In an IvI SEO test, 5 of 6 before-and-after Google Maps rank checks improved between June and September 2026, after the service descriptions on a York electrician's Google Business Profile were rewritten. For "emergency electrician clifton", it went from nowhere to the top 3 at 29 of 30 points. For "emergency electrician wigginton", its top-3 points doubled, from 13 to 26. The descriptions went in on 5 June. The website gained matching service pages over the same months, and one check slipped.
What did the IvI SEO test change?
On 5 June 2026, IvI SEO rewrote every service description on an electrician's Google Business Profile in York, all at once. Each description uses the service's main keyword, the problems customers call about and the towns the business covers. Over the same period, the business's website was built out with a full set of service pages to match the services on the profile. The only other change to the profile was two new reviews (8 to 10). The business isn't named, at the client's request.
This is the description that went into the Emergency Electrician service:
Emergency electrician in York for urgent power loss, tripping consumer units, dead sockets, unsafe wiring, sparks or burning smells. Available in York, Haxby, Wigginton, Rawcliffe, Huntington and Clifton.
That's 204 of the 300 characters Google allows. The keyword, the problems people actually ring an emergency electrician about, and six areas the business genuinely covers. Nothing clever.
Why does the description box get missed? When you add a service to a Google Business Profile, it only asks for a name and a price. The description box doesn't appear until you click back into the service. The full walkthrough is in the how-to guide linked at the end of this page.
How was the IvI SEO test measured?
IvI SEO measured the test with Local Falcon rank grids: 41 scans before the descriptions went in on 5 June 2026 (on 18 May and 2 June), 11 early scans on 9 June, four days after, and 11 follow-up scans on 8 and 22 September 2026. A rank grid checks where the business appears in Google Maps from evenly spaced points across an area, like dozens of people searching from different streets. The results compare only scans with the same keyword, grid size, spacing and centre point, so every before number has a like-for-like after number.
The scans cover 19 keywords across York and five nearby areas (Haxby, Wigginton, Clifton, Rawcliffe and Huntington), using grids from 5×5 to 11×11. Six keyword grids have a scan before the change and a matching scan in September. Those six are the main results below.
What the numbers mean:
- Points in the top 3: grid points where the business shows in the map pack, the three results people actually see.
- Points outside the top 20: grid points where the business doesn't appear at all. Invisible, basically.
- Average rank (ATRP): Local Falcon's average position across every point, counting "not found" as 21. Lower is better.
- Share of local voice (SoLV): the percentage of points in the top 3.
Every scan's data, down to each point, is saved. The screenshots below are Local Falcon's own map images.
What were the results of the IvI SEO test?
In the IvI SEO test, 5 of the 6 keyword grids with a before-and-after pair improved between 2 June and 22 September 2026, and 1 slipped. The biggest gains were on "emergency electrician clifton", which went from 0 to 29 of 30 points in the top 3, and "emergency electrician wigginton", from 13 to 26 of 35. Across the six grids, points where the profile didn't appear in the top 20 fell from 91 to 1. Both big gains were emergency searches in towns named in the Emergency Electrician description.
emergency electrician clifton: 0% on 2 June, 97% on 22 September; emergency electrician wigginton: 37% on 2 June, 74% on 22 September; electrician wigginton: 26% on 2 June, 46% on 22 September; electrician near me (0.6mi): 22% on 2 June, 37% on 22 September; house rewire rawcliffe: 0% on 2 June, 12% on 22 September; electrician near me (0.8mi): 77% on 2 June, 67% on 22 September.
| Keyword | Grid | Points in top 3 (June → Sep) | Points outside top 20 (June → Sep) | Average rank (June → Sep) | SoLV (June → Sep) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| emergency electrician clifton | 7×7, 0.8mi | 0 → 29 of 30 | 30 → 0 | 21.00 → 1.63 | 0% → 97% |
| emergency electrician wigginton | 7×7, 1.0mi | 13 → 26 of 35 | 12 → 0 | 9.51 → 2.37 | 37% → 74% |
| electrician wigginton | 7×7, 1.0mi | 9 → 16 of 35 | 0 → 0 | 4.11 → 3.14 | 26% → 46% |
| electrician near me | 7×7, 0.6mi | 11 → 18 of 49 | 0 → 1 | 6.29 → 5.12 | 22% → 37% |
| house rewire rawcliffe | 7×7, 0.6mi | 0 → 6 of 49 | 49 → 0 | 21.00 → 4.22 | 0% → 12% |
| electrician near me | 7×7, 0.8mi | 23 → 20 of 30 | 0 → 0 | 3.10 → 3.30 | 77% → 67% |
June scans ran on 2 June 2026, three days before the change. September scans ran on 22 September 2026. Average rank is Local Falcon's ATRP, with "not found" counted as 21.
What changed in the first four days?
