Track Google Maps Rankings Over Time

You track Google Maps rankings over time by repeating the same searches from the same spots across your area on a fixed schedule, with your phone and a spreadsheet or with a local rank tracker. A single check shows where your business ranks today, from wherever that check was run. For Google Maps results in the UK, as of October 2026, a change between two checks only counts as a move in your ranking if nothing about the check changed.

By hand, with your phone and a spreadsheet: Tracking by hand means searching on your phone and writing down where your business appears in a spreadsheet.
With a local rank tracker: A local rank tracker runs the same searches from many spots, meaning different places across your area, and keeps each result for the next check. Google's results depend on where the searcher is, so one spot can't stand in for your whole area. The tool behind this site, Local Rank Tracker, shows where your business appears on Google Maps across your whole town, on a map anyone can read.
Google's Performance report, and the ranking it doesn't show: The Performance report for your Google Business Profile shows views, searches, calls, directions and website clicks, and lists no ranking position.

Can you track Google Maps rankings with your phone and a spreadsheet?

Yes, you can track Google Maps rankings with your phone and a spreadsheet, but each search shows the results for one spot only: where you are. Google ranks local results partly on distance, meaning how far each business is from the person searching. Your location is used to show nearby results even when the search names no place, such as "electrician" on its own. Google can also use your past activity to shape your results. So your business can look higher in a search from your own premises than it does to a customer across town. A phone and a spreadsheet work for tracking a few spots you can search from in person.

Tracking by hand comes down to three steps, repeated the same way at every check:

Pick your searches and your places once: Choose the searches you'll check and the places you'll search from, then keep both lists fixed.
Search from each place: Open the Google Maps app in each place, run each search and count down the results to your business. Set your own cut-off, such as the top 20, and write "not found" if your business isn't within it.
Log one row per search, place and check: A plain spreadsheet does the job, with columns for the date, the time, the device, the search, the place, your position and who's in the top 3.

Private mode still uses your location, though it may not use your past searches. Google estimates your location from several sources, including "The IP address of your Internet connection".

Changing your location by hand moves a search to a different spot, but you still see one spot at a time.

Say an electrician covers three villages, Haxby, Wigginton and Strensall, and checks two searches. With 5 places to search from in each village, that's 2 × 3 × 5 = 30 searches to run and write down at every check, standing in each place. Those numbers are an example count, not data.

Local Rank Tracker runs each of those searches from spots across all three villages, with no one standing in any of them.

What does a local rank tracker do that a phone search can't?

A local rank tracker runs the same Google Maps searches from many spots across your area and keeps every result, so each check lines up with the last. Your whole area is checked in one go, with no travelling to each spot and no spreadsheet to fill in. The spots are set by your area, so there's no need to remember where you stood last time. The searches aren't run from your phone, so your own location and past activity don't shape the results. Each check is still a snapshot of one moment, and changing the set-up between two checks spoils the comparison, just as it would by hand. Checking by hand suits a few places you can get to, and a local rank tracker suits covering a whole area. Your area in Local Rank Tracker follows the real outline of your town or village from Ordnance Survey data, or your postcode district.

The tool works differently from a search on your own phone:

Nothing in the sea: Spots over water are dropped before any search runs, so every spot is somewhere a customer could be.
A new customer's view: Each search is run the way a new customer's phone would run it, with no search history.
The full top 20 at any spot: Tapping any spot on the map shows the full top 20 a customer there would see.
Who is above you: The report shows the businesses above you at every spot, with their reviews and rating, not just the few you scroll past on your phone.
Weekly checks, not memory: Your searches are checked every week on a plan, while a phone search leaves only whatever you remember from last time.

Setting up Local Rank Tracker takes three steps and about five minutes, with no SEO knowledge needed.

Which searches should you track for a local business?

The searches to track for a local business are the ones customers type: your main service, that service plus each place you serve, and your best-earning jobs. Start with your main service on its own, such as "electrician". Add that service with each place you serve, such as "electrician Haxby", checked from spots in Haxby. Then add the jobs that earn you the most, such as "emergency electrician". Check the main service and your best-earning jobs from spots inside every area you serve. Pick the searches once and keep them, so every later check uses the same list.

