Relevance: matching what the searcher wants
Relevance is Google's assessment of whether your business is a good answer to this specific query. Your primary category is the strongest relevance signal on the profile, followed by secondary categories, your services list, business description, website content, and even the language in customer reviews.
If you are not eligible for a search because your category or content does not align, distance and prominence cannot rescue you. Relevance fixes start on the profile itself: accurate categories, honest services, and website pages that describe the same work in the terms customers use.
Distance: why location still dominates local search
Distance is exactly what it sounds like: how close your business is to the person searching or the point Google treats as their location. It is why you can rank brilliantly near your premises and fade out further across town without anything being "broken" on your profile.
You cannot eliminate distance as a factor, but you can understand it. Service-area businesses compete across a defined region rather than a single pin, while storefronts anchor to a physical address. Prominence work widens effective reach over time, but proximity always weights nearby searchers toward nearer options.
Prominence: the signals that build trust
Prominence is where most deliberate local SEO effort goes. Google treats prominence as a measure of how well known and trusted your business appears, based on signals such as:
- Review quantity, recency, and rating, plus owner responses that show an active profile.
- Citations and NAP consistency across trusted directories and your website.
- Links and mentions from local and industry-relevant sites.
- Engagement on the profile: photos, posts, clicks, calls and direction requests.
- Overall web authority that supports the business beyond the profile alone.
How the three pillars interact in practice
A search near your shop for your core service weights all three: you must be relevant, close enough, and prominent enough to beat nearby rivals. A search across town puts more weight on prominence because distance hurts everyone equally. A vague broad search rewards relevance less precisely and can surface larger or better-known brands.
That is why copying a competitor's tactics without context fails. They may win on prominence you have not built yet, or lose on distance in searches where you are closer. Measure rankings on a grid across your service area, fix profile fundamentals first, then invest in reviews and citations. Azizi Technologies uses that grid approach so improvements target the pillar actually holding you back.