How Google decides which pages rank
Google ranks pages, not businesses: the page that best answers the search, from a site it trusts. What that means for a local business.
Google ranks pages, not businesses. For each search, it looks for the page that best answers it, from a website it trusts. Your website might rank for “furnace repair Des Moines” with one page and for “heat pump cost” with another, and for nothing at all with a third.
What Google weighs
- Relevance: the page is about exactly what was searched, and says so in its title, headings and first lines.
- Usefulness: it answers the question better than the alternatives. Google's own advice is to write for people first, not for search engines.
- Trust: other relevant websites link to it and mention you, your facts are consistent, and your reviews and record back you up.
- Experience: the page loads quickly, works on a phone, and isn't buried in pop-ups.
Two kinds of results
For local searches, Google often shows a map with three businesses, then the regular results underneath. The map comes from your Google Business Profile, which has its own course. The regular results come from your website, and that's what this course is about.
Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode are built from the same results, so a page that ranks well is more likely to be used in them too.
Nobody can promise a ranking, and anyone who does is guessing. What you can do is make the best page for each search that matters, and give Google reasons to trust it.
Do this before the next lesson
- Search Google for three things customers search before calling you, the way they'd type them.
- For each, note whether you're on page 1, and which of your pages shows.
- Note what kind of pages rank above you: service pages, guides, directories or lists.
In Groow
Groow checks where you rank for every search you track, every week, and shows which of your pages ranks for each.
Put this to work on your business
Groow checks how ChatGPT, Google and Google Maps see your business every week, tells you what to fix first, and drafts the work for your OK.