Guides to local rank tracking

How local rankings really work, written from the sources: Google's own help pages, the local search studies and the people who test this for a living. Every claim links to where it came from.

• Why your Google Maps ranking changes from street to street

  Google ranks map results from where the searcher stands, so a business has a different rank on every street.

• Geogrid rank tracking: how to read a local rank grid

  What each point on a rank grid means, which number to watch, and how to size a grid you can compare over time.

• How ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI choose local businesses

  What the 2026 studies found about where each AI gets its local facts, and why their answers keep changing.

• Why your rank tracker and your own Google search disagree

  Four reasons a tracker and a search by hand rarely match, and how to check a rank by hand without fooling yourself.