Measure local pack visibility across your area

Why one position is not enough

Google states that distance from the searcher is one of the three inputs to local ranking. The same query from two ends of a district can return two different packs. A business that checks its ranking from its own address sees the most favourable view there is, because it is at distance zero. A report that gives one pack position is reporting that view, and a company that presents it as “your local ranking” is either unaware of this or hoping you are.

The manual method

Take the target queries from the baseline. Choose five to nine points across the area you serve: the premises, and the edges and middle of the service area. At each point, on a phone, in a private window with location on, search each query and note whether the business appears in the pack and in which position. Record it in a grid: queries down the side, points across the top, position in each cell, blank for absent. Date it.

This takes a morning and a bus pass. It is crude, and it is honest, and it is the measurement that most local SEO companies do not do.

The tool method

Local rank tracking tools, sometimes called geo-grid trackers, do the same thing by simulating a search from each point of a grid laid over the area, and draw the result as a heat map. They cost money and they save the morning. The handbook does not endorse one; the publisher's own site describes the one it uses and that is a company fact about the publisher, not a recommendation of the tool. Whichever is used, the settings must be recorded, because the grid size and spacing change the picture.

What to record and what not to claim

Record: the date, the queries, the points or grid, the position at each, and the tool or method. Compare each month to the last and to the baseline. Report the pattern: strong near the premises, fading toward the edge, absent in the north. Do not reduce it to one number unless the method for the reduction is written down beside it; an average pack position across a grid is a made-up statistic unless its grid is stated.

Do not claim causes. A change in the pattern between two months may be your work, a competitor's work, or Google's. The monthly routine records what was done each month so that at least the first possibility can be checked.

Illustrative example. A dentist in Drumcondra checks eight queries from seven points monthly. In month one the practice appears in the pack at three points, all within a kilometre. By month six, after the profile and website chapters, it appears at five, and is absent at the two furthest. That is a description of what a grid shows; no figure in it is a measured result about any real practice.

Output

The dated grid, monthly, alongside the baseline. Then the measurement that matters more: calls and enquiries.