How far from downtown is the personal injury map pack? 431 listings in 22 cities

Personal injury firms hear two things about the Google Maps pack. The first is that it belongs to downtown: an office near the courthouse is the price of entry, and a firm in a suburb or the next town cannot reach the top three. The second is that the billboard firms with an office in every city have already taken the slots.

We tested both. On Tuesday, October 27, 2026, at 9:16 in the morning Eastern, we searched “personal injury lawyer” plus the city in 11 large metros and 11 small cities and read the address line and map pin on each of the 20 listings Google returned. After screening, 431 law practices remained.

The first belief is true, and more completely than for any trade we have measured. 422 of the 431 listings, 98 percent, had a street address inside the city searched. Not one hid its address. All 66 top-three listings were in the city, and the business at position 1 was in the city in all 22 markets. The median listing sat 0.7 miles from the city center.

But downtown is where the list begins, not how it is ordered. Inside the list, distance from the center sorted nothing: the rank correlation between position and miles was 0.008 across 431 listings, and the median distance was 0.7 miles at positions 1 to 3 and 0.7 miles at positions 13 to 20.

Your benchmark

Search “personal injury lawyer” and your city in Google Maps and read the twenty addresses. Here is how the 431 split by position:

Positions	Listings	In the city searched	Another town	Median miles from downtown
1 to 3	66	100 percent	0 percent	0.7
4 to 7	88	99 percent	1 percent	0.7
8 to 12	109	96 percent	4 percent	0.7
13 to 20	168	98 percent	2 percent	0.7

384 of the 431 listings, 89 percent, sat within 5 miles of the center and 417, 97 percent, within 10. In the top three, 62 of 66 sat within 5 miles and all 66 within 10. The farthest top-three listing in any market was 6.8 miles out, in Houston; the median market’s farthest was 2.3 miles out.

Market size changes the radius, not the rule. In small cities the median listing sat 0.5 miles out and 98 percent were within 5 miles. In large metros the median was 1.0 miles and 81 percent were within 5; the top three sat a median 0.6 miles out against 1.4 for positions 13 to 20, a gap whose correlation, 0.077, is not significant on 220 listings.

For comparison, pest control companies in these same 22 cities spread across the metro and distance ordered their list. Personal injury offices already cluster downtown, so the map pack is a downtown list before Google orders it.

Distance showed up in one place. Among the most reviewed third of listings, 285 reviews and up, closer sat higher (correlation 0.201, significant on 142 listings), and the 3 listings in that third from another town sat at a median position of 15 against 7. The two less reviewed thirds showed nothing. Once a firm has the reviews to compete for the top, where its office sits appears to break ties.

The multi-office firms

The second belief is also true, and it is the one that should change what a single-office firm plans for. We tagged a listing as a multi-office firm when its offices appeared in two or more of our 22 cities, when its listing linked into an office directory on its own site, or when it belonged to a named national or regional firm with offices in more than one city. The list ships with the dataset.

120 of the 431 listings, 28 percent, were multi-office firms. They held 30 of the 66 top-three slots, 45 percent, and position 1 in 9 of the 22 markets. One national firm appeared in all 11 large metros, made the top three in 7 and held position 1 in 3, on a median 1,980 reviews per office. A regional firm with offices in 5 of our cities made the top three in 4 of them on a median of 39 reviews.

The share was 35 percent of listings in large metros and 21 percent in small cities, but 45 percent of top-three slots in both. In small cities the multi-office firms sat at a median position of 5 against 11 for single-office firms, without more reviews: 39 against 41.

That last number is the finding. In every other vertical where we have tested a brand against local operators, the brand carried more reviews, and holding review count constant shrank or erased its edge. Here the edge stayed. In the middle third of small-city listings, 25 to 63 reviews, multi-office firms sat at a median position of 5 and single-office firms at 11, a significant gap; in the most reviewed third, 65 reviews and up, it was 5 against 9, also significant. In large metros it reversed at the top: among listings with 568 reviews or more, single-office firms sat at 5 and multi-office firms at 6, not significant. A metro firm with a four-figure review count competes on equal terms. A small-city firm with 40 reviews is competing against a satellite office that ranks on 40.

Reviews: the number to write down

The median listing carried 114 reviews: 334 in large metros and 41 in small cities. The median top-three listing carried 391, which was 987 in metros and 72 in small cities. In metros no top-three listing had fewer than 100 reviews and only 3 of 33 had fewer than 200; in small cities 14 of 33 had fewer than 50 and 7 fewer than 25.

The floor is the better benchmark for a firm asking whether it can compete. The least reviewed firm in each market’s top three had a median of 383 reviews in metros and 46 in small cities. Relative to each market’s own median listing, the top three carried 3.09 times the median in metros and 1.97 times in small cities. Read the twenty review counts on your own list, take the middle one, and multiply by the figure for your market size.

Review count ordered the list in both strata, with a rank correlation of negative 0.41 in metros and negative 0.304 in small cities. Rating did not order the metro list (negative 0.006) and did a little in small cities (negative 0.258).

One more line for the profile: 85 percent of metro listings said “Open 24 hours,” so in a metro the setting separates no one. In small cities 27 percent did and sat at a median position of 5 against 12, but 33 of those 57 were multi-office firms and the gap survived only in the least reviewed third (8 against 13). It reads as a tell of the firms that market hard, not a lever.

What verification changed

The first pass over the 440 results excluded only 2. Reading every kept row changed three things. A gym listing Google had merged with a law office passed because its category was on no list; it is now excluded. The rule that rescues a wrongly categorized listing had kept bankruptcy, estate and family practices because their names contained “law”; it now requires an injury or accident word, and 8 practices filed only under other areas of law are excluded with their reasons. That makes 9 exclusions, 2 percent, and 378 of the 431 kept listings, 88 percent, carry the personal injury category.

The multi-office tag changed most. The first pass found 64 locations, 15 percent, and 18 top-three slots. Reading the hosts seen in two of our cities, the listings that linked into office directories, and the named firms on the kept rows found 120 and 30. The location findings did not move: the median distance was 0.7 miles before and after, and the distance correlation stayed at zero.

One pattern changed no number but matters: in Sioux City one office address held four of the twenty slots, a firm and three of its attorneys listed separately, and Wausau, Johnson City, Bismarck and Dothan showed the same. Count offices, not pins.

Limits: what this can and cannot tell you

Every practice here already appears in the top 20 for its city. This study describes what the list contains. It cannot say what keeps a firm off it, and the suburban firms the list left out are not in the data. In particular, we cannot separate two explanations for the downtown result: that Google favors offices near the center, or that personal injury offices are already downtown and the list reflects where the profession sits. Both produce the same map.

The searches ran once per city at 13:16 UTC with Google’s default location for that city. A searcher in a suburb sees a list centered on the suburb; the study measures the downtown searcher.

We measured position, rating, review count, categories, the address line, the map pin, listed hours and the website link. We did not measure service areas, review recency, photos, posts, paid placement or the courthouse’s location, which is not the point we measured from. The multi-office tag depends partly on a named list, so a regional firm we did not recognize counts as single-office, which understates the share. Correlation here describes what co-occurs among practices that already rank. It does not establish cause.

The 9 excluded listings are in the dataset with their reasons, as is every kept listing with its address, distance, review count and multi-office tag.