Competitor visibility mapping means scanning a competitor’s Map Pack coverage across your shared service area with a geo-grid, then comparing it to yours. Where they are green and you are red, they have a real advantage, usually proximity, a stronger profile, or more recent reviews. Where you are both weak, the zone is open to whoever moves first. Where you are green and they are red, defend it. It turns “we need to beat competitor X” into a specific list of neighbourhoods and the signal gap in each.
By the numbers
- Local pack results change with the coordinates attached to a query (DataForSEO, 2026), so a competitor’s ranking is a map, not a number, just like yours. INDUSTRY DATA
- Proximity is the second-highest-scored Local Pack factor (Whitespark, 2026); a closer competitor holds zones you may never take without a second location. INDEPENDENT RESEARCH
- Review recency and count are among the strongest controllable signals, so a review gap is the most common closable reason a rival is ahead. INDEPENDENT RESEARCH
- Google names no way to pay for a better organic position, so a competitor’s lead is built from signals you can inspect and, mostly, match. GOOGLE DOCUMENTED
How to run it
Pick the competitor and the searches
Choose the one or two rivals actually taking your work, and the two or three searches that matter most. Keep the search terms identical to the ones you scan for yourself.
Scan both on the same grid
Run a geo-grid for each business across the same points and the same area, on the same day. Now you have two heat maps that line up.
Overlay and classify each zone
Green vs red: their advantage. Red vs red: contested and winnable. Green vs green: shared. Green vs red in your favour: defend.
Read the signal gap in the zones you lose
For each zone they own, compare the two profiles: category, services, review count and recency, distance to that point, citation consistency. The gap is usually one or two of those, not all.
Spend where the gap is closable
Reviews and profile completeness you can close. Raw proximity you often cannot. Aim effort at the contested and closable zones nearest your green core.
Reading the overlay
Where they win
- They are closer to that cluster of searches. Proximity, hard to beat.
- Their profile is more complete or better categorised.
- They get more recent reviews, especially ones mentioning that area.
- Their name, address and phone are cleaner across the web.
Where you can win
- Zones where you are both outside the pack, no incumbent to unseat.
- Zones where the only gap is review recency, which you control.
- Zones near your green core, where a small gain flips points.
- Zones a rival is neglecting: stale reviews, thin profile.
A worked walkthrough
Hypothetical, to make the overlay concrete. A roofer in Surrey scans their own grid and a named competitor's, both on the same 20-point grid, same day. The overlay sorts into three groups: the roofer holds the core five points nearest their own address; the competitor holds four points clustered near a rival's shop across town, where distance alone explains it; and eleven points in between show both businesses outside the top three, meaning nobody has actually claimed that middle ground yet. The useful finding is not “the competitor is beating us,” it is that 55% of the contested area (eleven of twenty points) is open, and the four points that are genuinely lost are lost to proximity, not to anything reviews or profile work can fix.
How this maps onto the Geographic Footprint model
This page's overlay is a two-business version of the broader Geographic Footprint model: your own Strong and Weak zones, read against a specific rival instead of read alone. Their green against your red is a Competitive zone in that model. Both of you red is an Opportunity zone. The competitor overlay does not replace a full geo-grid read of your own market, it adds one more layer: not just where you stand, but who, specifically, is standing in the zones you do not hold.
What it does not tell you
- Their revenue or lead volume. Map coverage is not a P&L.
- Why every zone differs. Some gaps are historical and slow to move; the map shows the what, not always the why.
- That you should chase every red zone. Zones far from your address, held by a much closer rival, are often not worth the spend.
- A guarantee. Closing a signal gap improves your odds in a zone; it does not promise the position.
The free audit includes the competitors currently holding your grid. Get the map with the rivals on it.
Sources
- Google Business Profile Help, Improve your local ranking on Google: relevance, distance and prominence decide local results; there is no way to pay for a better rank.
- Whitespark, Local Search Ranking Factors (2026 edition). Proximity of the address to the searcher is the second-highest-scored Local Pack factor (225, behind primary GBP category at 227), and Google Business Profile signals are the largest factor group at 32% of Local Pack weight.
- DataForSEO, SERP datasets (2026): local pack composition for the same query changes with the coordinates attached to the request, so any business's ranking is a spatial pattern.
- Peer-reviewed: Liang, Y., Gao, S., Cai, Y., Foutz, N. Z., & Wu, L. (2020). “Calibrating the dynamic Huff model for business analysis using location big data.” Transactions in GIS 24(3), 681–703. doi:10.1111/tgis.12624. Mobile-phone store-visit data from the 10 most populated US cities: store choice depends on distance and on a location’s draw, and how much distance matters varies by business type and city. Not about Google.
Figures are quoted from the sources above and are directional.