Google scores every eligible business against three factors for each local search: relevance, distance, and prominence. Understanding how they interact explains why a business further from the searcher can still beat one that’s closer.
Relevance
How well your profile matches what the searcher is looking for. This comes from your categories, your business description, the services you’ve listed, and how closely your Google Business Profile content maps to the actual search term. A profile with the right primary category and complete service listings has a real advantage here. This Google Business Profile optimization checklist covers every field worth getting right.
Distance
How far your listed location is from the searcher, or from the location implied in their search. This is the factor businesses have the least control over, though a well-defined service area can help for businesses that don’t operate from a single storefront.
Prominence
How well-known and trusted Google considers your business, based on reviews, review ratings, backlinks, general web presence, and citations. This is the factor with the most room for businesses to actually move the needle, and it’s why a business a few miles further away with strong reviews and a healthy backlink profile can outrank a closer competitor with a thin profile. See why review recency now beats review volume for how the review side of prominence has shifted.
What this means in practice
Distance is mostly fixed. Relevance is a matter of doing the completeness work right. Prominence is where sustained effort, reviews, citations, local links, and content, compounds over time. For a multi-location B2B business, this means the locations investing consistently in prominence signals will often outrank competitors sitting closer to the searcher but doing nothing beyond the basic listing.
That’s the practical argument for treating local SEO as an ongoing investment rather than a setup task: prominence is built, not claimed.
Related reading: see the full Local SEO hub for B2B & MSP businesses for the complete ranking framework these three factors sit inside.
Frequently asked questions
What are Google’s three local ranking factors?
Relevance, distance, and prominence: how well your profile matches the search, how close you are to the searcher, and how trusted your business is based on reviews and links.
Can a business further away outrank a closer competitor?
Yes. Strong prominence signals like reviews and backlinks can let a business further from the searcher outrank one that’s closer but has a thinner profile.