72 Google Maps ranking signals: what they actually mean for your business.

A list of ingredients is not a recipe.

You can read every item on the label of a sauce. Salt, garlic, vinegar. You still do not know how much of each went in, or in what order. You cannot cook it from the label.

That is what happened in September. Researchers recovered the labels from one part of Google Maps. Seventy-two of them. The headlines said “72 ranking factors.” The quantities were missing. And the label came from one pot in a much bigger kitchen.

Here is what the report found, what it does not prove, and what a roofer, plumber or clinic should actually do with it.

What is Oyster Rank?

In the report’s words, Oyster Rank “appears to characterize the importance of the entity inside Geostore.” In plain English: it helps describe how important a place is in Google’s own records. A search still passes through several other systems before anyone sees a result.

Your Google Maps ranking is not one number

A roofer searches “roof repair” from the office and sees the business near the top. A homeowner across town runs a similar search and sees a different set of names. Both screens are real.

Local results change with the words someone types and where they stand when they type them. One screenshot cannot tell you how visible you are across the area you actually serve. That is why a business can rank first at the shop and disappear two streets away.

So the number 72 needs context. The number is interesting. The limits of the evidence are more useful.

What the investigation actually found

Olivier de Segonzac, co-founder of the consultancy RESONEO, wrote the report for Search Engine Land. His team obtained a binary file exposing part of Geostore and cross-checked it against Maps network traffic, the web index and Google’s 2024 documentation leak. Here are the headline counts, all from that report.

A signal name is not a ranking factor

This is the part most of the coverage skipped. There are four different claims you can make about a signal, and the report only supports the first one.

1. The name existsThe recovered material contains a field called, for example, Google reviews.Shown
2. It is in use todayNot established for every entry. “Not marked deprecated” is not the same as “confirmed active.”Not established
3. It moves rankings by a known amountThat needs the weights. The report says they were not recovered.Not recovered
4. You can push it to rank higherA field name alone proves nothing about what an owner can change.Not proven

The author says it himself: the reviews signal “proves that reviews belong to the Oyster Rank vocabulary. It doesn’t prove that reviews currently carry a particular weight in a Maps search.” Anyone selling you a “72-factor checklist” has skipped three rungs.

Why 72 names do not equal the Google Maps algorithm

Think of local visibility as an assembly line, not a single score. The report sketches a simplified version:

1. Google builds its record of the place
2. It works out what the person means
3. It matches meaning to businesses
4. It picks possible candidates
5. It applies geography and quality
6. It reorders the shortlist
7. It decides what the map can show

Oyster Rank sits near the start. The report also found a separate scorer that runs offline on the phone, with its own eight signals. In the author’s words: “There isn’t a single Maps ranking formula.”

There is no fixed radius either. In tests from one spot in Paris, a busy query like “pharmacie” searched a much smaller area than a brand query like “Carrefour,” and the same query reached much further in a rural area. With geography switched off, the median distance of results jumped from 6.87 km to more than 4,000 km. Geography does not just reorder the list. It decides who is on it.

So the better question for an owner is not “how do I optimize 72 signals?” It is: at which stage am I losing the customer?

The four-layer visibility diagnostic

This is the audit we run for clients. It is our framework, not Google’s official terms. Each layer has one question to answer honestly.

Layer 1: is Google being given a clear picture?

Google says the information in a Business Profile is compiled from several sources: the business website, licensed third-party data, people who contribute facts and photos (including owners), and Google’s own interactions with the place. The report adds a useful detail. A place’s name might come from one source, its phone from another and its category from a third, and Google reconciles them when they disagree. Editing your profile adds evidence. It does not always overwrite what Google already believes.

Check the basics first: verified profile, the right primary category, real services only, current phone and hours, and a website that describes the same business. Keep facts consistent because it helps customers and machines understand you. Do not treat identical punctuation across every directory as a proven ranking lever.

Example: a Langley roofer lists emergency leak repair on the profile, but the website only talks about full replacements. The fix is a clear emergency-repair page and matching profile services. Not repeating “Langley roofer” twenty more times.

Layer 2: does the business match this search, here?

Google says local results are “mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity,” and that “there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.” “Emergency plumber,” “hot water tank replacement” and “whole-home repiping” are different jobs. You can be the obvious answer for one and a weak match for another.

• List the services customers actually hire you for.
• Pair each with the areas you genuinely serve.
• Test those searches from several fixed points, and write down the date, query, location and result.
• Repeat the same tests later so you compare like with like.

A geo-grid scan does exactly this at scale. It is still a set of samples, not a promise of what every person sees.

Layer 3: is it ranking, and is it being shown?

The report describes a separate map-drawing layer that decides which names can appear at which zoom level. In its words, “a business can be eligible or highly ranked and still fail to appear as a visible name on the map.” Keep four records apart: the local results list, the label on the map, your website in normal search, and what customers did next. A missing label at one zoom level does not prove you were left out of the results.

Layer 4: does visibility turn into a real lead?

A ranking is a step, not the finish line. If you show up and the phone does not ring, the problem may be the offer, the page, or calls nobody picked up. Rankings work cannot fix those. Track what you can measure honestly: visibility for key service-and-area pairs, calls and website clicks, forms and bookings, and whether each lead was answered.

What to do first, in order

Here is the order we use for a plumber, roofer, HVAC company, dentist or any local service business. None of it needs a secret list.

Four mistakes this report should stop

You cannot control Google’s ranking system. You can control whether your business is easy to understand, easy to verify, and easy to choose.

That is the whole game, and it was the whole game before the leak. The 72 names do not change the work. They make the case against shortcuts stronger: if even a recovered list cannot tell you the weights, a stranger promising a number on Maps is guessing.

Start with the free Map Pack Check. Find the gaps before you pay someone to fix them. If you want the full picture, the free Map Pack audit adds a hand-run geo-grid scan of your area.

Questions owners ask about the 72 signals