The Plumber Above You In Google Maps Isn't Better Than You. He's Just Ticking Boxes You Can't See.
For $199 I'll show you the scoreboard for your suburb — you against the three businesses actually beating you to the three-pack, line by line, on the things Google counts. Page one is a picture you can check yourself in about ten seconds. Then I write out what's missing, in words you can paste straight in.
Get My Gap Report$199 one-off. In your inbox within 2 hours. No logins needed. Read it, and if it's not worth $199 you get your money back.
Being fourth in the map is the same as being fortieth
You already know this bit. Someone's hot water has gone or there's water coming through the ceiling. They pick up the phone, type "emergency plumber near me", and Google gives them a little box with a map and three businesses in it.
That box has a name — the local pack, or the three-pack — and it isn't the top of the search. For a bloke with a wet carpet at 11pm it IS the search. He isn't scrolling past it, because everything under it is ten blue links and he's already got three phone numbers on the screen. If you're fourth, you may as well be fortieth. There's no prize for nearly.
And getting into the box isn't the finish line either
The best measurement anyone has published on this sat real people in front of real search results and tracked where they actually clicked. Plumbers were one of the five trades tested. First place in the pack pulled roughly six times the clicks of third place — and position one on its own took more than half of everything all three of them got between them.
Share of every click on the results page.
Reported by BrightLocal Local Services Ads Click Study, 2018 — 5,500+ participants
Be careful how much weight you put on that, and I'd rather say so than let you over-read it. It's American data from 2018, the searches were in San Francisco, and the people clicking were shown a results page rather than standing in a flooded laundry at midnight. I'm showing it to you because it's the best measurement published, not because it's gospel. What I'd take from it isn't the exact numbers — it's the shape, and the shape matches what I see: third spot in that box is worth a good deal less than most blokes assume.
Which is why the job isn't "get into the map". It's get to the top of it.
Here's the part that actually annoys you, and it should. The three in that box aren't necessarily the three best plumbers in your area. You've probably met one of them. You might have gone back and fixed something he did. He's not in there because he's better — he's in there because his listing answers more of the questions Google asks, and yours doesn't.
And nobody will tell you which questions. You get three calls a week promising you page one, and not one of them will say what's actually being measured, because a bloke who understands the scoreboard doesn't need to keep paying someone to look at it for him. Vague is the product.
Half of this is your address. Neither of us can move your yard.
Before you spend anything, you deserve to know what's fixed and what isn't. Google publishes the three things it weighs when it decides who goes in that box. They're not a secret:
Distance + Relevance + Prominence
Distance
How far your business sits from the person doing the searching. It's a big share of the decision, and it moves every time the customer moves. You cannot change it without physically relocating, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something. This is why you'll show up strongly in your own suburb and vanish four suburbs over — and why nobody can honestly promise you a position.
Relevance + Prominence
Whether your listing says you do this work, in these places, and whether Google can see that other people rate you for it. Your categories, your services, your description, your reviews, your photos, and what your own website says about you. Every single one of these can be changed this week, most of them in an afternoon, and most plumbers have left half of them blank.
So the fight isn't over the half you can't move. It's over the half sitting there half-finished — and that's the half the report is about.
This is also why I won't quote you a position. Two plumbers with identical listings will rank differently for the same search depending on where the customer is standing. What I can do is make sure that when the distance goes your way, nothing else is holding you back — because right now, for most of the blokes I look at, something else is.
Distance, relevance and prominence are Google's own words for how local results are ranked — you can read that on their support pages yourself. How much weight each one carries is not published, so when someone tells you proximity is exactly 55% of the algorithm, he's made that up. Worth separating those two things: where people click can be measured by watching people click, which is why there's a figure further up this page with a name and a date on it. What's going on inside Google's ranking system can't be measured from out here by anybody, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
This isn't an SEO audit. You can get one of those free, and free is roughly what they're worth.
