Why is my competitor above me in the map pack?
The hardest part of this question is that the company above you is often worse at the job. Google is not grading the work. It is grading three things: how close the business is to the person searching, how well the listing matches what was typed, and how established the business looks online.
You cannot move your yard. The other two you can do something about.
What Google is comparing
Distance. If the searcher is standing in a town your competitor is based in, they get an advantage there that no amount of work erases. That is why you win the towns near you and fight for the ones further out.
Match. Their category says Tree Service. Their listing mentions emergency removal, stump grinding, storm cleanup. Their site says the same words. Yours may say “landscaping and property maintenance”, which matches a different search.
Prominence. Reviews, how recent they are, how often the profile is updated, whether other sites mention the company, whether the website loads. This is where most gaps actually sit.
Go look at their scorecard
This takes ten minutes and tells you more than any report:
- Open their listing. Count the reviews and check the date of the newest one.
- Read the last three reviews. Do they mention the town you want?
- Look at their photos. When were they added?
- Check their categories.
- Open their website on your phone and count the seconds until it loads.
- See whether their site lists towns, and whether those pages actually work.
Write down where they beat you. Usually it is reviews and recency, not anything clever.
The honest gap-closers
- Ask for a review on every closed job, the same day, while the customer is still happy about the tree being gone. This single habit moves more companies up than anything else.
- Post to the profile when you finish something worth showing. A crane job, a storm cleanup, a tricky removal near a house.
- Fix the category and the service area so you match what people type.
- List your towns on your website, with a real page for each one that says what you do there. This is the one place local pages belong — on your site, not scattered across the internet.
- Answer the phone. Google now watches whether people who tap call actually connect. Beyond that, a missed call is a lost job no matter where you rank.
What does not work
Buying reviews, keyword-stuffing your business name, fake addresses in towns you do not operate in. These get listings suspended, and getting a suspended profile back is a month of your life. If somebody offers you any of it, that is your answer about the rest of their advice.
See the gap yourself
Tap the towns you think you cover. We will show you what Google shows a homeowner in each one, and email you the one-page report. Free, no call required.