# Local Grid: geo-grid rank tracking — why you need it and how ours differs from Local Falcon > Your Google Maps position depends on WHERE the customer searches from. A geo-grid scans the local pack from N×N points around your business and maps your visibility + SoLV. A review of our Local Grid vs Local Falcon and BrightLocal. _Source: https://seomatrix.ai/blog/local-grid-rank-tracker/ · Updated: 2026-07-04_ --- A business owner opens Google Maps at their office, sees themselves at #1 and relaxes. Meanwhile a customer two kilometers away — on the far side of the same district — doesn't see them in the top ten. That's not a glitch: **the Google map pack re-ranks around the searcher's location** more aggressively than around almost any other factor. The only honest way to measure local visibility is to capture the results from many points around the business at once. That is a **geo-grid**. > The geo-grid is the local-SEO industry standard: an N×N mesh of GPS points, each with its own Google Maps result set for your query. The output is a heat map of positions: green points (top-3, the map pack), amber (4–10), red (11+ or absent). ## How our Local Grid works Local Grid lives in a seo·matrix cabinet tab and runs the full cycle in about a minute: 1. **Set the query and the center** — e.g. "dentist" and your clinic's coordinates (right-click a spot in Google Maps to copy lat, lng). 2. **Pick the mesh** — 3×3, 5×5 or 7×7 — and the step between points (0.5–5 km). 3. **The engine captures the live Google Maps results from every point** and finds your business in each local pack. 4. **You get the position map + metrics**: SoLV (share of points in the top-3), average/best/worst position, weak zones. Three engineering details that separate an accurate grid from a rough estimate: - **Business matching, domain first.** The scan first looks across the whole pack for the listing with your website — the authoritative signal. The name match is the fallback: your business name's tokens must appear in the same order ("Coffee House" ≠ "House of Coffee"), and a listing carrying a different website is rejected. Fewer false "we're in the pack" readings. - **Honest geometry.** The mesh corrects for latitude (a degree of longitude shrinks toward the poles), so a 1 km step is really 1 km in Oslo and in Dubai alike. - **Honest SoLV.** Points where the business wasn't found — or the query failed — stay in the denominator. The metric doesn't flatter you. ## Who runs geo-grids the most: 5 business categories, with examples A geo-grid helps any business with an address, but five categories run them constantly — each with its own demand geography and grid settings. ### Restaurants, cafes, bars A guest's decision radius is tiny: "where to eat" is searched within 1–2 km, and the map pack shifts block by block. Typical queries: "cafe near me", "breakfast", "bar with a terrace", "pizza delivery". Setup: **5×5, 0.5–1 km step** around the venue. The classic grid finding: a restaurant in the top-3 "at home" but invisible near the metro station 800 m away where the evening foot traffic comes from — a lower-rated competitor takes it purely on listing geoposition. ### Beauty salons, barbershops, SPA Clients travel 2–3 km and choose visually on the map: "manicure", "barbershop", "spa massage", "lash extensions". Setup: **5×5, 1 km step**. Here the grid answers the owner's real question: "where are new clients NOT coming from". SoLV declining scan over scan is the early signal: regulars still come, new clients already go next door — in 2–3 months that becomes a revenue dip. ### Auto repair shops The customer has a car — the radius grows to 5–10 km: "tire change", "oil change", "auto repair near me", "wheel alignment". Setup: **5×5–7×7, 2 km step**. A special case is seasonality: before tire season, scan the grid for "tire change" in advance and fix weak zones with reviews and profile posts while competitors sleep. ### Hotels and hostels A special case: the searcher books from another city, but Google still ranks the map pack around the SEARCH point — "hotel near the station", "hostel near Times Square". So the grid is built not around the hotel but **around the points of attraction**: the station, downtown, the convention center — 3×3–5×5 at a 0.5–1 km step each. The grid question here: "am I visible from the places people actually search for a bed". ### Medical clinics "Dentist near