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What the Google map pack is and how the three are chosen

By the Cornerlens team ·

Search for a plumber, a dentist or a pizza place on Google and, usually above the list of websites, you get a small map with three businesses under it. That box is the map pack, also called the local pack or the 3-pack. It is often the first thing a local customer sees, and the three businesses in it are not the same for everyone.

What the map pack is

Semrush describes the 3-pack as the feature that highlights the top three local business listings for a location-based search, shown beside a map with each business's name, rating, address and opening hours. It appears when a search has local intent: Semrush's examples are "[service] near me", "best [service] in [city]" and "[service] [location]", such as "dentist near me" or "plumber Brooklyn".

The pack is the top of a longer list. A click on one of the three, or on the button below them, opens what BrightLocal calls the local finder: a map with many more businesses, tied to their Google Business Profiles. Google Maps shows its own list too. So a business that is not in the three can still be fourth, eighth or fifteenth one click away, which matters for how you measure it.

Ads in the pack

Not every listing in the box is earned. Google can place a sponsored business at the top of the local pack. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable reported in February 2026 that these ads were spreading fast: Joy Hawkins shared data from Places Scout, tracked across about 1,200 mobile ranking reports, showing ads in the local pack for about 22% of tracked keywords, up from under 3% a couple of months before. When you count where a business stands in the pack, decide whether you count the ad, and keep the same rule every week.

How Google picks the three

Google's help page for business owners says local results mainly depend on three things.

Google adds that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. The sponsored listing is an ad placement, apart from that ranking.

The people who test this for a living rank distance near the very top. In Whitespark's 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, 47 local search experts scored 187 factors; the distance between the searcher and the business came second for the local pack, one place behind the business's primary category. A 2025 study by Search Atlas of 3,269 businesses in food, health, law and beauty, reported by Search Engine Journal, found distance the biggest factor across the first 21 positions, with review counts gaining weight in the top ten. The authors warn that their figures show correlation, not cause, and that their fixed grid may overstate distance.

Why the three change from street to street

Because distance is one of the three factors, the same search returns a different pack depending on where it is made. A business can hold first place at its own door and drop out of the three a mile or two away, where other businesses are closer. That is why one search, from one spot, says little about how often a business gets into the pack across its town. Our guide to why your Google Maps ranking changes from street to street shows it on a map.

The pack can also change with the hour. Whitespark's survey added a new factor in 2026, whether the business is open at the time of the search, and the experts put it fifth. Darren Shaw, who runs the survey, writes that a business can sit at #1 while open, start to drop about an hour before closing, and be replaced by open businesses once it closes. He also warns a business people might walk into against listing hours it doesn't keep: it frustrates customers and breaks Google's guidelines.

How to get into it

Getting into the pack means doing well on the three factors Google names, and only two of them can be worked on: distance is fixed by where the business is. The work is mostly on the Business Profile (the right primary category, complete details, accurate hours) and on reviews. Our guide to how to rank higher on Google Maps goes through what Google says and what the survey ranks highest, including the one tempting move that breaks Google's rules.

How to measure it

The short version

The map pack is the box of three businesses Google shows above the websites for local searches. Google picks them by relevance, distance and how well known each business is, and sells a sponsored place above them more and more often. Because distance counts, the three change from street to street, so a business's place in the pack is something to measure across its area, not check once.

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