Your rank is a different number on every block.

Why one number lies

Google Maps results depend on where the searcher is standing. The same search from your own street, from across town, and from the next suburb returns three different packs — and the business that’s #1 at one is often absent at another. A tool that gives you one rank is averaging those, or worse, searching from its own server. Both are the fake cairn.

The grid

A grid scan does it the honest way: it picks points across the area your customers come from — Cairn uses 25, eight miles each side of you — and runs a real search from each one. At every point it records the top 100 and where you fall. Now you have 25 readings instead of one guess, and a shape.

Map share

Map share is the share of the points across the city where you’re #1 — the center point, which sits on your own front door, is measured but never counted, because Google shows the place you’re standing in first and that flatters everyone. Nine of 24 is 38%. It’s deliberately simple: the top spot is the one that gets the call, and “how much of my city do I own?” is the question owners actually ask. Cairn shows the same number for the businesses beating you, so you can see who owns the rest — or whether nobody does, which is the best news a scan can bring.

What “absent” means

A point marked “—” means you weren’t in the top 100 there at all. Not ranked poorly — not shown. Distance is part of that (a restaurant eight miles away is rarely in the pack), and categories, reviews and photos are the parts you control. Click the area and you see who was shown, which is usually the most useful thing on the page.

Why boundaries, not dots

Dots on a map say “we measured here.” Real neighborhood and city boundaries say “here’s what Lakewood sees.” Same data, but the second one you can act on, explain to a partner, and recognize as your own streets.