Can an individual agent rank in the Google Maps pack for real estate agent? 433 listings in 22 cities

Agents are told two things about the Google Maps pack for “real estate agent.” The first is that it belongs to the brokerage office: the office has the street address, the years and the hundreds of reviews, so an agent’s own Business Profile cannot reach the top three. The second is that without a national brand in the name you are not on the list at all.

We tested both against the list itself. On Thursday, October 29, 2026, at 9:18 in the morning Eastern, we captured the Google Maps top 20 for “real estate agent” in 22 US cities, 11 large metros and 11 small cities, and sorted every title into one of three kinds: a person (a first and last name, with or without Realtor or a brokerage after it), a team (a title carrying team, group, crew or collective), or an office or company (everything else). Seven listings were excluded with their reason, five commercial-only firms, one home-buying company and one trade association, and 433 remained.

The first belief is half right. A person’s own listing is on every one of the 22 lists, a median of 6 of the 20, and 28 percent of all listings. It is almost never on top: persons hold 5 of the 66 top-three slots and position 1 in 2 of 22 cities. Teams, 27 percent of listings, hold 32 of the 66 top-three slots. Offices, 44 percent of listings, hold 29. The second belief is wrong. 39 percent of listings carry a national franchise or multi-city brand, they hold 36 percent of top-three slots, and inside every review band the brand sits at the same position as the independent.

Your benchmark

Search “real estate agent” and your city in Google Maps and sort the 20 titles. Here is how the 433 split, with where each kind sits.

Kind of listing (433)	Share	Median position	Top-three slots (of 66)	Position 1 (of 22)	Median reviews
Person (a named agent)	28%	12	5	2	56
Team or group	27%	10	32	9	121
Office or company	44%	10	29	11	53

The median list holds 6 persons, 5 teams and 9 offices, and in 1 of the 22 cities persons were half the list. The team row is the one to read twice: in the top three the median team has 378 reviews against 88 for the median person and 67 for the median office. The two kinds of market differ in volume, not in shape.

	Large metros	Small cities
Listings	217	216
Median reviews	103	42
Top-three median reviews	383	110
Positions 13 to 20 median reviews	88	28
Persons	58 (27%)	65 (30%)
Teams	68 (31%)	51 (24%)
Offices	91 (42%)	100 (46%)
Person top-three slots (of 33)	2	3
Team top-three slots (of 33)	18	14
Brand share of listings	35%	43%
Brand share of top-three slots	27%	45%
Listings sharing an address with another on the list	20%	49%

The reason is reviews, and then something else

Across 431 rated listings, position against review count is -0.291, the shape every Maps study in this series has found. The median listing has 66 reviews, the median top-three listing 186, and positions 13 to 20 carry 55. The least reviewed top-three listing in the median city has 52 reviews, 132 in the metros and 39 in the small cities, and in 9 of 22 cities a top-three listing had under 50. The top three carry 2.39 times their own city’s median listing, 2.79 in metros and 1.81 in small cities. The most reviewed listing in the city held position 1 in 5 of the 22.

Persons have fewer reviews than teams, 56 against 121, and that explains part of the gap. It does not explain all of it. Split the list into thirds by review count and compare persons with offices at the same volume: in the middle third, 36 to 82 reviews, the person-named listing sits at a median position of 11 against 8 for the office, a correlation of 0.235 on 104 listings, significant. In the most reviewed third it is 12 against 8, not significant on 104. Against all business-named listings the person sits at 12 against 7 in the most reviewed third, 0.241 on 143, significant. A named agent with the same reviews as the office down the hall is listed below it.

Teams run the other way, and only once they have the reviews. In the most reviewed third, teams sit at 5 against 9 for other business-named listings. In the middle third they sit at 14 against 7, a correlation of 0.218 on 103, significant. A team name with few reviews is a thin listing like any other.

Rating sorts nothing. The median is 4.9, 49 percent of rated listings show a 5.0, and position against rating is 0.003. 38 percent of the 5.0 listings have under 50 reviews.

