How far 138 Charlotte-area home service companies reach on Google Maps, and which ones AI assistants recommend.
By Neil, founder, Isoline Growth · October 16, 2026
Residents who see a typical company in Google's top 3: 70% near its shop, about 1% at 6.7 miles.
Residents within 10 miles, outside its own neighborhood, for whom the typical company ranks top 3.
Top-3 rate 3.3 miles out, in quieter versus busier areas. Busier areas are harder to win.
Companies ChatGPT named at least once. Gemini named 31, Google's AI Overviews 2.
Counted by where people live, most companies in this study are visible on Google Maps only in their own neighborhood. AI assistants follow different rules, and each leaves many companies out.
Google shows most companies near their own shop and almost nowhere else.
When a homeowner in Matthews searches for AC repair, Google doesn't show the best AC company in Charlotte. It shows well-matched companies near where that homeowner is. Google lists relevance, distance and prominence as the three factors behind local results.
So visibility changes block by block. Most owners only see one point on that map, the search from their own office, which is usually where they look best. We measured the whole map for 138 companies, weighted it by where people live, and asked three AI assistants the same question.
Where one company ranked for "ac repair" at 49 points around its shop. Real scan, name removed.
Share of all 144 company scans ranking top 3 at each grid point, with the shop at the center. Darker squares mean more companies won that spot.
Counted by where people live, companies were top 3 for one in four residents 3.3 miles away, and about one in a hundred at 6.7 miles.
Share in Google's top 3 by distance from the shop. Shaded band: 95% range from resampling companies.
At 6.7 miles, the company appeared anywhere in the top 20 for about a quarter of residents.
Within 10 miles, outside its own cell, the median company ranks top 3 for 3% of residents. The average is about 10%, pulled up by a few far-reaching companies.
Scans with no top-3 spot anywhere on the grid, not even at the shop.
Where does your map drop off?
Get the same 49-point scan, free →At the same distance from the shop, companies were far less likely to rank in the busier parts of the map. That's why the resident curve falls faster.
Top-3 rate at each distance, splitting grid cells at the median population for that distance
The drop shows up in every trade. HVAC, the most crowded, falls off first: about 0.1% of residents at 6.7 miles.
Resident-weighted share in Google's top 3, drawn as a profile through the shop, 14 miles each way. Median competing businesses across each company's 49 searches in brackets.
Closeness does the most. Reviews matter up to a point. No one owns the map.
Distance shows the strongest link to winning. #1 sat 3.7 miles closer than #11–20, with three times the reviews.
Medians across all 141,120 ranked results, by position
93% of top-3 results carried a rating of 4.5 or higher.
Of #1 results, 99% had a primary Google category matching the trade searched.
Median reviews of the #1 plumbing result, about twice HVAC's 259. In garage door, 80.
Under 50 reviews, companies were mostly invisible. Past about 150, more reviews showed no relationship with reach.
Each dot is one company: its Google reviews (log scale) and the grid points, of 49, where it ranked top 3. Line: running median.
Across 7,056 searches, 21,168 top-3 spots went to 1,338 different companies. The company beating you three miles away is usually another local shop.
Each square is 1% of the trade's top-3 spots in our searches
The most frequent HVAC winner's share of HVAC top-3 spots in our searches.
Private equity sponsors' share of residential services M&A deals in 2026 through July 27 (Capstone Partners). Franchise and national brands held 6% of top-3 spots here.
National brands' share of garage door top spots, in the trade with the fewest competitors.
AI assistants don't follow the map. Gemini repeats a few names everywhere; each assistant leaves many companies out.
ChatGPT and Gemini each left about half the companies unnamed. Google's AI Overviews named two.
Each square is one company we checked; filled squares were named at least once. The bracket shows the 95% range.
On Maps, the five biggest HVAC winners held 7% of top spots. On Gemini, 31% of HVAC recommendations went to five companies.
Share of recommendations (or Maps top-3 spots) going to the five most frequent companies, by trade
When Gemini named a company, it named it at a median of 9 of 9 points. ChatGPT: 1 of 9.
Companies with any Maps top-3 spot that ChatGPT named. A Maps lead didn't carry over reliably.
AI answers vary between runs. These are one run per company, through simulated queries.
Three directory sites showed up in the sources of every ChatGPT check.
Share of ChatGPT checks whose cited sources included each site
A safe working assumption: Google shows you well in your own neighborhood and poorly a few miles out, especially where most of your customers live.
All 11 plates and the method notes, formatted to print or forward to your office manager.
We'll run the same 49-point scan for your main money search and show where you drop out, who takes those searches, and the one change most likely to move it.
Charlotte-area HVAC, plumbing, pest control and garage door companies; 144 company-and-search pairs.
49 points, 10 miles each way from the shop, 3.3 miles apart. Top 20 results recorded at each.
Each point weighted by residents in its 3.3-mile cell, from block-group population centers.
Bootstrap resamples of whole companies give the 95% ranges shown.
Companies checked once on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, 3×3 grid, same radius.
About 7 to 11:10am Eastern. Searches: hvac repair, plumber, pest control, garage door repair.
The same method runs in any metro. Planned: Raleigh–Durham, Greenville–Spartanburg and Columbia, then a Carolinas comparison. Future editions will add a second search term per trade and repeat the AI checks three times.