Which of your rivals is actually taking your customers, and from where? On Google Maps the answer changes street by street. Google says local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and prominence (Google Business Profile help), and distance is different for every person who searches.
This guide shows how to build a rival list from what Google really displays, read where each rival is strong, and choose one gap worth closing. It complements our complete guide to Google Maps heatmaps in the UK, which explains how to read the grid itself.
Build one grid, one search term and one rival list
Start with the search term as a customer would type it, such as emergency plumber Leeds or physio near Chorlton. Run it from a grid of points across your service area. A heatmap does this for you; by hand, five points at different distances from your premises will do. LocalEdge’s heatmap marks competitors with violet markers, so the names that keep returning are easy to spot.
Write down every business that appears and count the points where each one shows up. The two or three names that appear on most points are your working rival list. A business you consider a rival but that never appears on the grid matters little for this exercise, while one you had never heard of that keeps appearing matters a lot.
Three strength patterns and what each one suggests
Google has not published how much each factor weighs, so read each pattern as a hypothesis to test, not a verdict.
Strong only around their own address
If a rival ranks well within a few streets of its premises and fades quickly beyond, distance is probably doing most of the work. You are unlikely to beat it at its doorstep. The better question is where on the map it is absent.
Strong far from their address
If a rival keeps appearing at points well away from its premises, something other than proximity is carrying it. Google describes prominence as how well known a business is, with review count and rating among the signals, and relevance as how well a profile matches the search. Compare its category, its review count, how recent its reviews are and the services it lists against yours.
Strong in a pocket close to you
If a rival beats you at points near your own premises, that is the most useful gap. The distance disadvantage is small there, so the difference is more likely to sit in the profile or the reviews. Start here.
Pick one gap, change one thing, rerun the same grid
Choose a single gap from the third pattern, such as a missing service list, incomplete opening hours or reviews left unanswered, and change only that. Record the date, the search term and the grid settings, then rerun the same grid after a few weeks. Changing one thing at a time is what lets you link a movement on the map to an action you took.
Expect noise. Results move for reasons unrelated to your work, and nothing here guarantees a higher position. A pocket that improves on a repeated grid is a sign you are heading the right way, not a result to promise.
Staying inside the rules while you compare
Reading a rival’s public profile is fine; acting on it is not. Do not post reviews on a competitor’s profile, ask others to post negative ones, or file reports without a genuine reason. Google does not accept reviews from competitors, and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has banned fake reviews in the UK since 6 April 2025, with the CMA able to enforce directly. Time spent on a rival’s profile is better spent on your own.
For agencies, the grid works as a client deliverable: same search term, same grid, dated, with each rival labelled by pattern. Show the movement and the actions taken, never a promise of rank. The LocalEdge agency profile scan can help you find client profiles with the same gaps, and solo owners can start with the LocalEdge profile scan.
A rival list built from the map, read by pattern and acted on one gap at a time gives you something to measure rather than something to guess. If you want a free starting point, try the free LocalEdge Lite version.
