You open your rank tracking report. Your business is #1 for your specified keywords. Green across the grid. It feels great.
Here’s the problem with that report: there is no single keyword that customers use to find your business.
When we pull direct keyword data from Google, the average business shows up for over a thousand different keywords. Tracking 10 or 50 of them keeps you in the dark about the search terms people are actually typing in to find your business. You could make an educated guess on what keywords potential customers might use to find you, but ultimately, everyone will search differently.
💡 Marketing executives don’t dictate what the market searches for; customers do.
That’s only the first (of many) fundamental problems with rank tracking as a tool to measure local search performance.
This article breaks down why rank tracking is an outdated and inaccurate performance indicator, and what you should be paying attention to instead.
TL;DR: Rank tracking is an outdated way to measure the success of your Google Business Profile. Search results are personalized and localized, so no two customers see the same thing, and “ranking #1” doesn’t tell you whether anyone chose you. What matters is total visibility and real-world results: profile views, direction requests, calls, bookings, and orders.
What we cover:
- Who decides the search terms you’re found for
- Consumer search behavior in the real world
- Why search results are different for each person
- What you should be measuring
Customers Drive the Search Terms
Let’s start with the belief most businesses hold: that customers find them through a handful of keywords, the ones the business would pick for itself. The truth is, they don’t. Every customer searches differently, and the average business shows up for over a thousand different keywords. We know because we pull that data directly from Google.
The problem with a rank tracker is that it only watches the terms you feed it. But customers don’t use a handful of terms, they use hundreds. One person might type the keyword you’d expect. Ten others type something you’d never think of.
You can make an educated guess. You can optimize for the terms you want to be found for. But the customer types whatever they type, and that’s the term that counts. The market decides how it searches for you, and it searches in more ways than you could ever list, let alone track.
So a report built on hand-picked keywords isn’t measuring how, or how many, customers find you. You could be “losing” on the handful you track and winning everywhere you’re not looking, or the reverse.
Everyone Searches Differently
We ran a live experiment to find out how people actually search for local businesses. At the International Pizza Expo in Vegas, we walked up to attendees and asked one simple thing: “find us a pizza restaurant.” We didn’t tell them which app to open. We didn’t give them a keyword. We just watched what they actually did, and how they searched.
🔎 No two people searched the same way.
Most went to Google. Some opened Safari, which routed them to Google anyway. Others used Apple Maps. A few used Yelp, and a few asked an AI tool. Nobody opened Instagram or TikTok. Which showed something clearly: when people need to find something in the moment, they go to search.
And it wasn’t just the platform that changed. It was the search terms. One person typed “pizza near me.” Another went with “best cheese pizza.” Someone else asked a full question out loud. Same goal, same room, and no two searches alike.
You Can’t Rank #1 for Everything (and That’s Okay)
If your business shows up for a thousand different searches, here’s the next thing worth knowing: you will never rank first for all of them. And chasing it is a losing game.
Google rewards businesses that are the clear authority for a given search. The more specifically a business matches what someone is looking for, the more authority it earns. For the thing you’re known for, you’ll show up high, because you’re the obvious answer. For a service you only offer on the side, a business built entirely around that service will beat you every time.
Take a pizza restaurant that also offers catering. It is never going to outrank a business whose entire operation, name, and primary category is catering. That’s not a gap in your strategy or a setting you forgot to flip; it’s Google working exactly as it should, sending each searcher to the business that fits best.
So a rank tracker showing you at #7 for a secondary service isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a distraction. The businesses winning in local search aren’t the ones trying to do the impossible (ranking #1). They’re the ones dominating the searches that actually match what they do, and treating everything else as a bonus.
🎥 Watch this video to learn more about why rank tracking is an outdated performance indicator.
No Two Customers See the Same Results
Everything so far chips away at rank tracking. This is what breaks it completely.
Most rank trackers don’t watch real customers at all. They run simulated searches from a fixed location and check the same position over and over. But the results they’re checking aren’t fixed. They shift by the hour, by the person searching, and by the exact location.
Have two people stand shoulder to shoulder and search the exact same thing. They can see two different businesses ranked first. Change the time of day, someone’s search history, or their exact spot on the block, and the order shifts again.
We watched this happen in Vegas. Same convention center, an area a rank tracker would treat as a single dot on a map. One person got a two-star business at the top of their results. Someone standing a hundred feet away got a four-and-a-half-star business first. Same building, same moment, completely different results.
So when a report tells you that you’re “#3,” the real question is: #3 for whom, where, and at what time of day? There’s no single answer, because there’s no single result. The number on the report is a snapshot of something that never sits still.
Being #1 Doesn’t Mean Customers Chose You
There’s one last thing rankings can’t tell you: even when a business shows up first, people don’t just pick it.
Over and over at the Pizza Expo in Vegas, people skipped the top result entirely. Sometimes because it was a sponsored ad. Sometimes because it had fewer reviews than the option right below it. Sometimes because it was farther away, or the photos didn’t sell them, or the price looked wrong. They compared. They read reviews. They looked at pictures. Then they chose.
That’s the gap rank tracking misses entirely. Being #1 gets you seen. It doesn’t get you picked. Whether someone calls, gets directions, or moves on to the next option comes down to what they find once they land on your profile: your reviews, your photos, your hours, your responses.
So you can win the ranking and still lose the customer. Which raises the only question that actually matters: not where you “rank”, but how many people chose you.
What Should You Be Measuring?
“Ranking #1” isn’t the goal. Customers are. The real question was never “where do I rank,” it’s “how many people found my business, and how many of them took action?” That’s what to measure instead.
- Total visibility. How many times your business profile actually showed up in real-world searches, and how that’s trending over time. Not one keyword. All of them.
- Real-world results. The actions that correlate to revenue: direction requests, phone calls, bookings, appointments, online orders, website visits. These are the moments a search turned into a potential customer.
Rankings and results aren’t unrelated. When your profile is complete, active, and genuinely the best option, you’ll show up more, and you’ll earn more of those actions. Visibility is a byproduct of being the business customers want to choose.
So start measuring what you’re actually after: customers through the door, not green bubbles on a grid.
See How Your Profile is Actually Performing
A rank tracker can tell you where you sit for an ultra-specific long-tail keyword. It can’t tell you how many customers your profile brought in, or what they were worth. That’s the number that actually runs your business, and it’s the one that report will never show you.
We built Map Labs to help businesses accurately measure performance on Google & Apple Maps, and learn how to get results from the channel. When you connect your profile to our Software, you get visibility and results in plain terms: how often you showed up in real searches, what specific keywords were used to find your business, and the calls, direction requests, bookings, and orders that came from it. No green grids. No guessing which ten keywords to watch.
If you want to see where you stand right now, our free GBP Analysis walks you through your real performance with a Map Labs expert: twelve months of data, the dollar value of your Maps presence, and the specific opportunities to get more customers. No commitment, no credit card required. Use what you learn with us or on your own.
Want to go further? Map Labs offers Coaching and Full Service management, so you can build the expertise in-house or hand everything to us. Either way, you’ll measure actual results, not rankings.
Stop tracking rankings. Start tracking results.
Want to know more?
🎥 Watch the videos below!
