The workable framework is a scorecard built directly around Google’s own three named local ranking factors, relevance, distance, and prominence, auditing your listing against each of the top three local pack competitors factor by factor for the specific target keyword, rather than reaching for a generic third-party “local SEO audit” checklist untethered to what Google has actually stated it evaluates. This produces a diagnostic heuristic that identifies where the real gaps likely sit, not a precise numeric score matching Google’s actual internal weighting, since Google hasn’t published exact weightings and no legitimate framework can reverse-engineer them exactly.
The mechanism: structuring the audit around the three factors Google actually names
Google’s Business Profile documentation on local ranking states plainly that relevance, distance, and prominence are the three factors combined to determine local ranking, without disclosing precise weightings or a formula for how they combine. That’s a deliberately limited but genuinely useful piece of public information, it tells you what categories of gap to look for, even without telling you exactly how much each one matters in a given case. Building the comparative framework around these three named categories, rather than an invented list of “47 local ranking factors” some third-party tools market, keeps the analysis grounded in what’s actually documented rather than speculative.
Relevance gap check: compare primary and secondary GBP category selection against the competitors’, compare business description and service/product listings for how precisely they match the specific target keyword’s intent, and compare on-site landing page content for the equivalent query, since Google’s local ranking draws on both profile data and the broader web presence tied to that business. A competitor with a more precisely matched primary category or more specific service-page content for the exact query represents a genuine, identifiable relevance gap.
Distance gap check: compare the physical or declared-service-area proximity of each competitor to the specific location relevant to the target keyword’s typical searcher. This gap is largely structural (a business is where it is) and can’t be manufactured away, but identifying it correctly matters for realistic strategy, since a large distance gap means the remaining two factors need to work harder to compensate, and knowing that shapes where effort should actually go.
Prominence gap check: compare review count, average rating, and review recency/response rate; compare citation consistency and volume across major directories; and compare broader off-profile authority signals (press mentions, backlink profile strength, general brand recognition) between your listing and the competitors’. Prominence is the factor most within a business’s ongoing control to improve, so a clear gap here is often the most actionable finding from the audit.
Why this produces a diagnostic heuristic, not a precise score
It’s tempting to want the output of an audit like this to be a clean numeric score, “you’re at 72% of the top competitor’s ranking strength,” but that framing overstates what’s actually knowable. Google hasn’t disclosed how relevance, distance, and prominence combine mathematically, whether they’re weighted equally, whether the weighting shifts by query type or category, or what the actual internal scoring looks like at all. Any framework claiming to output a precise number matching Google’s actual internal calculation is presenting a heuristic as if it were a verified measurement, which it isn’t. The legitimate use of this scorecard is comparative and directional: identifying which of the three factors shows the clearest, most defensible gap between your listing and the top three competitors, not producing a number that claims to replicate Google’s internal math.
Similarly, be cautious of any named third-party “ranking factor study” cited to back up specific weightings or statistics in this kind of framework; those studies are typically correlational analyses of observed rankings, not verified insight into Google’s actual algorithm, and treating their findings as documented fact rather than industry-observed correlation risks presenting speculation as verified mechanism.
A worked example of running the scorecard
Take a mid-size HVAC company targeting “emergency ac repair” in its metro area, currently ranking fourth for that term, one position outside the local pack. Running the scorecard against the top three: on relevance, the audit finds the top three all list a specific “emergency HVAC repair” secondary category and have dedicated landing pages using that exact phrase, while the fourth-place business’s primary category is the more generic “HVAC contractor” with no dedicated emergency-specific page, a clear, actionable relevance gap. On distance, the audit finds the fourth-place business is actually the closest of the four to the metro’s population center, so distance isn’t the limiting factor here, a useful finding in itself, since it rules out “we’re just too far away” as an excuse and redirects attention to the factors actually within reach. On prominence, the audit finds the top three average around 150 reviews at a 4.7 rating with responses to nearly all recent reviews, while the fourth-place business has 40 reviews at a 4.5 rating with sparse owner responses, a second clear, actionable gap.
The resulting prioritized action list from this specific scorecard run would put relevance first (build the dedicated emergency-service page and add the matching category, a direct, quick structural fix) and prominence second (implement a systematic review-request and response process, a slower-moving but still fully actionable lever), while noting that distance isn’t the constraint holding this business back, so no effort needs to go toward trying to influence something that’s already working in its favor. Running the same scorecard for a different keyword, say “annual HVAC maintenance plan,” for the same business might surface an entirely different gap pattern, which is exactly why the audit needs to be repeated per keyword rather than treated as a single verdict about the business’s local SEO generally.
Practical implication
Run the three-factor scorecard against each of the top three local pack competitors specifically for the target keyword, since local rankings vary by query and location, a single generic competitor comparison run once for the whole business won’t capture keyword-specific gaps accurately. Document the gap findings under each of the three factors separately, then convert the findings into a prioritized action list: address the prominence gaps first if they’re the clearest and most within the business’s control (review generation and response process, citation cleanup, off-profile authority building), treat distance gaps as structural context that should inform how much other-factor improvement is realistically needed rather than something to try to engineer away, and address relevance gaps through category accuracy and content specificity rather than keyword-stuffing tactics that risk guideline violations. Revisit the audit periodically, since competitor positioning and the surrounding local pack shift over time, and a scorecard run once isn’t a permanent diagnosis of the competitive landscape for that keyword.
