Share of Local Voice (SoLV).

Local rankings depend on location. The same search for an agency in Zurich returns one result at Bellevue and another in Oerlikon or Zollikon, because Google factors in the distance of the searcher. A single position figure is therefore almost worthless for local search. Share of Local Voice solves this by laying a grid of measurement points over the catchment area — seven by seven points, for instance. At each point it is checked whether the business appears in the local top three, and the proportion of hits gives the SoLV.

The value is concretely interpretable. If a business appears in the top three at 30 of 49 points, its SoLV is roughly 61 per cent. More important than the number is the map behind it: it shows where visibility breaks off. The typical pattern is a strong core around the business's own location and a rapid fall-off outwards. That gradient is exactly what measures can shift, and it would be invisible in a single position figure. The term originally comes from the provider Local Falcon and has since become generic.

For advisory work, SoLV is above all an honesty metric. A business on Gustav-Maurer-Strasse in Zollikon is found across the surrounding few kilometres and practically not at all in Winterthur. That is not a weakness in the optimisation but the distance component of the local algorithm. Instead of making promises for distant towns that cannot be kept, the grid map shows where growth is realistic: at the edges of the existing core, in directly neighbouring municipalities, and along the routes customers actually travel.

A worked case: a business wanted to widen its local radius and planned further location pages for it. The grid analysis showed it was already strong within its own municipality but entirely absent at three points in the neighbouring one. What worked was not a new page but adding the neighbouring municipality to the service area of the Google Business Profile, combined with reviews from customers in exactly that area. The SoLV rose without a single page being added.