Take the same electrician, who covers Haxby, Wigginton and Strensall, three villages in the YO32 postcode district. In each village, check "electrician" on its own and "electrician" with that village's name: "electrician Haxby" in Haxby, "electrician Wigginton" in Wigginton and "electrician Strensall" in Strensall. That's 2 searches across 3 areas, so 6 results to compare each time. The wording counts letter for letter. Change "electrician" to "electricians" and it becomes a different search, so the old results and the new ones can't be compared. You don't have to build that list from scratch: Local Rank Tracker suggests searches from your Google category, plus the towns and villages around you to add.

What should stay the same each time you track Google Maps rankings?

Keep every part of the check the same each time you track Google Maps rankings: searches, area and spots, device type and kind of results. If any of them changes between checks, a move in the results may come from the check rather than a real shift in your ranking. The same area means the same town, village or postcode district, searched from the same spots across it. One check is one moment, so compare it only with an earlier check run the same way.

The same searches: Every check runs the same list of searches, each one worded exactly as it was the first time.
The same area and spots: The area you check covers the same ground every time, so a check of central Haxby is never compared with a later check of the whole YO32 postcode district.
The same device type: A check run on a phone is compared only with an earlier check run on a phone, not with one run on a laptop or desktop.
The same kind of results: Google Maps results are compared only with earlier Google Maps results, not with Google's normal web results or the local pack (the box of map results, usually three, on Google's normal results page).

With a plan, the weekly check from Local Rank Tracker runs the same search over the same spots each time, so every check compares fairly with the one before.

Run each check at about the same time of day as well, so the clock isn't one more thing that differs between two checks.

How often should you re-run the same scan?

Re-run the same scan on a fixed schedule, weekly or monthly, with the same gap every time. A scan is one run of your Google Maps searches from every spot across your area. Weekly scans show a drop within a week, at the next scan. Monthly scans give the trend over months with fewer checks, and a drop won't show until the next scan, up to a month later. Run each scan the same way as the last, so the date is the only difference in how two scans were run.

Two habits undo the point of a fixed schedule. The first is reading one scan's move as a trend. A drop at one scan isn't a trend until the next scan shows it again. The second is changing the gap between scans, such as switching to daily checks after a bad week. The gap is part of the check. A change over one day and a change over seven days aren't the same measure, so they can't be compared.

On a Local Rank Tracker plan, you pick your searches once and they're checked every week on UK time. After every check, you get a report by email with what's gone up and what's dropped. The free scan comes once a month.

Which numbers show whether your Google Maps ranking is going up or down?

Your average position and the share of spots across your area where you're in Google's top 3 show whether your Google Maps ranking is going up or down. That share is known as top 3 share, and SEOs call it Share of Local Voice (SoLV). Google's top 3 are the results that get most of the calls. Average position is your usual place in the results at the spots where you show up in the top 20, and lower is better. Read average position next to the number of spots where you're not in the top 20, because those spots are left out of the average. So dropping out at more spots can leave your average position the same, or even better, if the spots you lost were where you ranked worst.

When you track Google Maps rankings, read three more things next to those numbers:

Where you fall out of the top 3: The spots where you slip below Google's top 3 show how far from your business you still make the top 3.
A competitor's numbers from the same scan: A competitor's top 3 share and average position from the same scan are the fair yardstick for yours, because both were checked with the same searches from the same spots.
What else changed: Read any move between two checks next to what else changed in that time: your own profile edits, new reviews, competitors' changes and updates at Google. The rankings alone can't show which of these, if any, played a part.

In Local Rank Tracker, you can switch the map to any competitor from the same scan, free. The map colours each spot by where you rank there: Top 3, 4 to 10, 11 to 20 or Not found. On your own map, green means you're in Google's top 3 at that spot. Profile watch, on every paid plan, checks your Google Business Profile every day and emails you if the name, category, phone, website, hours or address changes. Also on every paid plan, "Did it work?" puts each change you tick off or add yourself next to your top 3 share before and after, with any edits Google made to your profile in between, so you can look for the pattern.

Where should you start if you've never tracked your Google Maps ranking?

Start tracking your Google Maps ranking with one scan of your main search across your whole area, because every later check is compared with that first result. Local Rank Tracker gives anyone who signs up one free scan every month, covering your town, village or postcode district, up to 81 spots. Each free scan comes with the full report: the map, the to-do list, competitors and a share link. Signing up takes just your email, with no card needed.

Each month's free scan is ready on the 1st, UK time.