The map pack is getting more valuable as clicks disappear

If your clients come from within driving distance, the map pack is the most valuable place your firm can show up in Google. Someone looking for a lawyer to call still sees one almost every time, even as AI answers take over more of the page, and they pick from the three firms it shows.

Below, I’ll cover how Google picks those three, which searches are worth chasing, where AI assistants fit, what to work on, and how to track whether it’s working.

Why the map pack is worth more every year

AI Overviews now answer a lot of what people used to click through for. When one shows up, people click a result about half as often, so searches like “what’s my case worth” and “how long do I have to file” send far less traffic than they used to.

Searches for a local provider still get a map pack. Whitespark ran 540 searches across Houston, Phoenix and Denver, in six industries including lawyers, and sorted them by what the person was after.

Someone who wants a lawyer near them right now gets a map pack almost every time and only occasionally an AI Overview. That’s the search that turns into a phone call, and Google is still answering it with three firms and a map.

For a local firm, that’s the argument for giving the map pack the biggest share of your SEO effort.

Three things decide the map pack, and you control two

Google ranks the map pack on three things.

• Proximity is how far your office is from the person searching. That’s fixed by your address.
• Relevance is how well your firm matches what they typed. It comes from the categories and services on your profile, and from pages on your site that cover that practice area in that city.
• Authority is how well known and trusted your firm is. Google points to links from other sites and to your reviews, and listings and local news mentions add to it as well.

Everything in the rest of this article feeds relevance or authority.

Why the top three is what counts

The map pack shows three firms, and everyone else sits behind a link to more results that most people never tap. SOCi looked at more than 300,000 Google listings and found the top three got 126% more traffic and 93% more calls, website clicks and direction requests than the listings behind that link.

That makes fourth place a very different spot from third. A firm that’s fourth across most of town rarely shows up where anyone is looking, even when a ranking report makes it look close.

The goal is to be in the top three for each of your most valuable searches, across as much of your market as you can. Track this number keyword by keyword, in every part of town you serve.

Which searches the map pack actually wins

Not every search puts a map pack on the screen. SEO people sort searches into four types by what the person wants.

Point your map work at commercial and transactional searches: a practice area with or without your city, plus the “best” versions of those. Those people are ready to pick a firm, and that’s where the map pack shows up.

Brand searches count too. Referrals and people who saw your billboard look you up by name, and your website and profile are what they see, so both need to hold up.

Question searches won’t put you in the map pack, but the pages that answer them build the relevance that does.

The same searches, asked of an assistant

AI assistants are a real local channel now. BrightLocal found 45% of consumers had used AI tools to find a local business, up from 6% a year earlier, and the four search types carry over to ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Mode pretty directly.

• Informational: “How long do I have to file after a crash in Arizona?” The assistant answers it, and at best your site is the source it cites.
• Navigational: “What do people say about your firm?” It sums up your reviews and whatever else it can find about you.
• Commercial: “Who are the best truck accident lawyers in Houston?” You get a short list of names, which is the assistant’s version of the map pack.
• Transactional: “I just got rear-ended in Phoenix. Which lawyer should I call?” Google’s AI Mode leans on Business Profiles here, pulling in ratings, reviews and photos.

The commercial question is the one to watch, and it’s decided by the same evidence as the map pack. Whitespark found AI Mode leaning hard on reviews and on everyday mentions of a business around the web, including local news, sponsorship pages, community sites and business associations.

What to do about it

Google and AI search want the rest of the web to back up what your site says about you. A firm calling itself the best in town counts for much less than a pile of recent reviews and a write-up in the local paper.

Dial in your Google Business Profile

Your profile needs to be complete, accurate, and active.

• Name, address and phone number exactly the same as on your website and every directory, including your state bar listing.
• Primary and secondary categories that fit your work and practice areas. Base off competitors.
• Services filled in under every category, and a full description.
• Plenty of real photos of your office and your people.
• A new post about once a week and fresh photos every so often, so it never looks abandoned.
• Reviews requested from every client and answered by the firm every time. Review volume, quality and recency are major ranking signals for GBP visibility.

Build local pages that back up the profile

Your website is where you prove relevance, and it works best when it matches the profile.

• Link the profile to a page that mirrors it: primary category and city in the title and main heading, the same name, address and phone, a map embed, your reviews, and schema that matches.
• A page for each practice area, plus a page for each city you serve that’s actually about that city. A page where only the city name changes doesn’t count.
• Links between those pages inside the text, not only in the menu. A link in a paragraph tells Google more than one in the navigation.
• Pages that answer the questions people ask before they hire, linked back to the practice-area page they belong to.

Earn local citations, mentions and links

This is the authority work, and it’s the part that can’t be an afterthought and must be baked into a firm’s overall marketing strategy.

• Consistent listings on the general and legal directories that carry law firm information.
• Memberships in the chamber of commerce and the local bar association wherever you practice.
• Real community involvement: sponsorships, nonprofits, local events and fundraisers that get written up.
• Local news. A quote in the paper is a mention and often a link.
• Links earned from local sites. Skip anything sold as a link package.

How to track your map pack visibility

Searching your firm from your own office tells you almost nothing, because you’ll nearly always look good from right next to the building.

Use a grid tracker instead. I use Local Falcon, and BrightLocal and Localo do the same job: they check your ranking from a grid of points across your market, so you can see it change from one neighborhood to the next.

• Track four or five of your most valuable searches.
• Watch the share of the grid where you’re in the top three, for each search. Local Falcon calls it Share of Local Voice, and it’s the number you’re trying to grow.
• Build that share around your office first. Once you’re competitive with the leading firm there, push it outward with neighborhood pages and local links.
• Run a fresh scan at least once a week.
• Put your top competitors on the same grid. When one beats you somewhere, look at their categories, reviews, pages and links. Whoever does your SEO should be doing this already.

For local services businesses such as personal injury law firms, progress on a map pack shows up as calls first, with website inquiries and direction requests close behind.

What law firms ask about the map pack