What decides who comes top?
Google wants to show the most useful result for each search. For a search like “plumber in Halesowen” or “web designer near me”, it weighs up three things:
- Relevance: how clearly your website and Google profile match what was searched.
- Distance: how close you are to the person searching, or to the place they named.
- Prominence: how well known and trusted you are, judged from reviews, mentions on other websites and links to yours.
You can’t change where you are, but you can do a lot about the other two.
The map results and the normal results are different
Local searches usually show a map with three businesses before the normal list of websites. They work differently:
| The map results | The normal results | |
|---|---|---|
| Driven by | Your Google Business Profile | Your website |
| What matters most | Categories, services, reviews and distance | Clear pages for each service and area, titles, speed and links |
| Cost | Free | Free |
| Where to start | Complete every part of your profile, then build reviews | A page for each main service, with a clear title and heading |
Most local businesses get more calls from the map than from the website list, so don’t skip it.
What to do, in order of impact
- Complete your Google Business Profile. Pick the most accurate main category, add your services and the areas you cover, your hours, photos and a clear description. If you work from home, set it up as a service-area business with your address hidden.
- Get genuine Google reviews, steadily. Ask every happy customer, every time, with a direct link. My guide on how to get more Google reviews has a message you can copy. A few reviews a month beats a burst once a year. Reply to all of them, good and bad.
- Give each main service its own page. One page trying to cover everything ranks for nothing in particular. “Boiler repairs” and “bathroom fitting” deserve a page each.
- Say what you do and where, in the words customers use. Each page needs a title and main heading that name the service and the area, for example “Emergency Plumber in Halesowen”, not “Welcome to our website”.
- Make it fast on phones. Shrink oversized photos, remove what you don’t use, and test it on Google PageSpeed Insights.
- Get mentioned on other websites. Local directories, suppliers, trade bodies, local news and clients’ websites. Use exactly the same business name, address and phone number everywhere.
- Answer the questions customers ask. Prices, timescales, what’s included. Short, clear answers on your pages help both Google and AI assistants.
Run the free check
How long does it take?
Changes to your Google Business Profile and website can be picked up within days, but moving up takes longer. For a local business in a fairly competitive area, one to three months is a realistic time to see a difference, and longer to reach the top for busy searches like “solicitor Birmingham”. Reviews and mentions build over time, which is why steady beats sudden.
What to avoid
- “Guaranteed page one” offers. Nobody controls Google’s results. Guarantees usually mean an obscure search nobody types, or paid adverts.
- Buying or filtering reviews. Paying for reviews, offering discounts in exchange, or only asking customers you know are happy breaks Google’s rules and can get reviews removed.
- A fake or borrowed address. Google can suspend profiles that use an address you don’t work from. If you work from home, hide your address and list your service areas instead.
- Stuffing pages with keywords. Repeating “plumber Birmingham” twenty times reads badly and doesn’t help. Write for the customer.
How ChatGPT and other AI assistants choose who to recommend
When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Perplexity for a recommendation, the assistant usually searches the web first, mostly through Google and Bing, then names a handful of businesses. It favours businesses whose websites clearly state who they are, where they work and what they charge, and whose reviews and mentions elsewhere back that up.
So the work above helps with AI too. On top of it, AI assistants find it easier to read websites that include structured data describing the business, a clear answer near the top of each page, and real details like prices and areas covered.
What I did on my own website
I set up my Google Business Profile as a service-area business with my address hidden, added my services and the areas I cover, and asked clients for reviews with a direct link. On the website, I built a page for each service and for each area I work in, gave every page a clear title, description and heading, and added structured data describing the business.
A few weeks later, Google’s AI answers name Clever Rabbit when people search for website costs in Oldbury, and the site scores 100/100 for Google and 96/100 for AI on my own check. Reviews are still the part that takes the longest.
When you don’t need me
Everything in the list above can be done yourself, and the Google Business Profile and reviews are worth doing yourself whatever happens: nobody knows your customers better. If your website isn’t on Google at all, start with why your website isn’t showing up on Google.
If you’d rather hand the website side over, that’s what I do: local SEO for small businesses, at a fixed price from your free check report, with no long contract.
Written by Ben Brailsford-Chambers, the web designer behind Clever Rabbit in Oldbury. Last updated 24 October 2026. More guides