Method · Research note
What links do for a business on the map
Links from other websites are the oldest currency of search, and many owners still pay for them. We compared them with the order of businesses on Google Maps in three South Brooklyn trades. On the map, links turned out to be the weakest and least consistent of the signals we could measure.
The question
For two decades, search engines counted links as votes: a site that many others pointed to was taken as more important. Links still matter in the ordinary list of websites. Google also says that the prominence of a local business draws on what it knows about the business from across the web, links included. So the question for an owner is a practical one: how much do links decide where a business appears on the map, against the things that obviously matter, such as distance and reviews?
How we checked
We took 2,622 searches in South Brooklyn for dentists, med spas and jewelers, measured in late October 2026: the main search of each trade from 181 points about half a mile apart, and one search for each service from the center of each of the 13 neighborhoods. For every search we took the top ten businesses that have a website and compared them two at a time. For each pair we asked four questions: is the business placed higher
- closer to the person searching,
- the one with more reviews,
- the one with more sites linking to it,
- the one with more editorial links, from articles and publications?
If a signal had nothing to do with the order, the higher business would win about half of the pairs, 50%. The further above 50%, the more the signal goes along with placing higher. Linking sites come from historical link data, up to the hundred strongest per website, after removing spam, link farms, autogenerated sites and technical hosts.
| Trade | Searches | Pairs | Higher one is closer | Has more reviews |
Has more linking sites | Has more editorial links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dentists | 894 | 23,800 | 62% | 53% | 54% | 54% |
| Med spas | 833 | 15,600 | 66% | 54% | 48% | 48% |
| Jewelers | 895 | 5,700 | 62% | 57% | 47% | 46% |
South Brooklyn, public map results, top ten places of each search. A pair is two different businesses with websites in the same search; pairs where both are equal on a signal are left out for that signal. 50% means the signal does not tell the higher business from the lower one.
What the numbers show
Distance comes first by a wide margin. In 62% to 66% of pairs, the business placed higher is the one closer to the searcher. This also shows the comparison can see a real signal when there is one.
Reviews help a little, and consistently. The business with more reviews is higher in 53% to 57% of pairs.
Links split by trade. Among dentists, the business with more linking sites is higher in 54% of pairs, about as often as the one with more reviews. Among med spas and jewelers, it is higher in 47% to 48%: there, the business placed higher slightly more often has fewer links. Editorial links behave the same way.
The dentist edge survives a stricter test, the others do not. Larger practices tend to have both more reviews and more links, so we repeated the comparison only for pairs with nearly equal review counts and nearly equal distance, within a quarter mile of each other. Among dentists, the business with more linking sites was still higher in 55% of 1,873 such pairs. Among med spas it was 48%, among jewelers 46%.
Between direct neighbors, nothing stands out. For businesses in adjacent places, including the line between third place and fourth, where the short list on the search page ends, links go with the higher place in 50% to 51% of pairs. Review counts do little better, 51% to 53%. The order of close competitors is decided by things that are harder to count: the exact spot the search comes from, how well the profile matches the words, the business name and its categories.
Where the dentist edge comes from. One reading was that in health care, independent sources such as dental associations confirm that a practice is what it says it is. We tested it by sorting the links of dental websites into groups. Links from dental associations, financing locators and local dental schools showed no edge at all: the practice that had them was higher in 49% of pairs. Large health directories showed a small edge that disappeared once reviews and distance were held equal. The edge that held sits in small dentist directories, many of them lead-generation or autogenerated sites, two of the largest now offline. Such sites tend to list the practices already visible on the map, so the likely direction is the reverse: a high place brings the link.
What it means for an owner
Buying links to move up on the map is the weakest spend we can measure. The same money and time do more as a page for each service, fresh photos and a steady flow of reviews, the work described in our free book, Found on the Map, from how Google picks to reviews and photos.
Some links are worth having for other reasons. A profile on the sites where customers look besides the map, such as an industry directory, a booking or review site, the Better Business Bureau or the local chamber of commerce, brings people directly and repeats your name, address and phone where search engines and AI assistants can find them. Those are worth having for the customers they bring. A link from a gaming site or a link network brings no one to a dental office.
Limits of this note
- It is a comparison, not an experiment. It shows what goes along with a higher place, not what causes it, and historical links carry no dates, so we cannot tell which came first, the link or the place.
- Links are historical and were not checked live. We counted linking sites; we did not judge how relevant each one is, and one strong link from the right source may weigh more than many weak ones.
- The same businesses appear in many searches, so the pairs are not independent and the real margin of error is wider than the pair counts suggest.
- It covers one part of one city and three trades. Weekly tracking will let us check it as a before-and-after: what happens to a business’s place when it adds the listings that matter.