Ask the SEO Wizard
Great and Glorious Keeper of the Map Pack,
How does a rival with two reviews and a fake address beat me on Maps?
— an owner of a roofing company in Gresham, adapted from a question on r/smallbusiness
Asked
Fifteen years in business, 200+ five-star reviews, a real office, and we used to own the map pack. Now three new listings with generic names like "Best City Roofers," two reviews each, and addresses that turn out to be fake rank above us.
The Wizard answers
This can be frustrating. Google is far from perfect at recognizing the best result for a given search. I won’t be able to tell you exactly why this is happening without more detail, but I can tell you about some things you can do.
But first, this old Wizard would like to remind you to beware of falling into the trap of focusing on a single keyword result you see in your own browser.
You can’t trust what you see in your own browser on your own computer. Google uses your search history and what it knows about you to personalize your results.
Map results change depending on where the searcher is standing. Search “roofer” from your office and you get one map pack. Search it from a driveway five miles away and you get another. Your own search history nudges things too.
So before you panic, look at the whole picture. A geo-grid rank tracker checks your position from dozens of points across your service area and shows it as a heat map. You might find the fake listings only win near their fake address, and you still win almost everywhere else. Or you might find a real problem. Either way, you’re working from facts instead of one screenshot.
Why the fakes rank at all
Three things usually explain it.
- Proximity. Google leans hard on distance. A fake address dropped near the center of town, or near where you happened to be searching, gets a boost that a real office across town can’t match.
- The name. “Best City Roofers” is a keyword stuffed into a business name. It shouldn’t work. But it does. Google still weighs the business name heavily, and spammers know it.
- The new-listing bump. Fresh profiles sometimes get a short honeymoon in the rankings. It usually fades.
You can report them
Fake addresses and keyword-stuffed names break Google’s rules, so report them. Look up the address on Street View first. An empty lot or a UPS Store is your evidence. Then use “Suggest an edit” on the listing, and for repeat offenders use Google’s Business Redressal Complaint Form. Keep screenshots. It can take weeks, and spam listings often come back, so check again every month or so.
Other than that, work on getting more reviews! Reviews power local search results more than just about anything.