me", "ultrasound", "blood tests", "vet clinic" — trust decides, but the clinic must be SEEN first. The catchment is wider than a salon's: **7×7, 1–2 km step**. Medicine is a YMYL niche: without a complete Google Business profile (categories, doctors, photos, fresh reviews) even a perfect geoposition won't make the pack — and the grid shows it honestly with red points around a live profile, a signal to fix the listing, not to "buy more ads". ## Local Grid vs Local Falcon vs BrightLocal | | **Local Grid (seo·matrix)** | Local Falcon | BrightLocal | |---|---|---|---| | Pricing model | **credit packs, no subscription** | subscription + credits | bundle subscription | | Entry price | **$19 / 300 points** | $24.99/mo | $39/mo | | A 5×5 scan | **25 credits (~$1.6)** | hundreds of credits, plan-dependent | included in plan | | Grid size | 3×3 / 5×5 / 7×7 | up to 21×21 | up to 15×15 | | SoLV metric | ✓ | ✓ (SoLV/ATRP) | ✓ | | Credits expire? | **never** | monthly per plan | — | | What else you get | the seo·matrix cabinet: rank tracker, AI visibility, GEO audits, Cited | local tracking only | grid + reviews + citations | To be fair about their strengths: Local Falcon offers bigger meshes (21×21 = 441 points — relevant for service-area businesses with a 30+ km radius) and white-label reports for agencies; BrightLocal bundles review monitoring. Our focus is different: **you shouldn't need another $25–200/mo subscription to see your visibility map once a week**. Packs start at $19, credits never expire, and the geo-grid sits next to the rest of the cabinet — rank tracking, AI visibility, audits and auto-content all work on the same project. ## What to do with the map A geo-grid is a diagnostic. Typical readings: - **Green center, red edges** — normal; the only question is where the boundary falls relative to your customers. - **A red spot around a competitor's location** — they win at "home": [compare reviews, categories and Google Business profile completeness](/tools/geo-compare/). - **The WHOLE grid red while your profile is live** — usually a matching problem (the Maps name doesn't match the website) or a profile without a website: fix the listing first. - **SoLV declining scan over scan** — the scan history in the cabinet shows the trend; it's an early signal that arrives before the calls drop. > Start with a 5×5 at a 1 km step on your main query — that's 25 credits (~$1.6). The 300-credit starter pack is 12 such scans: three months of weekly monitoring. **Try it:** the **Local Grid** tab in the [seo·matrix cabinet](/cabinet) → buy a pack → "Run grid scan". ## FAQ ### What is a geo-grid in local SEO? An N×N mesh of GPS points around a business; the Google Maps results are captured from each point for your query. The output is a position map: where you make the top-3 map pack and where you are invisible. A single check 'from the center' hides real visibility, because Maps re-sorts results around the searcher's location. ### What is SoLV? Share of Local Voice — the share of grid points where the business ranks in the top-3 (the map pack). Misses and failed points count in the denominator, so the metric is honest: SoLV 40% on a 5×5 grid means you are in the pack at 10 of 25 points. ### How much does a scan cost? 1 credit = 1 grid point. A 3×3 scan is 9 credits, 5×5 is 25, 7×7 is 49. Packs: 300 credits for $19, 1000 for $49. Credits never expire — there is no subscription. ### How is this different from a regular rank tracker? A regular tracker checks organic results for a region. A geo-grid checks the LOCAL map pack (Google Maps) from specific GPS points — a different result set with different ranking, and the one that actually drives 'near me' calls and direction requests. ### How does it know which listing is my business? The strongest signal is your website domain — it is checked across the whole pack first. Without a domain match, the name match requires all tokens of your business name in the same order, and a listing whose website contradicts yours is rejected — so 'Coffee House' never matches 'House of Coffee'. ### Which businesses need a geo-grid the most? Restaurants, cafes and bars (a 1–2 km guest radius, 5×5 grid at a 0.5–1 km step), beauty salons and barbershops (2–3 km), auto repair shops (5–10 km, 2 km step), hotels (grids around stations and landmarks rather than the hotel itself) and medical clinics (7×7, 1–2 km step). Any business that gets 'near me' calls.