Google’s Brainloc Explained and How It Affects Your Local Maps Rankings

**James Dooley says:** Google's BrainLoc. Today I'm joined with Paul Truscott and we're going to be talking about something I've never even heard of to do with Google Business Profiles and local map rankings. So Paul, let's get straight into it. What is Google BrainLoc? **Paul Truscott says:** BrainLoc is essentially the system that Google uses for everything to do with geolocation, geospatiality, and geotopicality in general. The loc in BrainLoc stands for location. That is the name Google has given the module, and that system handles all location based evaluation. We are going to talk about how important it is primarily for maps, but I will touch on web pages too. People need to know when they are overdoing it with location pages because many create pages that cannibalise each other by targeting the wrong places. So we will cover that. BrainLoc is absolutely vital for anyone in the local space. If you are working on maps rankings or building local web pages, BrainLoc influences everything and both sides compound each other. I will deal with web pages first because they are easier, and then I will reveal what is happening on the Google Business Profile side. With web pages, a lot of people do not realise that Google uses a geo system where it creates a centroid for a location and a boundary. When you search a city in Google Maps, you will often see a red dotted line around it. That is the boundary. Sometimes the boundary is smaller than people think, especially in America where many suburbs are incorporated cities. That boundary is the boundary for the SER. Sometimes Google expands it depending on the location size. Small towns might include surrounding villages for economic reasons. It is worth checking manually before creating local pages. The big issue people face with geotopicality and geospatiality is not understanding their correct boundary. If you generate two pages for two places inside the same boundary, they will normally cannibalise each other because they belong to the same SER. **James Dooley says:** I want to stop you there. With Google's BrainLoc, I have seen that if you type Manchester, you get the dotted line around it, but inside that boundary there are areas like Rochdale and Oldham. If you search individually for Oldham, it still shows a dotted line even though it sits within the bigger Manchester area. **Paul Truscott says:** Correct. In the UK, major cities like London, Manchester, and Birmingham have suburbs. Google treats them as sub locations. In America, large cities use boroughs. Smaller cities use a single SER. Even when a suburb appears with its own boundary, if you build separate suburb pages, they may only attract traffic for that exact suburb. At city level, they often cannibalise because they sit inside the same SER. This matters for anyone trying to create pages across a whole country. You should mirror Google’s own subdivision because Google processes locations exactly how it draws them. Always learn from the teacher marking your homework. Google tells you everything in the SER if you pay attention. Go to Maps, enter a location, view the boundary, then click directions. Google will drop a pin on the centroid. That centroid is not always in the geographical centre. It is where Google defines the centre of the entity. All of this is handled by BrainLoc. BrainLoc reads your page content, decides where it should rank geographically, and assigns weights based on the signals you give. **James Dooley says:** If you were to enter a new country, let’s say Spain, and someone asked you to build local pages, are you using Google’s BrainLoc to decide the right locations? How do you access that information? **Paul Truscott says:** You use Google itself. BrainLoc processes the information, and Google outputs it. You gather the information manually. It takes time but it is easy. Use a Chrome extension like GS Location Changer. You can also do this on mobile. Find the boundary of the city you want to rank in. Set your fake location to one side of the boundary and run a near me search. Keep the tab open. Then change location to the opposite side of the boundary and do the same search. If both sides show the same SER, then the city is one SER. If the SERs differ, Google has subdivided that location. For UK cities, subdivisions occur in large areas like Manchester, Birmingham, and London. In America, subdivisions occur at borough or city level. This matters because building pages blindly wastes time and creates cannibalisation. Once you map the structure for one niche, it applies to all niches in that city. **James Dooley says:** From a local SEO perspective for web pages, that makes sense. What about Google Business Profiles? **Paul Truscott says:** Google Business Profiles are where BrainLoc becomes really interesting. Google has never publicly announced this. It was not part of the API leak. But I have tested it heavily. Google identifies a city centroid using a single pair of coordinates. That pair represents the entity. Across the entire city there could be billions of coordinate pairs, but one pair acts as the centroid. Go to Google Maps, search the city, click directions, and you will see the centroid. That coordinate pair is what Google uses to define the location entity. The further you are from that centroid, the less relevant you become for ranking in keyword plus city queries. The closer you are, the easier it is to rank. If you locate your business very close to the centroid, you need fewer reviews, less domain authority, and less content to rank. A Google Business Profile located far away will have a harder time. **James Dooley says:** So could I upload images tagged with the centroid coordinates or operate from the centroid outwards? **Paul Truscott says:** It helps, but location trumps everything. If you are not located there, you cannot beat proximity. Prominence can beat proximity to some extent, but proximity always holds power. Think of it as nodes and edges. The city centroid is a node. Your business location is another node. The shorter the edge, the stronger the relevance. If you can get a serviced office near the centroid, that is an option. There are black hat ways too but we are not covering that here. This principle only applies when the user types keyword plus city. In that case, the city centroid becomes the reference point. **James Dooley says:** What if someone in Manchester searches plumbers near me? **Paul Truscott says:** Near me uses the searcher as the centroid. If they type skip hire Manchester, the centroid is the city. If they type skip hire near me, the centroid becomes the user's exact coordinates. **James Dooley says:** Random one. What if I type plumbers near me in Manchester? **Paul Truscott says:** My guess is Google prioritises the first part of the query. It recognises Manchester, confirms your location, and calculates both signals. I will test it and let you know. **James Dooley says:** Paul Truscott, it has been an absolute legend having you on. Anyone who did not know about Google's BrainLoc, I am in local SEO for over fifteen years and never heard of it. We hope you enjoyed the knowledge. Leave a comment if you can expand on anything or want a follow up episode. **Paul Truscott says:** Thank you James. Likewise mate. Cheers.