The Truth About Ranking in Google Local Search

Joy Hawkins debunks the most common myths about Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) and explains what actually moves the needle in local search rankings. Covers address setup, business name strategy, the role of your website in local rankings, reviews, geotagging, and link building. Essential listening for any LO or agent trying to show up in Google local search.

Takeaways you can run this week

• If your business address is the same as 40+ other agents at your brokerage, change your Google Business Profile address to your home address and enable the 'hide address' option — staying on the office address causes Google to filter out all but 1-2 of those listings.
• When setting or updating your Google Business Profile name, include the word 'mortgage' or 'real estate' if it's genuinely part of your team or business name (e.g., 'Jane Smith Chicago Mortgage Team') — this carries a direct ranking benefit for category keyword searches.
• Stop uploading photos to your Google Business Profile weekly. Add one photo of your team and one of your office, then leave it. Frequency of photo uploads has zero proven ranking impact for mortgage or real estate profiles.
• Do not waste time geotagging images for your Google Business Profile or website — Joy's agency ran controlled tests across multiple industries and found zero ranking impact, and Google strips geotag data from uploaded photos anyway.
• Audit your own website for internal and external links: if you have a preferred vendor list (title company, financial planner, CPA, inspector), weave links to their sites naturally into relevant content pages — and ask them to link back to yours. This is one of the highest-leverage ranking moves most LOs completely ignore.
• Sign up for HARO (HelpAReporter.com) and respond to journalist queries in finance or real estate — earned media links from news outlets pointing to your website are among the strongest signals that move your local Google ranking.

The playbook

1. 1. Search your own name on Google to find your existing Google Business Profile (you may already have one you don't control).
2. 2. If unclaimed, request access through Google — the prior owner has 3-7 days to respond before Google lets you re-verify.
3. 3. Set your address to your home address, then enable 'hide address' so it is invisible to the public but still anchors your local ranking radius.
4. 4. Update your business name to include your brokerage name and, if legitimately part of your brand, a searchable keyword like 'mortgage' (e.g., 'Jane Smith — ABC Mortgage Team').
5. 5. Set your primary category to 'Mortgage Broker' (the most relevant available option).
6. 6. Link your profile URL to your website homepage — it is typically the strongest-ranking page on your site.
7. 7. Prioritize getting Google reviews above all other platforms; add Zillow as a secondary option only if you actively generate leads there.
8. 8. Work with your SEO provider (or hire one who handles both traditional SEO and Google Business Profile) to build inbound links to your website through partner pages, preferred vendor content, and media placements via HARO.

Worth quoting

“A lot of people think when they fill in this profile, the stuff they're putting in is what makes them rank. In reality, there's only a few fields that even have any impact.”

“If your SEO company doesn't know anything about Google's profiles and how they work, you need a new SEO company.”

Best for

LOs who have a Google Business Profile but have never optimized it — or who are doing busywork like weekly photo uploads instead of the few things that actually drive local search rankings.