Geo-grid rank tracker
Geo-grid rank tracker
A geo-grid rank tracker measures your Google Maps position from many real coordinates at once, then draws the answers in place. The result is a picture of where your visibility begins and ends — and the settings you choose decide how good that picture is.
Free to start · No card required · By the Local SEO Bot team
coffee shop
5 × 5 grid · 1 mile spacing
Illustrative scan — each pin shows the Google Maps rank from that location
Mechanics
What actually happens in a scan
Three settings define a scan, and each one trades cost against resolution.
Grid size
How many points per side. A 5×5 is 25 lookups; a 9×9 is 81. More points means a sharper boundary between green and red, at proportionally more cost per scan. Choose the coarsest grid that still shows you where your coverage ends.
Spacing
The distance between adjacent points, which sets the total area scanned. Tight spacing over a dense city block answers a different question from wide spacing across a county — match it to how far your customers will actually travel.
Centre
Where the grid is anchored. Centring on your pin gives a symmetric read of how rank decays with distance. Centring on the market instead is the right call when your address sits at the edge of the area you serve.
Reading it
What the map tells you that a number cannot
The shape of the green area
A tight green core with rapid decay means you win close-in searches and little else. A broad green field means your visibility travels. Same average rank, very different businesses.
The direction of the decay
Rank rarely falls off evenly. The direction it holds up in usually corresponds to something real — a highway, a dense neighbourhood, a competitor's absence — and that is where expansion is cheapest.
Where a competitor is holding
Points where you sit at 8 or 9 are usually not empty; someone is occupying them. The scan captures who came back at each point, which turns a weakness into a specific target.
The edge, which is the thing to move
The boundary between amber and red is the most actionable line on the map. Pushing it outward by a mile adds real search volume. Improving from #2 to #1 at your own address adds close to none.
Ready to put it to work? See how to bracket a change with two scans.
The grid engine behind Local SEO Bot
Maprank runs the same geo-grid scanner our own agency platform uses to report on client rankings — now available as a standalone tracker.
- Free to start
- No card required
- White-label reports
FAQ
Geo-grid scanning, answered
What is a geo-grid?+
A lattice of measurement points laid over a map. Each point has real coordinates, and the tracker asks Google Maps for your keyword as though the searcher were standing at that exact spot. The collected answers, drawn in place, become a heat map of your visibility.
What grid size should I use?+
Grid size is a resolution choice. A 5×5 gives you a coarse read cheaply; a 9×9 or larger resolves the boundary between where you rank and where you do not. Bigger grids cost more per scan because every point is a separate lookup, so the practical answer is the smallest grid that still shows you the edge of your coverage.
How far apart should the points be?+
Spacing decides the area covered: points × spacing is the width of the scan. Match the total footprint to your real service area. A dense grid over a small radius suits a walk-in business in a city; a wider spread suits a service-area business covering a county.
Why do scans cost credits?+
Each point on the grid is an individual ranking lookup, so a 7×7 scan is 49 of them. Credits are counted in points rather than scans, which means a small grid is cheap to run often and a large one is worth reserving for when you need the resolution.
Should the grid be centred on my business?+
Usually, but not always. Centring on your address gives you a symmetric read of decay in every direction. If your market is genuinely lopsided — a coastline, a river, a metro you sit on the edge of — centring on the market rather than the pin describes your real opportunity better.
Why do two scans of the same grid differ slightly?+
Local results are not perfectly stable. Small movements between scans are normal, which is exactly why average rank and top-3 coverage across a whole grid are better trend signals than the position at any single point.
Draw the map. Run a grid scan.
Pick a keyword, a grid and a centre, and see exactly where your visibility starts and stops.
Try Maprank freeFree to start · No card required · By the Local SEO Bot team