When it comes to marketing your small business online, there’s no shortage of fancy tools promising to give you an edge. One of the more recent ones making the rounds is the Local Search Grid (or GBP Heatmaps), a tool designed to show how your Google Business Profile (GBP) ranks across different points on a map. Sounds useful, right?
Well… not really. At least, not for most small businesses. This falls into the category of “data for the sake of data” in my opinion.
Who Actually Benefits from These Heatmap Tools?
These tools were built primarily for multi-location brick-and-mortar stores that rely on walk-in traffic. Think chain restaurants, retail stores, dental offices, or gyms. These businesses need to see how far their visibility extends and where they might need to improve. For them, expanding to neighboring territories is about getting rankings from the next block over, not the town that’s 10 miles away.
If you’re running a single-location service-area business (SAB) like a plumbing, electrical, or roofing company, these tools will be a shiny toy that will lead to very little actionable data. Why? Because your business doesn’t rely on people coming to you—you go to them.
Why SABs and Single-Location Businesses Don’t Need This Tool
Minimal Time Savings
While it might seem like this tool would save you a whole bunch of time, it likely won’t. In fact, it might be a net drain on your time because you’ll spend hours playing with it, trying to gain some key insight that just isn’t there. It’s largely going to confirm what you already know.
You Already Know Where Your Customers Come From
If you’re a service-based business, you don’t need a fancy map to tell you where your jobs are coming from. You can just check your invoices. If you haven’t gotten a job in a certain area in a while, that’s your answer, no heatmap required.
If You Have a Storefront, Checking Your Rankings Is Easy
For most single-location businesses, you probably care about how you rank in 3-5 key areas. Guess what? You can figure that out in under 5 minutes by doing a few Google searches. Better yet, delegate it to an employee. Paying for a tool to do this is like buying a $100 calculator to solve 2×2.
The One Possible Exception: Hyper-Dense Metro Areas
There might be a small benefit if you’re in a super densely populated city like New York, where neighborhoods are essentially micro-markets. In that case, knowing how you rank in one neighborhood versus another could be useful, since getting from, say, Hell’s Kitchen to SoHo for a service call can be a hassle.
However, even then, most people aren’t searching for “Plumber in Hell’s Kitchen” or “Appliance Repair SoHo.” They’re searching for broad terms like “Plumber NYC” or using a borough name like Brooklyn or the Bronx. So while there’s a possible use case in these situations, it’s still a maybe.
Better Ways to Spend Your Time & Money
Instead of chasing a shiny tool that doesn’t move the needle, focus on the basics that actually impact your local rankings:
- Optimizing Your Website (better UX, internal links, location pages, refined copy)
- Fully Optimizing Your GBP (photos, categories, business info)
- Getting More Reviews (yes, reviews matter a lot)
- Building Backlinks (local citations, partnerships, and industry directories)
- Investing in PPC or Local Directories (better ROI than a heatmap tool)
If you’re running a business with multiple locations (like a regional chain or a franchise) these tools can make sense. They help track performance across different areas and locations, giving you a way to optimize at scale.
But for 95% of small businesses? It’s just not worth it.
Final Thoughts: Don’t Chase Data for the Sake of Data
Local Search Grid tools aren’t a scam, they’re just built for a different kind of business than yours. If you’re a small business with a single location, they won’t give you any insights you couldn’t figure out on your own in a few minutes.
So before you spend money on another marketing tool, ask yourself: Is this actually going to help my business, or is it just a distraction? Because in most cases, it’s just not worth it.