You've probably had one. You put your website into a box on someone's site, and out comes a PDF full of red crosses and a score out of a hundred. Then the phone rings.
That's not a report, it's bait. The findings are the hook and the fix is the sale, which is exactly why the findings are free and vague and the fix costs eight hundred a month. Telling you something's broken is the cheap half. It always was.
This one is built the other way round. You get the fixes — written out, finished, ready to paste. Not "improve your business description". The description, written, in your voice, ready to go in.
And you own it. It's your document. Hand it to your nephew who does websites, hand it to the mob you're already paying, or do half of it yourself on a Sunday. I'm not after a retainer and I don't need to become your SEO company.
Which does mean that if I do this properly you might never need to ring me again. That's an odd way to run a business. It's also the reason the report has to be worth the money on its own, because there's nothing else propping it up.
So what's actually on the scoreboard?
Nine questions, asked about you and about the three businesses above you, side by side. None of them are technical. All of them are things Google can see and most plumbers have never checked:
- 01Is your primary category the same one the businesses beating you have chosen?
- 02Is your Services list filled in, or is that box sitting empty?
- 03How many reviews have you got — and how long since the last one arrived?
- 04Do your reviews contain the words your customers actually type?
- 05Are your photos yours, and when did you last add one?
- 06Does your listing point at a page about your area, or at a general home page?
- 07Is your business name written identically everywhere Google can find it?
- 08Does your website tell Google the same story your listing tells it?
- 09Which boxes has your competitor filled that you've left blank?
That last one is the whole report in a sentence. I'm not comparing you to some ideal listing out of a textbook — I'm comparing you to the actual businesses actually beating you, in your actual suburb. That's a much shorter and much more useful list.
Two lists, because two different people do the work
Most reports hand you one long pile and leave you to work out who does what. This one splits in half on purpose, because half of it is yours and half of it isn't — and being honest about which is which saves you a fortnight of confusion.
Only you can do these
Your Google listing. Nobody else can touch it, and it doesn't need a web developer — most of these are typing.
Your categories
The primary category is the single biggest relevance lever on the listing, and it's a dropdown you probably picked once, in a hurry, years ago. Secondary categories are usually blank.
What it costs you: Pick the wrong primary and you're competing in the wrong race. You can be doing everything else right and still not appear for the search you care about.
Your Services list
A separate box from the description, and on most plumbing listings it's empty. It's one of the few places you get to state plainly what you do, in Google's own structured fields.
What it costs you: You're relying on Google to guess what you do from your category alone, while the bloke above you has spelled it out.
Your description
Either blank, or written by whoever set the listing up, or stuffed with keywords in a way that reads like a robot and risks the listing.
What it costs you: The first 250 characters are all anyone sees before it truncates. Most listings waste them on "we are a family owned business committed to quality".
Reviews — the system, not the favour
Almost every plumber gets reviews by remembering to ask, which means he gets them in bursts and then goes quiet for five months. Recency counts, not just the total.
What it costs you: Eleven reviews sitting next to a competitor's ninety is the single most visible gap in that box — the customer sees it before he reads a word.
Photos
Stock images, or six photos uploaded the week the listing was created and nothing since.
What it costs you: A listing that hasn't been touched in two years looks like a business that might not be trading, to Google and to the bloke choosing at 2am.
Hand these to whoever does your website
Your website feeds your listing. These are the ones you forward — and every item comes written out, so nobody has to interpret anything.
Local business markup
There's usually code on the site telling Google "this is a web page" — the SEO plugin's default — and nothing telling it "this is a plumbing business, based here, open these hours, covering these suburbs". That's the one piece of code written specifically for the map.
What it costs you: Google is left guessing at who you are from ordinary page text, while your competitor has handed it a form filled in.
Your phone number, written one way
It's common to find the same number written three ways on one page — spaced, unspaced and hyphenated — plus a fourth version inside the tap-to-call link.
