Should You Target a Bigger City Like Austin? Probably Not.

This is one of the most common mistakes I see. A contractor in a small town, Liberty Hill, Leander, Bertram, decides the real money is in Austin. So they point their whole website and their Google profile at "Austin," and then they wonder why they never show up. For a long time my answer was just "trust me, focus local." Now I can show you why with real numbers.

I pulled the Google map pack for the same five trades in Austin and compared it to the 132-business review study I just finished across 8 small Central Texas towns. Two things jump out, and together they explain why a small-town business chasing Austin almost always loses.

First, what "proximity" actually means

Google decides local rankings on three big things: proximity (how close you are to the person searching), relevance (how well you match what they typed), and prominence (reviews, links, how known you are). People obsess over reviews. But proximity is the one quietly running the show, and it's the one you can't buy your way out of.

Think of your Google Business Profile as having a kind of gravity. It pulls in searches near you and fades the farther out you go. Sit in the middle of a bunch of neighborhoods and you're the close option for all of them. Sit on the far edge of town, or try to stretch your reach 30 miles to Austin, and you're the close option for almost nobody.

Both businesses can be equally good. Same reviews, same website, same everything. But the one sitting in the middle of where customers actually live shows up for far more of them. Now stretch that idea across 30 miles of highway to a city you're not in, and you can see the problem coming.

Proof: the same business ranks differently in different towns

You don't have to take my word for the gravity thing. It's sitting right in the data. A handful of businesses in my study showed up in two different towns' map packs at the same time, at different ranks, with the exact same review count. The clearest example is two painters:

The same business, the same week, ranking at two different spots depending on which town the searcher was in. Source: the 132-business map pack study.

Look at the top two. In Liberty Hill, Rooms2Paint is #1 and Paint EZ is #3. Drive nine miles to Leander and they swap: Paint EZ jumps to #1 and Rooms2Paint falls to #3. Nothing about either company changed. Same reviews, same website, same Google profile. The only thing that moved was the customer. That is proximity, in the wild.

Here's the lesson hiding in that: each of these businesses is strong near home and weaker one town over. Now imagine asking them to rank not one town away, but in Austin, against Austin companies. It doesn't happen. And the data proves that too.

The Austin tax: the review bar is 5 to 10 times higher

First problem with chasing Austin: the cost of entry. I pulled the Austin map pack for five trades and lined it up against what those same trades need in the small towns. It's not close.

Map-pack review counts: the small-town floor-to-median range vs the three actual businesses in the Austin pack, June 2026.

A painter cracks the pack in Liberty Hill or Cedar Park with 10 to 60 reviews. In Austin, the lowest business in the pack had 421, and one had 1,100. Here's how much higher the Austin bar runs, by trade, using the median of each pack:

Austin pack median reviews divided by the small-town median, by trade. The quieter the trade, the bigger the jump.

Notice where the gap is biggest. It's the quiet trades, painting, fencing, landscaping, the exact trades where ranking in your own town is easy. Going to Austin erases your easiest advantage and replaces it with a wall of 400-plus-review companies. And in plumbing and HVAC, the Austin page is stacked with Local Services Ads and national brands on top of all that.

And you probably can't show up in Austin anyway

Now the second problem, and it's the bigger one. Say you somehow matched the review count. You still have to beat proximity, and you can't, because you're not in Austin.

In all five Austin packs I pulled, every single business was an Austin company. We Plumb, Austin Plumbery, U.S. Electric, Austin Brothers Fence, Tex Painting, Cutters Landscaping. Not one business from Liberty Hill, Leander, Cedar Park, or any of the surrounding towns appeared, not even the ones ranking #1 at home. When somebody in central Austin searches, Google shows them businesses in central Austin. You, 32 miles up the highway, never enter the picture.

So pointing your website at "Austin" is the worst of both worlds. You're competing for a review count you'll need years to reach, for a spot Google was never going to give you in the first place, while your own town, where you could actually win, gets none of your attention.

The local-first play (what I actually do)

Here's what I tell every contractor who comes to me wanting Austin. I've watched this play out over and over: someone's been targeting a big city for a year with nothing to show for it, we switch the focus to their own town and the few next to it, and the rankings (and the phone) start moving in weeks, not years.

The plan is simple:

Win your own town first. Get your Google Business Profile tight, your categories right, and your reviews climbing toward your trade's local target (often just 40 to 100, not 400). You're already close to these customers, so proximity is working for you instead of against you.

Then add the towns you can actually drive to. The ones next door, where you're still close enough that Google counts you. Build a real page for each one. This is how you grow coverage without pretending you're somewhere you're not.

Skip the metro until you have a reason not to. The calls you get from your local area are usually better jobs anyway: shorter drives, neighbors who refer neighbors, less competition on price.

Do the math on your own situation. In your town you might need 50 reviews and you're already close. In Austin you need 400-plus and you're invisible. One of those is a project you finish this year. The other is a money pit.

"But I really want Austin"

I'm not saying a metro is impossible forever. I'm saying it's a real project, not a setting you flip on. To genuinely compete in Austin you'd need an actual, staffed Austin location (a real one, a fake address gets your profile suspended, see why businesses get hidden from Maps), hundreds of real reviews, years of built-up authority, and a budget to fight Local Services Ads and national brands at the top.

For a few established companies, that's worth it. For most small contractors, that same time and money spent dominating their own area and the towns next door produces far more calls, far sooner. Be honest about which one you are.

The bottom line

Should you target a bigger city? For most small-town contractors, no, at least not yet. The data is clear: the metro review bar is five to ten times higher, and proximity keeps you out of the pack regardless. Pointing your website at Austin from 32 miles away is chasing a spot that was never available, while the spot you could own goes empty.

Win where you are. Add the towns you can reach. That steady, local-first approach is how small businesses actually grow on Google, and it's most of what I do for the contractors I work with.

Quick answers

Does my business location affect my Google ranking?
Yes, a lot. Proximity to the searcher is one of Google's core local ranking factors. In our data, the same business ranked #1 in its home town and dropped to #3 just one town over, with no other changes.

Should I target a bigger city to get more customers?
Usually not, if you're a small business outside that city. You'll face a much higher review bar (5 to 10 times higher in our Austin data) and proximity will likely keep you out of the pack anyway. Targeting your own town and its neighbors ranks you faster.

How far away can my business rank on Google Maps?
It varies, but your reach is local. In this data, businesses rarely held a map-pack spot more than a town or two from home. The closer the searcher, the better your odds.

Can I rank in a city I'm not located in?
It's very hard. You generally need a real, staffed location there, strong reviews, and built-up authority. Faking an address to appear closer violates Google's guidelines and can get your profile suspended.

Jerod Johnson

Owner · Get Found Guy · Liberty Hill, TX

I used to own a small service business. Good work, inconsistent phone. Years later, after working in SEO for bigger companies, I built the thing I wish I'd had back then. Now I manage Google Business Profiles and websites for service businesses across Central Texas, and I spend a lot of my time talking contractors out of chasing the wrong city. See what I do →

Methodology: In June 2026 I pulled the Google map pack for five trades (plumbing, electrical, fencing, house painting, landscaping) in Austin, TX, and compared the organic 3-pack review counts against my 132-business study across 8 small Central Texas towns. "Austin tax" multiples use each pack's median review count. Local Services Ads and paid results were excluded from the pack counts. Proximity is shown through businesses that appeared in more than one town's pack and through the absence of any small-town business in the Austin packs; exact distances were not measured. Want the raw numbers? Email me. Happy to share with attribution.