Local SEO with geo grid: what ATRP actually tells you

Ask a typical rank tracker where you sit for “plumber oslo” and you get one number. The problem is that local searches do not have one answer. The result depends on where the person is standing when they search.

Three blocks from your office, you might be number two. Across town, you are not there at all.

What a geo grid is

Instead of measuring from one point, you lay a grid over the area — say 7×7 points across a city — and measure the ranking from each point. The result is shown as a heatmap: green where you are visible, red where you are not.

For most people it is the first time they see how sharply local visibility drops with distance. It is rarely an even circle, and it tends to follow neighbourhoods and competitor locations more than kilometres.

What ATRP is

ATRP — average total rank position — is the average position across all measured points. One number summarising the whole map.

It is useful for following a trend over time, but it hides the shape. Two businesses can share an ATRP where one is moderately visible everywhere and the other dominates its own neighbourhood and is invisible elsewhere. Those are two completely different situations calling for completely different work.

Use ATRP for the trend. Use the map for decisions.

The detail most tools get wrong

A 7×7 geo grid is 49 separate measurements. They take time, they cost money, and sometimes not all of them complete.

The question is what happens to the points that were not measured. The easy — and wrong — answer is to treat them as “does not rank”, meaning red squares. Your map then looks worse than reality, ATRP drops, and you spend money fixing a problem that does not exist.

The correct approach separates three states:

• measured, ranks — a position
• measured, does not rank — outside the first N results
• not measured — we do not know

A run that hit some but not all points is a partial run. ATRP and coverage should then be calculated only across the points actually measured, and the map should show the rest as unmeasured — not as absence.

How to use the map

Three questions are almost always worth asking:

1. Where does visibility stop? Usually more steeply and closer in than expected. That tells you how large an area you can realistically serve.
2. Who takes over where you disappear? The competitors at the edge are the ones you actually compete with, not the ones you assume.
3. Are there holes inside your zone? A red square in the middle of a green area is almost always a concrete signal — a strong competitor at that exact address, or a problem with your business profile.

In short

One position for a local search is an average without a map. Geo grid gives you the map. ATRP gives you the trend line. You need both, but not for the same thing — and an unmeasured point is not the same as a lost position.