What it costs you: Google matches your website to your listing partly by matching contact details. Every extra variant weakens the match for no reason at all.
The page your listing points at
Most listings point at the home page. If the home page is written for the whole country, or for every trade you do, it's the weakest local page you own.
What it costs you: You're aiming your strongest local signal at the page with the least local content on it.
Suburb pages that a local would recognise
Nine suburb pages that are individually spun filler — suburb name swapped in, no landmarks, no streets, nothing about what things cost around there.
What it costs you: They're not duplicates, so they don't get penalised. They just don't do anything, which is worse value than not having them.
A live map of the listing
No map embedded anywhere — not on the home page, not on contact. Zero references to your actual map pin.
What it costs you: You're missing the simplest signal there is that this website and that listing are the same business.
Mobile speed
Emergency callers are on a phone, often on ordinary reception, often in the dark.
What it costs you: If it takes six seconds they're back in the map picking someone else, and you paid for that click either way.
The honest bit: the owner list is usually where the bigger win sits, and it's the list that doesn't cost you anything to action. I'd rather tell you that than pretend the expensive half is the important half.
Want to read up before you spend anything? I've written the long version of all this for free — the ten reasons a plumbing business doesn't show up on Google Maps, how Google Business Profiles work for tradies, the wider picture on local SEO in Australia, and what plumbing SEO actually costs. None of it is gated and none of it asks for your email.
Knowing what's missing doesn't fix it. This does.
Finding the gaps is the easy half. Anyone with ten minutes and your suburb can tell you your competitor has more reviews than you. The hard half — the half that actually moves something — is knowing exactly what to put in each empty box.
That's what the $199 buys. Not a list of complaints. The finished words, and a picture of where they go.
Page one: the scoreboard
You and the three businesses above you in your suburb, side by side, on every point Google counts. No interpretation, no jargon — just the picture. You'll be able to open Google on your phone and check I'm telling you the truth before you read anything else.
Your categories, chosen and written out
The primary and the secondaries, picked against what's actually working for the businesses beating you. Copy them into the listing exactly as written.
Your business description, written out
The full thing, front-loaded so the important part survives the truncation, written to Google's rules so it doesn't put your listing at risk. Paste it in as it is.
Your Services list, written out
Every service, worded the way your customers search for it rather than the way tradesmen say it. Straight into the box.
The review request, written out
The actual text message, plus when to send it so it doesn't get ignored. Reviews are the one thing on this list that compounds, and the reason most plumbers have few is that asking feels awkward — so I've written the awkward part for you.
The list you forward to your web guy
Separated out, so you're not trying to work out which half is yours. He builds what's in it. You don't have to translate anything or argue about it.
What you're already doing right
A report that only finds faults is a sales pitch wearing a lab coat. Some of what you've got is fine, and you should know which parts so you don't go breaking them.
And the website half, included
Getting into the box is only worth something if the blokes who tap through then ring you. So the same $199 covers the website side as well — what your page says to someone standing in water at 2am, and where it's losing him. Two halves of the same problem, one file, one price. Some blokes come to me about the map and find the website was the real leak. Plenty go the other way. You get both either way, so it doesn't matter which one you turned up for.
That's the other door in — same $199, same bundle →An SEO mob will put you on six hundred a month and take four months to tell you this much, and at the end of it you own nothing. This is one payment of $199 and the document is yours forever.
In your inbox within 2 hours. Not next week.
It's quick because the process is fixed, not because it's rushed — the same nine questions, in the same order, every time. The thinking was done long before your listing turned up.
I don't need your logins or your passwords. I never touch your listing or your site — I write what should be in them, and you or your own bloke puts it there.
Be clear about the other clock, though. Two hours is how fast you get the report. It is not how fast Google moves. Category and description changes tend to get picked up in days to a couple of weeks. Reviews are slower again, because they arrive at the speed your customers write them. Anyone telling you they'll shift the map by Friday is telling you what you want to hear.
