Before you read a pattern: what a cell actually says
Each cell is one search for your keyword from that point, with the business’s position in the Google Maps results. Geogrid reads the first page of Maps results at every point, which is ten listings, so a measured cell is either a position from 1 to 10 or grey.
Four things make a map look worse, or better, than the market really is. Check them first:
- →Grey has two meanings. Not on the first page, or no data at all for that point. Missing points are left out of the visibility score rather than counted as losses.
- →Some cells are interpolated. They are drawn lighter and say so in their tooltip. The “show only scanned nodes” toggle (shortcut S) hides them.
- →Water is skipped. Blue-grey cells were never searched and do not count against you.
- →The search has to come from the right place. A location that silently falls back to another city paints a grid grey for a business that ranks fine. How Geogrid guards against that is explained in our UULE and search location deep dive.
The eight patterns
The diagrams are schematic 7×7 grids with the business at the centre. Real scans are noisier, and larger grids show the same shapes in more detail.
Pattern 01
The steep bullseye
Green on the pin and the first ring, then grey within one or two cells in every direction.
Proximity is doing all the work. Close to the listing you win on distance alone; as soon as a competitor is nearer to the searcher, you lose, because nothing else (reviews, category fit, links) is strong enough to keep you on the first page.
Open the grey cells in the outer ring and look at who ranks there. If the top results are simply the businesses closest to each cell, it is a distance contest you are not winning on prominence.
Work on prominence, not proximity: primary category, reviews that mention the service, links and citations from the wider area. Do not report the inner ring as “the ranking”. Measure success by how far the green spreads, ring by ring.
Pattern 02
The donut
A strong ring a few cells out, and a weak middle right where the business is.
Something specific to the centre is beating you. Usually it is a cluster of competitors in the same block, often downtown, or a listing Google treats as a near-duplicate of yours. Google hides listings that look like copies of a nearby one in the same category, a behaviour the industry calls the Possum filter after a 2016 update; a shared address or building is the classic trigger.
Click the centre cells and read the results. If a business at your address, in your building or a few doors away holds the spot you lose, it is the filter or a direct neighbour. Then check that the scan centre sits on your listing’s real pin and not on a geocoded street address.
Differentiate the listings that compete at the same spot: distinct suite numbers, distinct primary categories where it is legitimate, and remove duplicate or outdated listings. If it is a plain competitor cluster, it is a prominence fight at the centre, not a coverage problem.
Pattern 03
The off-centre hotspot
Grey around the business, and a patch of green somewhere else on the grid.
Google places you somewhere other than where you think. Common causes: the map pin is not on the building, a service-area business whose hidden address Google has placed elsewhere, an old address still live in citations, or a neighborhood name in the business name or keyword that matches the hotspot.
Compare the scan centre with the listing’s pin on Google Maps. Check whether the hotspot lines up with a former address or a named neighborhood. If several keywords show the same hotspot, it is the location; if only one does, it is the keyword.
Fix the pin and the citations first, then rescan. Do not build landing pages for the area around the hotspot until you know why it is there: you might be reinforcing an error.
Pattern 04
The competitor wall
A straight, sharp edge. Strong on one side, grey on the other, with almost no transition.
Gradual decay is normal; a cliff is not. Either a competitor takes over at that line, or a physical or administrative boundary does: a river, a motorway, a city limit, a state line. Google’s idea of the area a searcher is likely to travel across is not a circle.
Select the top competitor in the competitor list and look at their positions on the map. If their strong zone starts exactly where yours ends, it is them. If nobody in particular wins the grey side, look at the base map for the boundary.
Against a competitor, compare categories, review count and rating with theirs at the cells they win; that is the gap to close. Against a boundary, accept it in reporting and focus on the side where customers actually come from.
Pattern 05
Edge-only rankings
Grey across the core of the grid, some colour along one outer edge.
It looks like a win at the edge. It usually is not. Edges tend to fall where businesses thin out, past the suburbs or the city limit, so there are fewer competitors within reach and you make the first page by default. Few people search from there, too.
Open an edge cell and count the results. A short list, or results from far away, means a sparse market rather than a strong listing.
Treat it like flat grey for the core of the grid. Shrink the radius so the grid covers the area that matters; a tighter grid also costs fewer credits for the same number of points that count.
Pattern 06
Water and empty quadrants
A block of the grid that is blue-grey, or grey over fields, forest or a port.
