A local SEO heat map is a grid of pins laid over a map of your area, where each pin shows where your business ranks in Google Maps for one keyword when someone searches from that exact spot. It exists because your ranking is not one number. It changes every few streets. Below is a real one we ran this week, then how to run your own for free, read it, and fix what it shows.
What a local SEO heat map looks like: a real 49-pin scan
On 13 October 2026 we searched Google Maps for “dentist” from 49 points across central Austin, Texas, each one mile from the next. Then we followed one downtown practice, the one that ranks first at the centre pin, across the whole map. It has 988 Google reviews.
Rank 1, at the practiceTap any pin to read it.
- Rank 1 to 3
- Rank 4 to 10
- Rank 11 to 20
- Not in the top 20
- 2 of 49
- pins where this practice is in the top 3
- 9 of 49
- pins where it is in the top 10
- 3 miles
- out, it is not in the top 20 anywhere
First at its own door. Fifth to tenth a mile away. Gone from the top 20 at three miles, in every direction. And it was not losing to one big rival:
- 34 different businesses ranked first somewhere on the 49 pins.
- 83 different businesses appeared in a top 3.
- No business held a top 3 spot at more than 8 of the 49 pins.
- The practice had more reviews than the first-placed business at all 48 other pins, and still lost every one of them.
A normal rank tracker would report this practice as “number 1 for dentist in Austin”. The map shows that is true for about a mile around its door. So why does it fall away so fast?
Why your Google Maps ranking changes every mile
Because Google measures how far each business is from the person searching. Google’s own help page says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and popularity, and defines distance as “how far each business is from the customer who’s searching”.
In our scan that rule was easy to see. We measured how far the first-placed business was from each of the 49 search points.
How far away was the #1 result? One mark per search point.
- 22 of 49 within half a mile
- 40 of 49 within one mile
- 0 farther than two miles
Outside studies agree. Search Atlas analysed 3,269 businesses in August 2025 and found that distance from the search point carried 55.2% of the weight in its model of positions 1 to 21, with review count next at 19.2%. And when Whitespark asked 47 local search experts to score 187 factors, three of the top twelve were about where your address is.
The 12 strongest local pack factors, scored by 47 local search experts
Set by where your address isSomething you can change
That chart is the most useful thing to keep in mind when you read your own map. The dark bars are fixed unless you move. The blue bars are where your work goes. But first you need your own map.
How to create a local SEO heat map for free
You need a geo-grid rank tracker. It runs the same search from every pin and draws the result. Google does not offer one. Five steps.
Step 1. Pick one keyword a customer would type
Use the plain service word: “dentist”, “emergency plumber”, “nail salon”. Leave the city out. The pin already tells Google where the searcher is, and adding a city name changes what you are measuring. If you are unsure which words matter, our guide to local keyword research shows how to find them.
Step 2. Choose the grid size and spacing
Two settings decide everything: how many pins (3 × 3 up to 21 × 21) and how far the grid reaches. More pins cost more, because in most tools one pin is one credit. Local Falcon, Semrush and LeadSnap all state this on their pricing pages. Work it out here before you sign up to anything.
Grid planner: how many pins, how far apart, what it costs
Pick how far your customers come from and a grid size. Nothing is sent anywhere.
- 49
- pins, so 49 credits for each keyword you scan
- 1 mile
- between pins
- 36 sq mi
- covered
- $2.45
- per scan at Local Falcon’s pay-as-you-go rate of $0.05 a credit
Fits in the free credits at Grid My Business (5 scans), Whitespark (4 scans) and Local Falcon (2 scans).
Between half a mile and a mile and a half is a sensible start for a city. In our Austin scan the first result was usually within a mile of the searcher.
Free allowances and prices are from each vendor’s page on 13 October 2026 and are listed in the table below. The spacing advice is our rule of thumb from the scan above, not a standard.
Step 3. Run it in a tool with free credits
Five of these tools let you run a real scan without paying. The other three give you a trial.
| Tool | Free to start | Paid from | Largest grid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whitespark Local Ranking Grids | 200 credits, no card | $10 a month for 2,000 credits | 15 × 15 |
| Grid My Business | 250 credits on a free plan | $29 a month for 7,500 credits | 7 size options |
| Local Falcon | 100 credits on sign-up, no card | $24.99 a month for 7,500 credits, or $0.05 a credit as you go | 21 × 21 |
| Semrush Map Rank Tracker | 50 credits a month, one keyword, 5 × 5 only | $30 a month | Not stated |
| localseotool.io | Grids up to 5 × 5, 10 reports a month | Not shown on the tool page | 13 × 13 |
| BrightLocal Local Search Grid | 14-day trial, no card | $31 a month, billed yearly | Not stated |
| Local Dominator | 7-day trial, no card | From $32.50 a month | Not stated |
| LeadSnap | 7-day trial, no card | $59 a month for 10,000 credits | Not stated |
Read on each vendor’s own page on 13 October 2026. Prices in US dollars. Check the page before you buy, because these change.