Four of the Wigginton-area grids were scanned again on 9 June, four days after the descriptions went in. Three moved up straight away. One got worse.
| Keyword (7×7, 1.0mi) | Points in top 3 (2 → 9 June) | Points outside top 20 (2 → 9 June) | Average rank (2 → 9 June) |
|---|---|---|---|
| emergency electrician wigginton | 13 → 19 of 35 | 12 → 0 | 9.51 → 3.11 |
| electrician wigginton | 9 → 14 of 35 | 0 → 0 | 4.11 → 3.29 |
| house rewire wigginton | 0 → 0 of 35 | 31 → 0 | 19.17 → 5.00 |
| electrician near me | 0 → 0 of 35 | 0 → 7 | 10.80 → 12.74 |
Two more grids were first scanned on 9 June, so they have no before. From four days after the change to September, "house rewire haxby" went from 15 to 42 of 49 points in the top 3. "Electrician haxby" held at 27 of 49.
Here's Clifton, the biggest swing. June first: red everywhere, meaning not in the top 20 at a single point.
September. Top 3 at 29 of 30 points, and first at 14 of them.
And Wigginton, the grid from the how-to guide, scanned three times. 2 June, three days before the change:
9 June, four days after the descriptions went in. Already back inside the top 20 at every point, and top 3 at 19:
September:
What didn't improve in the IvI SEO test?
One of the six before-and-after grids in the IvI SEO test slipped: "electrician near me" on the 0.8mi grid went from 23 to 20 of 30 points in the top 3. "Electrician haxby", first scanned four days after the change, held at 27 of 49. Calls made straight from the Google Business Profile stayed flat, at 3 in August, the same as July. The test covers one business on one profile, and the website was improved over the same months, so it shows what happened here, not a guaranteed result or the effect of the descriptions alone.
The rest of the small print, because you should see it:
- Generic searches moved least. "Electrician haxby" and "electrician near me" don't match a specific service, and they barely moved. The service-specific searches did.
- Grids wobble week to week. "Emergency electrician haxby" was scanned on 8 and 22 September. Top 3 barely changed (48 to 47 points), but first place dropped from 12 points to 4. Two weeks, nothing changed, different picture.
- Not every early reading went up. "Electrician near me" on the Wigginton grid got worse in the first four days (average rank 10.80 to 12.74), while the grids around it improved.
- Two new reviews landed between June and September (8 to 10). That's the only other change to the profile itself.
- Only 6 grids, covering 5 of the 19 keywords, have a scan before the change and a matching one in September. The June scans used several grid sizes, and only those repeated with identical settings are compared. Mismatched grids aren't stretched to fit.
- The website grew at the same time. The business's site got a full set of service pages over the same months, matching the services on the profile. Google doesn't rank you on your profile alone. It looks at your website and wider signals too (links, brand, reputation). So the descriptions didn't do all of this on their own, and they're not meant to. A profile and a website that say the same thing about the same services back each other up.
Is it perfect? No. But the searches the descriptions were written for moved the most, and that's the bit that matters.
What else changed during the IvI SEO test?
Google's own performance report for the profile showed searches up 221% and profile views up 98% in August 2026 compared with July, during the IvI SEO test. Website visits from the profile rose 88%, to 17. Calls from the profile stayed at 3. On the client's website, GA4 logged 19 leads, 9 WhatsApp clicks, 4 email clicks and 2 phone calls between 24 July, when tracking started, and 25 September 2026.
The August report straight from Google Business Profile (business name hidden):
So people aren't ringing straight off the profile any more than before. More of them are clicking through to the website to have a proper look first. And the website is where enquiries are coming in. Here's the site's GA4 event report for 24 July to 25 September:
Two caveats on the GA4 numbers. They cover all website traffic, not just visitors from the Google Business Profile. And tracking only started on 24 July, so there's no June figure to compare them against.
What does the IvI SEO test mean for your Google Business Profile?
The IvI SEO test suggests that writing proper service descriptions on a Google Business Profile, with the service keyword, the problems customers have and the areas you cover, can lift map pack visibility for those exact searches, especially when the website has matching service pages behind them. It's one business, so treat it as strong evidence rather than a promise. The descriptions take minutes to write, and most profiles leave them blank.
If you've got a Google Business Profile, go and check your services now. Click back into each one. If there's an empty description box, that's your job for today.
The step-by-step, including what to write and what to avoid, is in the how-to guide: The Hidden Google Business Profile Service Description Box (and What to Put in It).
About this test
This test was run by Jack at IvI SEO on a client's Google Business Profile he manages. IvI SEO wrote the descriptions, ran every Local Falcon scan and pulled the Google Business Profile and GA4 reports shown here. The client agreed to share the results without their business name.
Want the same done for your profile? Take a look at IvI SEO's local SEO service. I'll tell you honestly what I'd fix first.