Does a pest control company need a city address to make the Google Maps top three? 388 listings in 22 cities

Pest control owners hear one piece of local search advice more than any other: Google Maps ranks by proximity. A company based in the next town, or one that runs from a shop out on the highway, is told it cannot reach the map pack for the city where its customers live, and a service-area company that hides its address is told it has handed the top three to the ones with a storefront in town.

We tested it. On Thursday, October 22, 2026 we searched “pest control” plus the city in 11 large metros and 11 small cities and read the address line and map pin on every one of the 20 listings Google returned. After screening, 388 pest control companies remained.

For this trade the belief holds, which it did not in our earlier study of house painters, where distance from downtown did not order the list. 61 of the 65 top-three listings had a street address inside the city searched. The business at position 1 was in the city in all 22 markets. In small cities the top three sat a median of 2.1 miles from downtown, and the bottom of the list was mostly companies from other towns.

Your benchmark

Search “pest control” and your city in Google Maps. Read the town on each of the twenty listings and note where yours sits. Here is how the 388 companies split by position:

Positions	Listings	In the city searched	Another town	No street address	Median miles from downtown
1 to 3	65	94 percent	3 percent	3 percent	3.4
4 to 7	78	85 percent	14 percent	1 percent	4.4
8 to 12	100	69 percent	22 percent	9 percent	6.3
13 to 20	145	51 percent	35 percent	14 percent	8.8

Two numbers to compare yourself against. In a small city, 30 of the 32 top-three listings with a street address sat within 5 miles of downtown, and all 32 within 10. In a large metro, the top three sat a median of 6.6 miles out and none farther than 13.6.

Distance from downtown ordered the list more than review count did. Across the 353 listings with a street address, the rank correlation between position and miles was 0.391. Between position and reviews it was negative 0.154. Both are significant; the first is more than twice the size.

Small cities: the list is a circle around downtown

The effect is concentrated in small cities. There the rank correlation between position and miles was 0.523, a strong relationship by the usual standard and stronger than review count in the same cities. The top three sat a median of 2.1 miles from the city center. Positions 13 to 20 sat a median of 12.8 miles out, and only 29 percent of them had an address in the city searched; 44 percent were in another town and 26 percent showed no street address at all.

Every one of the 11 small cities had at least one company from another town on its list, but only one small city had one in its top three.

The obvious objection is that in-town companies are simply bigger. They were not, in small cities: in-city companies carried a median of 70 reviews and those in other towns 82. And the gap held inside each review third. Among the most reviewed small-city companies, from 147 to 3,471 reviews, those in the city searched sat at a median position of 3 and those in another town at 16. Volume did not buy an out-of-town company into the top three.

Large metros: in the city, but anywhere in it

In the 11 metros the city line mattered and the mileage mattered much less. 31 of the 32 top-three listings had an address inside the city searched, none was in another town, and the one exception was a listing with no street address. But inside the city, the top three sat a median 6.6 miles from downtown, against 8.1 miles for positions 13 to 20. In a metro the city limit draws the line, not the downtown.

Metro companies from suburbs were not small operators. They carried a median of 1,198 reviews, against 417 for companies inside the city, and still sat at a median position of 14 against 9. Among the most reviewed third of metro listings, 1,223 reviews and up, in-city companies sat at a median position of 9 and suburban ones at 17. A suburban company with a four-figure review count was on the list, but low on it. Review count on its own did not order the metro lists at all (rank correlation negative 0.055, not significant across 204 listings), which is unusual: in our roll-up of eight other trades searched in these same cities, more reviews meant a higher position in every trade and both market sizes. In small cities the review correlation was negative 0.308, smaller than the distance correlation.

Hidden addresses

32 of the 388 companies, 8 percent, showed no street address, the setting a service-area business uses. Two of them made a top three. They were concentrated in small cities, 27 of the 32, where they sat at a median position of 15 and carried a median of 28 reviews. In metros there were only 5. A hidden address puts the map pin wherever Google places it, so we measured distance only on street addresses.

What verification changed

The first pass over the 440 results excluded only 9, all lawn care companies and a garden center, and that is the result our process treats as a failed screen rather than a clean one. Reading every kept listing with fewer than 30 reviews found 39 that could not be confirmed as businesses. 27 were keyword names on template sites: a “.site” or “.us” domain, a page written for another city or state, an out-of-state area code, or a site that did not answer. Three Valdosta listings with different names linked to the same template site about another state. 12 more were generic names such as a trade, a city and the word “services,” with no website and one or two reviews, the same pattern repeated city after city. Two more listings were a national wildlife lead network.

Most of the 39 showed a street address in the city searched, often downtown, and several sat in a top ten, one at position 3 in Atlanta. Left in, they diluted the proximity effect, because they were close to downtown and still ranked low; removed, the effect grew stronger. If you are a small-city owner, these are worth knowing about: they are the listings between you and the top of your own list, and you can report them to Google.

Verification also caught an instrument error. A town name repeats across states, and a listing in Bowling Green, Ohio, 337.6 miles away, had been read as being in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The engine now compares the state as well as the town. And regional brands that appeared in exactly two of our cities were tagged as brands, which moved brand locations to 102 of 388 listings, 26 percent, and 22 of the 65 top-three slots. With brands removed the result stands: 39 of 43 independent top-three listings were in the city searched, and the correlation between position and miles was 0.351.

Limits: what this can and cannot tell you

Every company here already appears in the top 20 for its city. This study describes what separates listings on the list. It cannot say what keeps a company off it, and the suburban companies the list left out are not in the data.

The searches ran at 16:33 UTC, about 12:33 in the afternoon Eastern, once per city, with Google’s default location for that city. A homeowner searching from a suburb sees a list centered on that suburb, where a suburban company may rank well. This is the strongest caveat: the study measures the downtown searcher, not every searcher.

We measured position, rating, review count, category, the address line, the map pin and the website link. We did not measure the service area a company has set, review recency, photos, posts, profile completeness or paid placement. Distance from downtown also tracks other things, such as how long a company has served the city and how many customers search from near it, and this design cannot separate them. Correlation here describes what co-occurs among businesses that already rank. It does not establish cause.

The 39 unverifiable listings were excluded by name, each with its reason, and are in the dataset. Some could be real companies with thin listings; we could not confirm any of them.

The number to write down

If you run a pest control company in a small city, measure your shop’s distance from downtown. The median top-three company was 2.1 miles out and every one was within 10. If your address is in another town, expect the bottom half of the list, whatever your review count. In a metro, the line that mattered was the city limit, not the mileage.

The full dataset, every listing with its address, distance and the 51 exclusions with reasons, is below.