In any of them the flow is the same: search for your business by name, type the keyword, set the grid, press scan and wait for the map.
Step 4. Scan while you are open
Run the scan during your opening hours, and at the same time of day each time. Google confirmed in December 2023, in a statement quoted by Sterling Sky, that “openness” had recently become a stronger signal in local ranking, so a scan at midnight and a scan at noon can look different. Our Austin scan ran at about 4 am local time with every practice closed, which is fair for comparing them but not what a lunchtime searcher sees.
Step 5. Save it, then scan again in four weeks
One map is a photo. Two maps a month apart show whether anything you did worked. Keep the keyword, centre point, grid and time of day identical, or the two maps cannot be compared.
No tool? Spot-check one point in Chrome
You can fake your location in Chrome for a quick look. Open Developer Tools, press Ctrl + Shift + P (Command + Shift + P on a Mac), type “sensors” and choose Show Sensors. Chrome’s documentation says you can then pick a preset city or enter a custom latitude and longitude. To move a point one mile north, add about 0.0145 to the latitude: the US Geological Survey puts one degree of latitude at roughly 69 miles.
Treat it as a rough check. Google says it estimates your location from several sources, including your IP address, so the browser setting is not the only thing it reads. For 25 or 49 points, use a tool.
How to read a local SEO heat map
Read the numbers, not the colours. The two tools below both paint ranks 1 to 3 green, then disagree about everything after that.
The same rank, two different colours
So a rank of 8 is a warning in one tool and an emergency in another. The number is the same. What matters is which side of 3 you are on, because only three businesses fit in the local pack.
The three numbers under the map
Most tools sum the map up in three figures. The names come from Local Falcon, which says it invented this kind of tracking, and other tools use the same ideas under other labels. Here they are, worked out on the Austin scan.
ranks at the 20 pins where it was found, added up220÷20=11.0
Your average rank only where you appear. It hides the pins where you are missing.
the same 220, plus 29 missing pins counted as 21 each829÷49=16.9
Your average across every pin. The honest one. Lower is better.
pins where it ranked in the top 32÷49=4.1%
The share of the map where you are in the 3-pack. Higher is better.
Notice how different the first two are. An ARP of 11.0 sounds fine. An ATRP of 16.9 tells you the business is missing from most of the map. If you only track one, track ATRP or SoLV.
The four shapes, and what each one means
After the numbers, look at the shape. Tap each one.
A circle around you
Normal. Distance is doing its job.
This is what most healthy single-location businesses look like, including the practice in our scan. You are strong at your door and fade as other businesses get closer to the searcher.
- Do not treat the faded edge as a fault to fix.
- Grow the circle slowly with reviews, the right categories and local links.
- Compare scans month to month. The circle should widen, not move.
Faint everywhere
A relevance or trust problem, not a distance problem.
If you are not in the top 3 even at your own address, Google is not matching your profile to the search, or it trusts competitors far more.
- Check your primary category first. Google says the categories you select affect your local ranking.
- Check the keyword is a service you clearly offer on your profile and website.
- Compare your rating and review count with whoever is first at your own pin.
Strong on one side only
Something on the weak side is beating you.
A lopsided map usually means a cluster of strong competitors, a city or county line, or water, a motorway or parkland where few businesses and searchers are.
- Tap the weak pins and note who ranks first there. The same name twice is your real competitor.
- Check whether the weak side is a different city name than your address.
- If nobody lives there, ignore it.
A hole where you are
Check your pin and your address.
Ranking better a mile away than at your own door is unusual. The scan may be centred on the wrong spot, or the map pin on your profile is in the wrong place.
- Open your profile on Google Maps and check the pin sits on your building.
- Check the scan was centred on your address, not the city centre.
- Scan again at a time you are open. Opening hours are a ranking factor.
How to fix the weak areas on your heat map
Start with what Google lets you change. In order of how strongly Whitespark’s experts scored each one:
- Check your primary category. It is the top-scored factor, and Google states that “the categories you select affect your local ranking”. Compare yours with the business ranked first at your weakest pins. Our free Google Business Profile Audit shows your categories next to theirs.
- Keep your hours accurate, and open when people search. Being open at the time of the search is factor five. If your listed hours are shorter than your real ones, Google treats you as closed while you are open.
