72.4% of Google Map Pack Businesses Are Within a Mile of the Search Location

Someone in the center of a large US city searches for an accountant. The three businesses Google shows under the map are all a few blocks away. The same search for a plumber shows businesses from across the city, one of them miles out. Google treats the two needs differently, and distance decides much of who appears.

The map pack, the three businesses Google shows with a map at the top of local search results, gets most of the clicks from local searches. For a business owner, knowing how close you need to be to the searcher tells you whether you can realistically compete for a city-wide search, or whether your best chance lies in the neighborhood searches where you are the closest option.

72.4% of map pack businesses are within one mile of the search location, and the median is 0.4 miles. The number one result sits a median of 0.31 miles away, and distance grows almost steadily to 1.73 miles at position 20. But the reach depends on the service: businesses customers visit sit within a few blocks, while trades that go to the customer rank from much further out.

On September 23, 2026 we ran Google Maps searches for 20 local services, such as accountant, dentist and plumber, in 79 US cities, each with and without "near me": 3,160 searches in all. For each search we took the location Google used for the search, the center of each city, and the map location of every business ranked 1 to 20.

Distance is the straight-line distance in miles between the search location and the business. The median is the middle business: half are closer, half further away. The average is higher than the median because a few businesses in every rank sit many miles away. We report distances by rank, by service, by city size and with and without "near me" in the search.

Every step down the rankings adds distance. The median more than doubles between number one and number four, from 0.31 to 0.69 miles, and keeps climbing to 1.17 miles at position 10 and 1.73 miles at position 20.

Distance is one of the clearest patterns in how Google picks the map pack. For a business in a city search, being close to the point Google treats as the center of that city is a large advantage and one an owner cannot change. That is why the same business can rank first for a search from its own neighborhood and not appear at all from across town.

Distance varies most by service. Businesses customers go to sit very close to the search location: the median map pack restaurant is 0.1 miles away, real estate agents 0.13 miles and accountants and hair salons 0.17 miles. Businesses that go to their customers rank from across town: HVAC companies at 0.66 miles, moving companies at 0.85, locksmiths at 1.08 and plumbers at 1.23.

Plumbers show the widest spread: a median of 1.23 miles but an average of 4.94, so some plumbers rank from well outside the city. Emergency plumbers sit a median of 1.28 miles away. For these trades, Google looks further out because the customer never visits the business, which leaves more room for reviews, relevance and a complete profile to decide who ranks.

City size matters less than you might expect. The map pack in large cities sits a median of 0.35 miles from the search location and in small towns 0.56 miles, and both average about 1.5 miles. Adding "near me" to a search barely changes the distance: map pack businesses average 1.6 miles away with it and 1.4 miles without.

Across all searches, 13.3% of map pack businesses are more than 2 miles from the search location and 4.5% more than 5 miles. Those are the businesses that win on other strengths, and they show that distance is a strong pattern, not a fixed rule.

You cannot move your business, but you can know where you stand. Check your Google Maps rankings from several points across your service area, not only from your own office, and you will see where you win and where a closer competitor takes the spot.

If you sit far from the city center, focus on the searches where you are the close option: searches that name your neighborhood or suburb, and landing pages for the areas you serve. If you run a service-area trade, such as plumbing or HVAC, distance counts for less, so reviews, business categories and a complete profile carry more weight.

Track the results over time, since the map pack a customer sees depends on where they stand. Our local seo packages include grid-based rank tracking that shows where a business wins and loses across its service area.

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