Here's part of one I've already done
Rather than describe it, here are real findings from a real Gold Coast plumbing business, anonymised. This is the website half of the report — the part his web developer got handed. Two of the ten website signals were in place. Eight weren't.
- →No local business markup anywhere. The only code on the site told Google "this is a web page" — the plugin default. Nothing told it there was a plumbing business behind it.
- →His phone number appeared in three different formats on a single page, and a fourth inside the tap-to-call link.
- →No map of his listing embedded anywhere on the site. Not on the home page, not on contact.
- →Nine suburb pages. I compared two of them line by line — they shared only 19% of their wording, so they weren't copy-paste duplicates. They were individually spun filler, which is a different kind of useless.
- →And the good news he got to keep: his page title led with the trade and the city, which most plumbing sites get wrong, and he already had eight service pages built — exactly what the listing's Products feature needs to link into.
0412 345 678 0412345678 0412-345-678 (all three on the same page)
0412 345 678 — one format, every page, matching the listing exactly, including inside the tap-to-call link.
$199. One payment. In your inbox in 2 hours.
Not a subscription. Not a retainer. Not a monthly plan with a lock-in contract and a three-month notice period. One payment of $199 and the document is yours.
One other thing worth saying plainly, because you'll find the other page sooner or later. There's one product here and two doors into it. You're on the door for blokes who aren't in the map. If your problem is the opposite — people are finding you fine and still not ringing — there's a page that starts from that end instead. Same $199, same two hours, same two halves in the file. The only difference is which problem it opens with, because that's the one you already know you've got.
Fair question: why so cheap? Because this is my front door. Some blokes take the report, do the lot themselves over a weekend, and I never hear from them again. That's a completely fine outcome and it's the one I've priced for. Some read it, decide they'd rather not manage the job at all, and ask me to do it. Also fine.
What I'm not going to do is put you on a retainer before either of us knows whether you need one. I'd rather hand you the scoreboard for $199 and let you decide what it's worth. One after-hours callout usually covers it.
This isn't for everyone
Don't buy it if
- ✗You haven't claimed your Google Business Profile yet. Go and claim it first — it's free, it takes twenty minutes, and there's nothing for me to compare until you have.
- ✗You want a guaranteed position in the map. I can't give you one and neither can anybody else, and I'd rather lose the sale than pretend otherwise.
- ✗You don't take after-hours or emergency work. The whole thing is built around emergency searches, so you'd be paying for the wrong report.
- ✗You want someone to tell you it's all looking great. I'll tell you what your competitor is doing that you aren't, and some of it will sting.
- ✗You're not going to change anything. The best-written description in Queensland does nothing sitting in a PDF on your phone.
Buy it if
- ✓You're not in the three-pack for your own suburb and you can't work out why.
- ✓You're in it some days and gone others, and nobody's been able to explain that to you.
- ✓Blokes you know for a fact are worse tradesmen are sitting above you.
- ✓You're paying for Google Ads to cover for a listing that should be bringing those calls in for free.
- ✓You've been paying someone monthly for SEO and you genuinely can't tell what you've got for it.
- ✓Your listing got set up years ago by someone who's long gone and nobody's touched it since.
Already in the three-pack, and it's the website letting you down? Same bundle, same $199 — that page just starts from the other end.
Who you're actually dealing with
I'm Hilton Holder. I moved to Australia in 2000 and have run businesses here ever since — some that worked very well, and a couple that didn't. Before that, two businesses I helped build and sold went on to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
For the last ten years the work has been the same thing over and over: getting local trade businesses found, and getting their phones to ring. Not brand campaigns, not social media strategy. The map, the listing, the reviews, and the words on the page.
The two blokes further down this page are the clearest examples I've got. Both were paying good money for leads — one on twelve hundred a week of AdWords, the other on HiPages and OneFlare — and both stopped, because the map started doing the work instead.
