In short: Google says local results come down to relevance, distance and prominence. Distance you can’t move. The rest leans on things like your review count and a complete, current profile — all of it recurring work rather than a one-time setup. Staying active is the lever you actually control.
Most owners set up their Google Business Profile once, tick it off, and never open it again. Then they wonder why the shop down the road keeps turning up above them. The answer isn’t a secret — Google publishes it.
What Google says decides local results
Google’s local ranking guidance names three factors:
- Relevance — how well your profile matches what someone actually searched for.
- Distance — how far you are from the searcher.
- Prominence — how well known your business is. Google says this draws on information about you from across the web, and states plainly that your review count and score factor into local ranking.
Distance is fixed: you can’t move your shop closer to someone’s phone. That leaves relevance and prominence — and those are the two you can do something about this week.
Google’s own advice is a to-do list that never ends
Read what Google tells you to do to improve local ranking: enter complete information, keep your hours accurate, add photos, and manage and respond to your reviews.
Now notice what’s not on that list: anything you do once. Hours drift out of date. Photos get old. Reviews keep arriving whether or not you answer them. Every item on Google’s list is a chore that comes back — which means a profile isn’t a thing you set up, it’s a thing you keep.
That’s the whole reason an “active” profile does better. Not because activity is a magic ranking input, but because the things Google says count are things that quietly rot when nobody tends them.
What we won’t claim
You’ll read a lot of confident posts announcing that Google “changed its algorithm” this year and now scores freshness directly, with a percentage to go with it. We’re not going to tell you that. Google doesn’t publish its weightings, and anyone who quotes them is guessing — often to sell you something.
We don’t need the guess. What’s on the record is enough: reviews count, a complete and current profile counts, and both slide if you stop.
What “active” actually looks like
You don’t need to post daily or chase trends. A steady rhythm beats a burst:
- A few posts a week, each built around a real photo of your work.
- Every review replied to — the good ones and the awkward ones.
- Profile details kept current: hours, categories, services.
That’s it. The hard part isn’t knowing it — it’s doing it every week when you’re flat out running the shop. That’s exactly the part Mostravia takes off your plate: you send a photo, we keep the profile tended. See how it works.