Blue-grey cells are water. Geogrid detects them before the scan, skips them, and leaves them out of the visibility score and the competitor analysis, so a coastline does not read as lost ground. Grey over empty land is different: those points were measured, and nobody searches from them.
Look at the map under the grid. If the grey follows a park, an airport or farmland, it is geography, not performance.
Move the centre or reduce the radius so the grid sits on populated land. Leave water quadrants alone; they cost nothing and change nothing.
Pattern 07
Flat grey
No colour anywhere. A visibility score of zero.
The listing is not on the first page of Maps results at any point of the grid. That is either a ranking problem (you exist, but on page two or lower) or a listing problem (wrong category, unverified, suspended, or the keyword simply does not match what Google thinks you are).
When a grid larger than 3×3 comes back with no first-page result anywhere, Geogrid checks page two on up to nine sample points and reports the best position it finds. A position in the 11–20 range means a ranking problem. The “Who owns this area” panel lists the three businesses that do rank across the grid, which tells you what Google expects for that keyword.
If page two finds you, you are a few positions short: prominence work, as for the steep bullseye. If it does not, start with the listing itself; our guide to a business not showing on Google Maps covers the checks in order.
Pattern 08
The checkerboard
Green next to grey next to amber with no shape at all.
Real rankings have a shape, because distance changes smoothly. A grid with none is often a data problem: points where no results came back at all are shown grey but are missing data, not “not ranked”, and interpolated cells between measured points can blur a pattern. Volatile keywords and listings in flux produce it too.
Turn on “show only scanned nodes” to hide interpolated cells. Then rescan after the cache window: points measured in the last 72 hours for the same keyword and listing are served from cache, so an immediate rescan shows you the same map.
Do not act on a single checkerboard. Compare two scans a few days apart; only the cells that keep their colour are signal.
For the flat grey case, the step-by-step checks are in why your business is not showing on Google Maps. For the distance mechanics behind the steep bullseye, see how the proximity factor works.
What the visibility score adds, and hides
The visibility score compresses the map into one percentage. Each land point with data gets a weight for its position, and the score is the average:
The weights fall off fast because clicks do: the top three positions are the ones that show in the local pack, and that is where most of the value is. Two consequences. A map full of positions 6 to 10 scores low even though it is mostly coloured. And very different maps can share a score: a steep bullseye and a checkerboard can land on the same number. Use the score to track one setup over time, and the shape to decide what to do.
Reading change between two scans
A pattern is a hypothesis; the next scan tests it. For the comparison to mean anything, keep the keyword, grid size, radius and centre identical, and leave at least 72 hours between scans so you are not looking at cached points. In compare mode, cells that improved turn green, cells that declined turn red, and unchanged cells stay grey.
Look at where the change happens, not only how much. Green spreading outward ring by ring is prominence work paying off. A donut filling in at the centre means the duplicate or neighbour issue is fixed. A hotspot moving onto the pin means the location fix took. A wall that does not move after a month of work means the gap with that competitor is bigger than the changes you made.
To try this on a listing before signing up, the free local rank check runs a 3×3 grid around an address and reads the first page of Maps results at each point. It is enough to tell a steep bullseye from flat grey. Seeing a donut or a wall takes more points, which is what a city-wide grid is for.
Frequently asked questions
What do the colors on a Google Maps ranking heatmap mean?
In Geogrid, dark green is position 1, green 2 to 3, light green 4 to 5, amber 6 to 10. Grey means the business was not on the first page of Maps results at that point, or that no data came back. Blue-grey cells are water and are skipped.
Why is my heatmap green around my office and grey everywhere else?
That is the steep bullseye: you win on proximity close to the listing and lose as soon as a competitor is closer to the searcher. The fix is prominence (category, reviews, links), not anything location-specific.
Why does my business rank in an area far from its address?
An off-centre hotspot usually means Google places you somewhere else: a misplaced pin, an old address in citations, a hidden service-area address, or a neighborhood name in the business name. Check the pin first.
Does a grey cell mean my business ranks nowhere?
No. It means the business was not in the first page of results read at that point, or that the point returned no data at all. When the whole grid is grey, Geogrid checks page two on sample points to tell the two cases apart.
How often should I rescan to compare heatmaps?
Leave at least 72 hours, since recent points are served from cache, and compare scans with the same keyword, grid size, radius and centre. Changing any of them changes which points you measure.
See which pattern you have
Run a 5×5 to 13×13 grid on your keyword (21×21 on Enterprise), click any cell to see who ranks there, and compare scans over time. 1 credit per point, 200 credits when you sign up.