I'll also tell you what I'm not. I'm not an agency, there's no account manager, and there's no reporting dashboard. When you email, I'm the one who answers. That's a limitation as much as a selling point, and you should know it before you buy anything.
That's what your $199 buys: ten years of working out why one local business's phone rings and the identical one down the road stays quiet, pointed at your listing.
Two Gold Coast businesses I've done this for
Neither of these blokes is a plumber — they're both cleaners. Same game though: local trade, the phone rings or it doesn't, and the map pack decides a great deal of it. Read what each of them says about where they ended up in Google, and what they stopped paying for.
We used to spend up to $1,200 per week on Google AdWord campaigns for a steady workflow and keeping our schedule full. A very expensive immediate fix with no long term benefits for a relatively new business. In a matter of three months Hilton managed to get us ranked in the top position of the Google Map pack for multiple primary keywords and services, and implemented software that increased our reviews from 18 (when we started) to over 100 today. Due to our online reputation we now close 99.9% of our calls as jobs and at much better margins. No more AdWords or looking for customers. We're not only saving thousands of dollars but also autonomously building our organic rankings and reputation daily.
Having been in business for close to ten years now, I have been paying for leads from various sources such as Jim's, HiPages, OneFlare and word of mouth. When I left Jim's and ventured out on my own I met with Hilton to discuss the way forward. In conjunction with the positive reviews, totalling 113, Hilton has also promoted my page so that it appears in the Google 3 pack across a wide area for different keywords. Working with Hilton over the last twelve months, clients now have access to a fully automated booking system, where they can obtain a quote and book the job without speaking directly to me. This has totally transformed my business and I no longer pay for leads and have withdrawn from both HiPages and OneFlare.
Straight up about what these are and aren't. Both came from full engagements over months — the listing, the reviews system, the website, the lot — not from a $199 gap report. The report is the diagnosis those jobs started with, sold on its own, and it's new enough that nobody's had it long enough to write me a review about it yet. They're here for one reason: to show you that the bloke reading your listing has put a local trade business in that box before, more than once.
Read it. If it's not worth $199, don't pay $199.
Open the file, check page one against Google on your own phone, read the words I've written for you. If you don't think it's worth what you paid, say so and I'll refund the lot — and you keep the document anyway, because taking it back off you wouldn't achieve anything. You'll have already seen where the gaps are. You shouldn't be carrying the risk on the fix as well.
There are three places the money leaks. Most plumbers are losing it at the first.
Every emergency job you don't get is lost at one of exactly three points. It's worth knowing which one is yours, because they have completely different fixes and most people guess wrong.
He never found you
You weren't in the box. He never saw your name, never visited your site, never had the chance to choose you. This is the one that hurts most and the one you can't feel, because there's no missed call in your phone and no email that didn't arrive. It just doesn't happen, quietly, several times a week.
This is what the gap report is for.
He found you and picked someone else
You were in the box. He looked at three businesses, and yours had eleven reviews and no photos next to a bloke with ninety reviews and a picture of his van. It took him about two seconds. You paid to be seen and then lost it on the shortlist.
This is what the gap report is for as well.
He picked you and the phone rang out
He found you, chose you, dialled — and you were under a house, or on another job, or asleep. It went to voicemail. He didn't leave a message and he didn't ring back, because there were two more numbers on the screen and he had water coming through the ceiling.
The report will tell you honestly if this is your biggest one. It usually is, and it's the one nobody wants to look at.
You can only fix the leak you've actually got. Spending money on ads when the problem is leak three is how good tradesmen stay busy and stay broke — you pay more for calls you were never going to answer. The report tells you which one you're on before you spend anything else.
Two hours from now, you could be looking at it
Fill this in and I'll come back with a payment link and get started. Two hours after you pay, the scoreboard and the write-ups are in your inbox — most blokes have it before they're back in the ute.
No obligation until you pay. I'm not going to ring you every week.
Or skip the form — ring or text me on 0488 845 404, or email hilton@designrepublic.net.au.