A waste business with 115 five star reviews loses in Bradford to one with nine. The profile is not broken. It is the pin.
Here is the scene. Kruze sits fourth in Leeds Maps for waste removal leeds. Verified, 5.0 from 115 reviews, profile strength ticking along nicely. Drive west for half an hour to Bradford and it does not appear at all, on either search term anyone would actually type. Every business in that pack has a Bradford street address. One is in there on 26 reviews. One is in there on nine.
So the plan was obvious. Hide the address, let the service area do the talking, walk into Bradford.
Here is the part that killed it. Google names three ranking factors for Maps, and one of them is Distance, meaning how far the business sits from the person searching. Service areas are not on that list anywhere. And hiding your address does not move the pin. Google still measures from the address you just hid, so you have thrown a rug over the nail and told yourself the floor moved. Sterling Sky ran it live and watched the pack disappear for a main keyword, then come back when the address went back.
Then the bit that stung. The rival I kept seeing up there did not turn up in a single organic search I ran, either city, either term. Our own notes say they qualify for Local Services Ads, which render above the map pack. I had been studying an advert and copying its homework.
It was never a ranking I was losing. It was a postcode I do not have, and I was one click from pulling the pin out of the only city where it works.