- Raise your rating and keep reviews coming. Local Falcon’s study of 50 million local results found that “almost every category requires at least 4.5 stars to compete, and the typical winner has 4.8-4.9 stars”. Whitespark’s survey scores how recent your reviews are as its own factor, separate from how many you have. See how Google reviews affect ranking.
- Check the map pin. Open your listing in Google Maps. If the pin sits on the car park or the wrong unit, fix it in your profile.
- Leave your name alone. Keywords in the business name score third, which is why people stuff them in. Google’s guidelines say your name “should reflect your business’s real-world name” and that “including unnecessary information in your business name isn’t permitted”.
- Do not bother widening your service area. It is factor 152 of 187 in the same survey, and Sterling Sky’s testing found a profile’s service area “does not currently affect local rankings”.
What about the far pins that will never turn dark?
Be honest with yourself here. If 34 businesses can each win their own patch of one city, you will not win all of it from one address. For the areas beyond your circle, you have three real options:
- Win the ordinary results instead. Under the map pack sit the normal website results, and distance matters far less there. Whitespark’s experts rank searcher distance 2nd for the map pack but 41st for local organic results. A useful page for each town you serve can rank where your profile cannot. Our guide to city pages covers how.
- Build prominence. Google says prominence is partly based on “how many websites link to your business”. Local links widen the circle slowly.
- Open a real second location, if the far area is worth it. See local SEO for multiple locations.
If you would like someone to run the scans and do this work for you, that is what our local SEO service is for.
Do heat maps work for ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews?
They are starting to. Local Falcon says it now monitors how a business appears across “ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Grok, and AI Mode”, and Local Dominator advertises an AI tracker too. It matters for two reasons.
First, AI answers follow different rules. Local Falcon’s May 2025 study of 430 US businesses concluded that “Google AI Overviews currently places less emphasis on proximity than traditional local packs”. A business with a small circle on the map can still be named in an AI answer across town.
Second, AI is far pickier. SOCi looked at more than 350,000 locations and found ChatGPT recommends just 1.2% of brand locations, against an average 35.9% that appear in Google’s local 3-pack. And people do use it: BrightLocal’s 2026 survey found 45% of consumers used AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier.
Share of searchers who click, by where the business appears
The map pack still earns more clicks, so the heat map stays your main report. To see whether AI tools mention you at all, run your business through our free AI Visibility Checker.
What a local SEO heat map cannot tell you
A heat map is a sample, and it has blind spots. Know them before you show one to a boss or a client.
- It is not real customers. A pin in a lake or an industrial estate counts the same as one in a busy neighbourhood. Weigh the pins by where people live.
- It is one moment. Rankings move with opening hours and from day to day. One scan proves little. A trend across four scans proves a lot.
- It is one keyword. “Dentist” and “emergency dentist” can draw two different maps.
- Tools can disagree. Each tool has its own settings for how it runs the search. Compare a tool with itself, not with another tool.
- Rank is not revenue. Google’s own performance report counts calls, direction requests and website clicks from your profile. If the map gets darker and those do not rise, the pins you won were not where your customers are.
A heat map is one check among several. Our local SEO audit guide walks through the rest.
FAQs
Is there a free local SEO heat map tool?
Yes. As of October 2026, Whitespark gives 200 free credits, Grid My Business has a free plan with 250, Local Falcon gives 100 on sign-up, and Semrush Map Rank Tracker gives 50 a month on a 5 × 5 grid. One credit is usually one pin, so 100 credits covers four 5 × 5 scans or two 7 × 7 scans.
What grid size should I use for a local SEO heat map?
Start with 7 × 7 and pins about one mile apart for a city business, or 5 × 5 if you are on free credits. Spread the pins wider for a service business that travels. In a 49-pin SEOs Hut scan of Austin dentists, the first result was within one mile of the searcher at 40 of 49 pins, so wider spacing misses detail.
How accurate is a local SEO heat map?
It is accurate for the moment and the points it sampled, and no more. The tool runs a real Google search from each pin, but results shift with opening hours, the day, and the tool’s settings. Use it to compare your own scans over time, with the same keyword, grid and time of day, not as an exact ranking.
Why do I rank well near my business and nowhere else?
Because distance is one of Google’s three main local ranking factors, alongside relevance and prominence. Google ranks businesses partly by how far they are from the searcher. Whitespark’s 2026 survey of 47 local search experts scored searcher distance as the second strongest local pack factor, just behind the primary business category. A tight circle around your address is normal.
What is a heat map in SEO?
It can mean two things. A local SEO heat map, also called a geo-grid, shows where a business ranks in Google Maps from different points in an area. A website heat map, from tools like Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity, shows where visitors click and scroll on a page. This guide covers the first kind.