GeoGrid searches are a specific type of search that allows you to see how your business ranks in different locations in a specified area. GeoGrid search results provide a granular view of your local search visibility and can help you identify areas where you’re performing well or may need improvement. GeoGrid searches can also help you identify competitor performance in specific locations, which can be useful for adjusting your local SEO strategy.

You can run two types of GeoGrid searches: live and scheduled. A scheduled search will repeatedly run every week or every month, depending on the settings you choose when you set it up. Scheduled searches allow you to track your local rank progress over time. Your scheduled searches will be saved, and you will be able to view old ones and compare them to new ones any time you like.

Live searches can be run at any time. These are one-offs and will not repeat themselves the same way scheduled searches do.

The GeoGrid search result above this paragraph shows where the business Hanover Adams and York Painting Contractors ranks for the term “painter” in 169 different places in and around Hanover, PA. There are 13 columns of nodes going from west to east and 13 rows of nodes going from north to south. The top-left node shows a ranking of 15. This indicates that someone running a search from the geographic center of that circle would see our example business ranked 15th if he ran a local search for “painter.”

You have the ability to click into any GeoGrid search result node. This will show you the top 20 businesses ranking for your search term in that particular part of town. You can also see the primary and secondary categories of all the businesses ranking for the term “painter.” Let’s click into the center node to demonstrate the information that is available about the rankings at that location. Before clicking into it, all we know is that our example business ranks sixth for “painter.”

There are a number of things to pay attention to in the pop-up window that opens after clicking a node. The first thing to pay attention to is the fact that you’re given latitude and longitude coordinates. That information can be useful for geotagging images. Beneath that, we see the top 20 businesses that rank for the search term “painter” at those coordinates. We can also see the categories those businesses registered their GBPs with.

The same information can be gathered from every other node in your GeoGrid search results.

Another thing you can check on is how a competitor ranks over the same area. When you open the pop-up window associated with any ranking node, you’ll notice an eyeball icon next to every business. You can see what we mean in the screenshot below.

Clicking that eyeball will reload the GeoGrid search results and show you how another business ranks. Take a look at the recording beneath this paragraph to see what we mean. We will switch the results from Hanover Adams and York Painting Contractors to Michael Robertson Painting.

Viewing how other businesses rank in your service area can give you valuable information about who your strongest competitors are and what parts of town they are flourishing in.

The last detail to explain in this help article is the map that becomes visible when opening a pop-up associated with any given node. You will notice the numbers 1-19 on the map. Those numbers show you the physical locations of your competitors. For example, in the screenshot below, We can see that Ausherman Painting ranks third for the term painter. The number 3 on the map is where their office is.

There is other information available in GeoGrid search results. Our next help article explains the GeoGrid metrics that have not been covered in this one.