Google Maps ranks roofers partly by how far they are from the person searching, so most roofers I’ve measured show up best around their own office and fade with distance. A Fort Worth roofer came second of 87 companies for “roofing contractor fort worth”. When I ran that search from 169 points around their office, they made the top three at 143 of them. A Dallas roofer with a yard in Oak Cliff held Oak Cliff and the southwest side, then fell away everywhere north and east of I-30, making the top three at only 34 of those points for “roof repair dallas”.
Nobody can sell you a way out of the distance part. Google’s help page says “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.” What you can change is how closely your profile and website match the search, and how well-known your company is.
In a town where you have no office, a page about that town can rank in the regular results under the map while the map still leaves you off.
Google measures distance from the homeowner doing the search
Google says local results “are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity.” Relevance is how well your profile matches the search. Further down the same page the third factor is called prominence, “how well-known a business is,” judged partly by “how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.”
Distance, in Google’s words, “refers to how far each business is from the customer who’s searching.” A search from your truck shows the map for wherever the truck is parked, which is why I measure with a grid. The tool runs the same search from 169 points in a 13 by 13 square around your office and records your rank at each one, up to 20th. With the points about three quarters of a mile apart, the square is about 9 miles across, so it covers your side of town and little past it.
Most roofers I’ve measured rank best around their own office
The Fort Worth roofer averaged 3.23 across the grid. Their search, like the Oak Cliff one, had the city name in it, and that is easier to win than “roofer near me”. Their weak patch was the northwest corner toward I-20 and west Fort Worth, where 15 points came in 11th or worse. The one company ahead of them made the top three at every point, with 516 reviews and 320 photos.
A roofer south of Fort Worth held a bigger share of the map for “roofing contractor” than any other roofer in it, and still split in two. Across the southern two thirds of the grid they averaged 3.5 and never fell outside the top 20. Across the northern third, toward Crowley, Rendon and Fort Worth, they averaged 13.9 and made the top three at only four points. It was one profile with one set of reviews, and the two halves looked like different companies.
The search term changes the shape as well. A Lewisville roofer with 84 reviews at 4.9 ranked at only 8 of 169 points for “roofing contractor”. For “hail damage roof repair” they ranked at 35 points, 22 of them in the top ten, clustered around their office.
Some fade much faster. On a wider grid about 15 miles across, a Southlake roofer with 84 reviews, all five stars, ranked first at their own address for “roofing contractor” and showed up only on the points touching it, all within a little under two miles. A Dallas roofer with 86 five-star reviews ranked first at exactly one point, their address, then 12th and 15th on the two points beside it, and outside the top 20 at 165 of the other 166. Good reviews didn’t carry either of them past a couple of miles.
In that Dallas grid 405 roofing contractors ranked somewhere, and the leader made the top three at only 8.28% of points, fewer than one in twelve. So nobody, us included, can honestly promise you the top three across a whole metro.
Two roofers with hidden addresses ranked nowhere, even at home
Two service-area profiles with the street address hidden, one in Rockwall and one in Fate, ranked outside the top 20 at all 169 points on two different searches. Google tells service-area businesses to hide the address, so I won’t tell you to show yours. Both companies also had thin websites when I measured them: one was blank, the other five pages of about 1,000 words with no meta descriptions. So I can’t tell you whether the hidden address played any part.
The Fate roofer’s Google pin sat in Grand Prairie, about 40 miles west of Fate, so I ran a third grid centered on the pin to test it. All 169 of its points came back outside the top 20, the same as the first two, which ruled the pin out. My best guess is the thin website, and that’s still a guess.
A page about the next town can win the regular results and still miss the map
A roofing owner in Lancaster, Pennsylvania built a location page and blog posts for Harrisburg. On r/SEO he wrote that the page ranked third in the regular results there, “But we’re nowhere to be found in the map pack.” Some of the businesses that did make the pack, he said, had no website and no reviews.
Owners hear both answers from agencies. Another roofing owner on r/SEO, serving more than ten cities within an hour’s drive, collected four bids: “I’ve been told by two companies that SEO can only be done for the city our Google My Business address is listed.” The other two said any city he served was fair game. The Lancaster result fits both answers, since his page ranked in Harrisburg and his profile didn’t.
Google lets a service-area business list up to 20 cities or ZIP codes and won’t take a radius. Its help page says the list “shows customers where you can provide your products and services” and that setting it “helps people find your Business Profile.” It never says a listed town lifts your rank in that town, and I haven’t confirmed that it does, so fill it in for customers and don’t count on it to move your map.
Some of the fixes you’ll be pitched break Google’s rules
- A mailbox or virtual office in the target town. Google says a rented mailing address you don’t operate from “isn’t eligible for a Business Profile,” and P.O. boxes aren’t acceptable either. A marketer on r/Entrepreneur described a roofing client who switched his profile to a P.O. box after selling his office, and the profile was flagged for verification and lost.
- A profile for each nearby city. Service-area businesses “can only have one profile for the whole area that they serve.” A second one needs a separate location with its own staff and service area.
- A town added to your business name. Google’s name rules list location information among the extras a name must not include, and say unnecessary information “could result in the suspension of your Business Profile.”
- A promise to expand your radius for a fee. Google’s line about paying for rank applies here, so ask exactly what they would change on your profile and website.
At least 50 highly rated DFW roofing profiles are lead-gen fronts
In September I went through 1,061 DFW roofing profiles rated 4.8 or higher with at least 30 reviews. At least 50 were lead-gen fronts, listings that exist to collect calls and sell them on. The tells are “Open 24 hours”, an area code that doesn’t match the city, dozens of customer photos with one or none from the owner, stock photos or houses from another part of the country, and a .best or .homes site listing the same “business” in several cities with a different number for each (one listed Fort Worth, Houston, Dickinson and Coppell). Two of those together is enough for me to rule a profile out.
I logged which searches they appeared in without recording their positions, so I can’t tell you how many map spots they hold. If you find one near you, report it through Google’s Business Redressal Complaint Form, where a spreadsheet of links reports several at once.
Check your own map before you pay anyone to fix it
A grid tells you where you rank and never why, so check your rank more than one way before you act on it. Search once with your city in the words and once with a plain term like “roofer near me”, since the city-name search is easier to win. Try a specific job too, like “hail damage roof repair”, because the Lewisville roofer barely showed up on the broad term and held their side of town on the specific one. Then have someone search from the town you want work from, and compare that with where your calls come from.
If anyone shows you a grid with no rank at any point, including at your own office, ask for it to be run again, because a failed run in the tool I use looks exactly like that. The Rockwall and Fate results came back the same on a second search, and Fate’s on a grid centered on its pin as well, so they weren’t one bad run.
Start with your profile and the towns beside yours
Inside the patch where you already rank, prominence is the factor you can push. Google says “More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking,” and counts links from other websites too. Reviews weren’t enough for the Southlake and Dallas roofers, so look at your website and your profile’s category as well. Google says it picks up category information “from your website and from mentions about your business throughout the web.” I’ve seen a roofer’s profile set to general contractor while the companies above him were listed as roofing contractors, and that’s worth checking first.
For a town outside your patch, build a page about it with real jobs and photos from that town, and judge it by the regular results first, since that’s where the Lancaster owner’s page landed. Your office won’t move closer to the homeowner, so the towns beside yours are a fairer target than the far side of the metro.
To see your own map, run the free Google Maps heatmap. Pick your Google profile and a search, and in a few minutes you’ll see your rank at 49 points around your office, the strong side of town included.