Local Search Dominance: Why You Need Both Google Maps and Organic Rankings

By Mark Marquis · Mark B Marquis & Co · Windham, NH

The Map Pack: Where ~42% of Local Clicks Go

The Map Pack is the section at the top of local search results that shows three businesses on a map with their name, rating, address, and phone number. According to Backlinko’s analysis of over 4 million Google search results, the local Map Pack captures approximately 42% of all clicks on local search results pages.

That means when someone searches “plumber near me” or “dentist Derry NH,” nearly half of the people clicking on a result are clicking on one of those three Map Pack listings. If you are not in the top three, you are not getting that traffic.

Your position in the Map Pack is determined primarily by your Google Business Profile — how complete it is, how many reviews you have (and how recently they came in), how accurate your citations are across the web, and how relevant your categories and content are to the search. This is what Google Business Profile optimization addresses.

Organic Position #1: Another ~24% of Clicks

Below the Map Pack sit the traditional organic search results. First Page Sage’s CTR study shows that when a local Map Pack is present on the page, organic position one captures approximately 24% of clicks. Positions two and three drop to roughly 13% and 9% respectively.

This is lower than the ~28-32% that organic position one captures when there is no Map Pack, because the Map Pack pushes organic results further down the page. But 24% is still a massive share — especially when combined with Map Pack presence.

The Dominance Math

Here is where the strategy gets powerful. The Map Pack and organic results are not separate contests — they are the same search results page. A business that appears in both the Map Pack and in organic position one occupies the most visible real estate on the page. The prospect sees you at the top of the map and again in the listings below.

Your competitors are left fighting over the remaining positions. If you are in the Map Pack (top 3) and in organic position one, the combined visibility gives you a dominant share of the page. Research from BrightLocal’s annual Local Consumer Survey confirms that consumers increasingly interact with both the Map Pack and organic results during the same search session, particularly for high-intent local queries.

The exact percentages are not strictly additive — some users click on the Map Pack and then also scroll to organic results, so there is overlap. But the strategic point is clear: showing up in both places means your competitors are splitting whatever attention is left.

Why Most Businesses Only Get One (or Neither)

Most local businesses either focus on their Google Business Profile and ignore their website’s organic SEO, or they hire an SEO agency that focuses on organic rankings without properly optimizing their GBP. Very few do both — because doing both requires different skill sets and different tools.

GBP optimization requires profile management, review strategy, citation building, and geographic visibility tracking. Organic SEO requires schema markup, meta optimization, internal linking, content strategy, and technical site health. These are different disciplines, and most agencies specialize in one.

How AI Changes the Cost Equation

The reason organic SEO has historically been expensive is that it is labor-intensive. Writing meta tags, building internal links, implementing schema, and optimizing content for hundreds of pages takes hours of manual work every month. That is why agencies charge $3,000-$8,000 for it.

AI-powered SEO tools have fundamentally changed this. Schema markup, meta optimization, internal linking, and content analysis can now be automated — run continuously, updated as data changes, and deployed without manual intervention. The same work that took a junior analyst 20 hours a month now happens automatically.

This means a local business in Southern New Hampshire can now afford both GBP optimization and organic SEO — not as two expensive services from two vendors, but as one integrated strategy from one team. That is exactly what AI-powered SEO makes possible.

What This Looks Like in Practice

For a Southern New Hampshire business, the dominance strategy works like this:

Google Business Profile optimization gets you into the Map Pack. Your profile is fully completed, your categories are precise, your reviews are growing steadily, your citations are accurate across major directories and on SNHLocal.com, and your visibility is tracked with geographic scans across every town you serve.

AI-powered SEO gets you into organic position one. Your website has proper schema markup, optimized meta tags, intelligent internal linking, and content built around the keywords your customers actually search. All of this is automated and continuously improved.

Monthly visibility scans prove both are working. You see a map of your service area showing exactly where you rank for your key services — in both the Map Pack and organic results. Not a vague report. A map with data you can read yourself.

Sources

Backlinko — Google Click-Through Rate Statistics
First Page Sage — Google CTRs by Ranking Position
BrightLocal — Local Consumer Survey

Next Steps

If you want to see where you currently stand across Southern New Hampshire — in both the Map Pack and organic results — request a free visibility scan. We will show you exactly where customers find you and where they are finding your competitors instead.

For the complete approach to getting more customers from local search, see how our system works.