Why is my competitor above me on Google Maps? Five causes, in the order to check them
You are sat in the van on somebody's drive, you type your trade and your town into your phone, and three businesses sit in the box with the map. You are fourth.
The one on top has eleven reviews to your forty and a website that has not been touched since 2019, which is the detail that keeps people awake. Here is the first thing worth knowing: that search is also the least reliable one you will ever run, because you ran it from the one postcode where your own pin sits closest to the phone. Distance is one of the three things Google says decides a local result, so your own drive flatters you, every time. Before you change a single setting, you need to know whether you are genuinely fourth across your patch or fourth in one spot, because across the UK those are two different problems with two different fixes, and picking the wrong one costs you a season.
A rival outranks you on Google Maps for one of five reasons: they are nearer the searcher, their profile categories match the search better, they have more recent reviews, their website agrees with their listing, or their listing breaks Google's naming rules. Google names relevance, distance and prominence as the three factors. Check distance first: most UK trades diagnose Maps from their own drive.
Start by checking it from somewhere other than your own yard
Google says local results are ranked mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, so the Maps position you see standing in your own yard is the best one you will ever have, not the one your customers see.
This is the cheapest mistake to fix and almost everybody makes it. Distance means how far each business is from the person searching, and Google works from whatever it knows about where they are. Your phone, parked at your own address, is the most favourable point on the map for your own listing. Move two miles and the order changes. Move five and you can vanish from the three while still sitting first at home, which is why a tradesman can genuinely believe he ranks and never get called from the next town.
The way to settle it is to check a spread of points rather than one. A grid scan does exactly that: 49 points in a 7 by 7 pattern across an agreed radius around your base, each asking Google where you appear for the same search. What comes back is a picture rather than a number, and it tells you the one thing a single search cannot: whether your patch is shrinking or your profile is simply weaker than the firm above you. Do it before you change anything, because it is also your before picture. If you cannot find yourself anywhere on the grid, that is a different fault with a different cause, and I have set it out separately in why your Google Business Profile is not showing up.
Five reasons a rival sits above you, in the order to check them
Work the five causes in the order Google actually responds to them: distance, then categories, then reviews, then whether your website and your listing agree, then a rule-breaking listing. The first two can move a position inside a fortnight. The last one takes weeks and may never land.
The order matters more than the list. Almost everyone starts at reviews, because reviews are the visible thing, and reviews are the slowest of the five. Two minutes on each tells you which one you have.
Relevance is the box most trades have never opened
Your primary category is the single biggest relevance lever on a Google Business Profile, it is free to change, and it takes about a minute.
Relevance is how well a profile matches what somebody typed, and Google's own guidance on local ranking is blunt about improving it: give complete and detailed business information. In practice that is four fields, and most profiles I look at have one of them filled in properly. The primary category, which decides most of it. The secondary categories, for the searches around the edges. The services, typed out by name. And the service area, which should be where you will actually drive, not an optimistic radius.
Categories first, then services, then the area
The commonest fault is a category chosen at sign-up years ago and never revisited, usually something broad like "Contractor". If you fit kitchens, your primary category should say so, and "Kitchen remodeller" and "Kitchen furniture shop" are different bets on different searches. Pick the one that matches the job you want the phone to ring about. Then add every service you sell as its own entry, because the services list is what Google matches against the long, specific searches that convert.
Your website has to agree with your listing
Google checks the profile against the website, so a site that never names a town or a trade leaves the profile arguing on its own. This is not a small problem in British trades. When I audited 100 real UK trade websites by hand off my own cold-call lists, 58 named no town and no service anywhere a search engine would read. An Instagram page cannot close that gap either, because there is nothing on it for Google to match, which is the split I set out in do flooring fitters need a website or just Instagram. The fix is unglamorous: a page per service, a page per area you genuinely work, the same phone number as the listing, and the trade written in words.
Prominence is reviews, and a steady flow beats an old total
Google says review count and review score feed into local search ranking, so a rival with eleven reviews and a fresh one most months is building a signal you can start building this week, whatever your total says.
Prominence is how well known a business is, and Google builds it from what it can see: reviews, links, mentions, the rest of the web. Reviews are the part you influence directly, and the trade habit of asking in a burst when things go quiet is the worst possible pattern. A review link on the invoice and a QR code in the van makes it happen by itself after every job. Reply to all of them, including the three-star one: the reply is read more often than the review.
A listing that breaks the naming rules is a reportable answer
Google's guidelines require the name a business actually uses in the real world, so a listing called "Best Electrician Worthing 24/7" is in breach, and a listing taken down for it frees one of the three places in the box.
This is the cause people find hardest to believe and it is common in the UK trades, because stuffing a town and a trade into the business name works until somebody reports it. The rule is simple to check: Google's guidelines for representing your business require the name used consistently on the storefront, the website, the paperwork and by customers. A keyword-stuffed name is not that.
Document it before you report it
A report with evidence attached gets further than a flag, and you may need to escalate, so write it down as you go.
Expect two to six weeks, expect some reports to be ignored, and expect the stuffed name back once. Still worth doing: it is the only item where the result is a competitor leaving the box.
What each fix costs, and how long it honestly takes
Four of the five causes cost nothing but your time. The fifth, a website Google can actually read, is £50 every four weeks with no build fee, or £350 every four weeks with the Maps work included.
The five causes, priced honestly
| Grid scan to find out which cause you have | Free, one hour |
| Primary category, services and service area | Free, one hour |
| Review link and QR code, replies to all | Free, ongoing, 1 to 3 months to tell |
| Name, address and number matched everywhere | Free to £100, a weekend |
| Report a rule-breaking listing | Free, 2 to 6 weeks, no promises |
| A site with real service and area pages | £50 every four weeks |
| All of it done for you, Maps included | £350 every four weeks |
The website line is the Website plan, no build fee and nothing to pay on day one. The last line is SEO and Map Pack with the website included, or £300 every four weeks if you already have a site worth keeping.
The timescales are what people get sold badly. A category change is pure relevance and can show inside a fortnight. Reviews and profile activity are a one to three month story. A reported listing is out of your hands. So anyone promising the top three next week is either measuring from your own doorstep or guessing, and the organic picture is longer still, which I have set out in how long SEO takes to get trade jobs.
Ninety days is a fair target for a town or a suburb with a verified profile and a real service area. It is not a fair target for a dense city centre against thirty established listings. That is why the Google Maps work I sell starts with a scan of your patch and a straight answer about whether your search is winnable, before there is anything to sign. Sometimes that answer is no.
The bottom line: your rival is above you for a reason you can name by lunchtime, and usually a free one. Run the three searches from three places, read your primary category out loud, look at the dates on their reviews, then see whether your website says the same thing as your listing. Want the scan run for you? I will tell you which of the five it is and build a free mockup alongside it.