In our last guide, we explained that Google shows different businesses depending on where the searcher is standing. This time we are going to look at a heatmap one dot at a time and learn to read it. Our example is a lawn care company.
Lawn care is a good one to study. Almost every homeowner needs it, most of them search on their phones, and they usually call the first company or two they see. Showing up in those top spots matters.
Meet the example
Say there is a lawn care company called Green Edge Lawn Care. It is a small crew with a truck and a good name around town. Customers love them: a 5.0 rating from 88 reviews, plenty of photos, and a Google Business Profile that is filled out. Someone ran a heatmap for the search lawn care service. Here is what it showed.
Green Edge Lawn Care: where it shows up on Google Maps
- 1 to 3
- 4 to 10
- Not in the top 10
Made up on purpose. Green Edge Lawn Care and every other business in this guide are invented, and the numbers are changed. We built the example from a pattern we see in real heatmaps, so it behaves the way a real one does.
How to read the map
Start with the parts of the picture.
- Each circle is a spot on the ground. The tool pretends to stand there and search for lawn care service. There are 7 rows and 7 columns, so that is 49 spots in all.
- The spots are 1 mile apart. Six gaps of one mile each means the whole map is 6 miles across, about the size of a small town.
- The number is the business’s place in Google Maps. A 1 means first. A 9 means ninth. A 20+ means it is not in the top 20 at all.
- The circle with a white ring is the business itself. It sits in the middle, because the map is centered on the shop.
- The N at the top means north is up. Like most maps, the top of the picture is north.
- The colors are a quick signal. On this map, green means places 1 to 3, yellow means 4 to 10, and red means outside the top 10. Other tools pick their own cutoffs, so always check the key under the map you are reading.
Why does green mean 1 to 3? Because the map at the top of a local search shows only three businesses. Most people pick from those three. A fourth or fifth place is easy to miss, and a 20+ is like being invisible.
What this map tells us
Let us count. Out of 49 spots, 0 are green, 2 are yellow, and 47 are red. Green Edge Lawn Care is not in the top 3 from any spot in this town.
Now look at three clues.
Clue 1: the center is red
The ringed circle is the shop itself, and it says 20+. This is the biggest clue on the map. Distance is the one thing that should help a business most, and a homeowner standing right at the shop still cannot find it. So the problem is not that the business is too far away.
Clue 2: a few yellow spots up north
A couple of spots at the top show a ninth and a tenth place. They are not great, but they are better than nothing. A map cannot say why. Maybe fewer lawn companies compete up there. It is a hint of where to look, not an answer.
Clue 3: everything else is red
The rest of the map says 20+. For most homeowners in this town, searching lawn care service, this company does not exist.
Notice what the map does not say. It does not say the crew is bad at mowing, and it does not say the customers are unhappy. Google never sees the lawns. It sees the Business Profile, the website, and the signals around them.
Who is winning instead?
A heatmap gets much more useful when you can see who owns the green spots. Here is how Green Edge compares with four rivals on the same map.
| Business | Spots in the top 3 (of 49) | Spots in first place | Google rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green Edge Lawn Care | 0 | 0 | 5.0 (88 reviews) |
| Prairie Pro Landscaping | 31 | 12 | 4.9 (260 reviews) |
| Maple Ridge Lawn Co. | 26 | 14 | 4.8 (92 reviews) |
| Clearcut Lawn & Garden | 17 | 10 | 4.9 (79 reviews) |
| Hometown Mowing | 12 | 5 | 5.0 (14 reviews) |
Read it like a scoreboard. The first column is how many of the 49 spots each business appears in the top 3. The second is how many spots it takes first place. Green Edge has a better rating than almost everyone on the list, and still has zeros across the row.
Two things in the table are worth a second look:
- Prairie Pro Landscaping has by far the most reviews, and it shows up in the top 3 at 31 spots. That is what prominence looks like. Google says that how well known a business is, including its reviews and the sites that link to it, helps it rank.
- Hometown Mowing has only 14 reviews, yet it still takes first place at 5 spots. Reviews are not the whole story. A business can win the spots near where it is based, and a business can win by matching the search well.
The lesson is that a good reputation helps, but it does not do the whole job on its own.
Why might the center be red?
A heatmap points at a problem without naming it. Start with the basics, all of which live in the Google Business Profile, the free listing that shows up on Google Maps:
- The main category matches the work.
- Services are listed in plain words.
- The name, address, and phone number match the website and the directories.
- There are real photos, and reviews get replies.
Green Edge passes all of those, so the answer is somewhere else. When the profile checks out, look at two other places.
- The competition. The table shows rivals with far more reviews, or with a long list of spots where they already rank first. Those businesses are hard to move.
- The website. Say a quick check of Green Edge’s site finds four things: no street address on the page, no local business markup (hidden labels that tell Google what the business is and where), thin pages for the gallery, the about page, and the services, and a home page that loads slowly on a phone. None of these is dramatic. Together they leave Google with less to go on.
We cover the profile basics in our guide on why a business is not showing on Google Maps, and the website side in how your website design affects local ranking.
What Green Edge could do
Google has told business owners that its local results rest mainly on relevance, distance, and prominence. The shop cannot move, so distance is fixed. The other two can improve. For Green Edge, that could mean:
- Put the street address and local business markup on the website. Make it easy for Google to match the website to the map listing.
- Rewrite the thin pages. Give mowing, aeration, fertilizing, and cleanup each its own page, with real photos and a clear headline.
- Add a page for each town served. A page about lawn care in a nearby town shows Google, and customers, that the company really works there.
- Speed up the home page. Smaller photos and fewer scripts help most.
- Keep the reviews coming. Ask every happy customer, send the link right after a job, and reply to every review. Reviews that mention the service and the neighborhood help most.
- Keep the details matching everywhere. The same name, address, and phone number on the profile, the website, and online directories.
None of that is fast. Websites take time to rebuild, and Google decides when to notice changes.
The same map, months later
Here is the kind of picture that can follow steady work. Again, this is made up. It shows what progress can look like, and it is not a promise of any result.
Green Edge Lawn Care: the same map, months later
- 1 to 3
- 4 to 10
- Not in the top 10
Now count again. Out of 49 spots, 5 are green, 17 are yellow, and 27 are red. The center, the shop’s own spot, is a 1. A green patch has formed around it, a yellow ring surrounds the patch, and red remains only near the edges.
That shape is common, and it makes sense. A business tends to do best close to home and fade as the searcher moves away. Moving the red outward, one ring at a time, is what progress looks like on a heatmap. Reaching the far corners may never be realistic, and it does not need to be. The goal is to be easy to find in the places your customers actually are.
Before you trust any heatmap
- Compare like with like. A map with a different search phrase, a different spacing, or a different number of spots will look different. Keep those the same when you check progress.
- One scan is a snapshot. Real results can shift a little with the person, the phone, and the time of day. Look for patterns over several checks, not one dot.
- Test the words customers use. Lawn care service and lawn mowing near me can give different maps.
- Remember the season. Searches for lawn care jump in spring, and competitors wake up too.
- A map shows the problem. Work fixes it. The picture does not change until the profile and the website do.
The short version
A geo-grid heatmap is a report card for where customers can find you. Read the center first, then the pattern, then the edges. Check who owns the green spots. Use the colors as a quick signal and the numbers for the detail. Then improve the profile and the website one piece at a time, and check again later.
If you would like help reading a heatmap for your business, get in touch. You can also start with our free Website Grader.
Sources