The brand

168 listings, 39 percent, carry a national franchise or multi-city brokerage brand in the title or the link. They hold 24 of the 66 top-three slots and position 1 in 7 of 22 cities. Position against brand is 0.043 across the list, 0.098 in metros and -0.009 in small cities, none significant. Inside review thirds, brand and independent listings sit at 13 against 12, 13 against 10 and 7 against 8, none significant. Among persons alone, 59 of the 123 carry a brand, they sit at 13 against 12 for the 64 who do not, and the brand-affiliated agents hold 1 of the 5 person top-three slots. The agents who reached a top three did it without a brand in the title in 4 of 5 cases.

The largest franchise in the sample has 21 locations across 14 of our cities and 4 of them in a top three, at a median position of 9.

Count the addresses

147 listings, 34 percent, share a street address with another listing in the same list. In the metros it is 42 listings, 20 percent, and in the small cities 105, 49 percent, with every one of the 11 small cities affected. The median metro list holds 17 distinct addresses; the median small-city list holds 14, and the thinnest 8, where 6 of the 20 listings sit at one brokerage office. 19 addresses hold three or more listings, 67 listings in all.

Half of the person-named listings, 61 of 123, share an address, and 47 of those share it with a business-named listing, usually the brokerage office they work from. The person at a shared address sits at a median position of 12 with 48 reviews; the business-named listing at a shared address sits at 9 with 66. The office is the one Google shows higher.

For an agent counting competitors, the list is shorter than it looks. In a small city the twenty pins are a median of 14 offices.

What did not sort the list

Where the office is. 95 percent of listings have a street address in the city searched, 4 hide their address, the median listing sits 2.7 miles from the geocoded center and the top three 2.1, and position against distance is 0.063. 29 percent of listings say open 24 hours, 54 of the 123 person listings among them; it did not move position.

What changed in verification

The first pass applied the person rule before the team rule, so a listing titled with an agent’s name and a team word was counted as a person. Reading all 440 titles reversed the order, moved two-surname brokerages and founder-named firms to the office kind by exact title, and fixed two name words the rule had been eating as direction and nature words. It also reversed three wrong exclusions: an agent whose title begins with a homes-by phrase, a franchise office that also holds auctions, and a brokerage that also manages property. A trade association filed under a category spelled with a slash was excluded, and a commercial firm named with an abbreviation. The kind counts shifted by a few listings each; the top-three result did not change. Run 3 fixed the address key, which had been reading a street name as a suite number, with the shared-address counts unchanged.

What to do with this

• Keep the personal listing, and expect it to sit mid-list. A named agent is on every list at a median position of 12. It is not a route to the top three in this sample.
• If you want the top three, build the team listing and the reviews. Teams hold 32 of 66 top-three slots and 378 reviews there.
• Do not count on the brand. 39 percent of listings carry one, and it buys no position at any review level.
• Count the addresses in your pack. In a small city, 14 of the 20 pins are distinct offices.
• Read the floor, not the top. In 9 of 22 cities a top-three listing had under 50 reviews.

Limits: what this can and cannot tell you

Measured: titles, review counts, ratings, addresses, hours, links and positions of 433 listings in the Google Maps top 20 for one query in 22 cities on one Thursday morning, sorted by title into three kinds by a stated rule, with brand status and every comparison repeated inside review thirds and within each market-size stratum.

Not measured: whether a listing titled with a team word is a team of agents or a small brokerage that named itself Group; the rule counts the word. Whether an agent’s listing was created by the agent, the brokerage or Google. Searches for “realtor” or for a neighborhood. Transactions, which is what agents compete for.

Range restriction: every listing here already appears in the top 20. The study can say which kind sits higher on the list, not whether a person-named profile with few reviews is kept off the list entirely.

Other explanations: teams carry more reviews and reviews track position, and this design cannot fully separate the two; the within-thirds tests narrow it but do not close it. Persons at a shared address may be ranked below the office because Google treats them as a duplicate of it, or because the office listing is older; the data cannot say which.

The number to write down

A named agent is 28 percent of the pack and 5 of 66 top-three slots. The top three carry 186 reviews, 2.39 times the city’s median listing, and the brand on the sign changes none of it. Build the reviews on the listing you want to rank, and count the addresses before you count the competition.