What Is SoLV in Local SEO? Share of Local Voice Explained

If you have ever asked what is SoLV in local SEO, here is the short version: SoLV stands for Share of Local Voice, and it is the single best number for measuring how visible your business actually is on Google Maps across a real geographic area. Instead of telling you "you rank #3 for plumber," it tells you what percentage of the local search visibility in your service area you own. It is the metric I lean on most when I audit a Google Business Profile, because it reflects how customers really search: from different spots around town, not from one fixed point.

In this guide I will explain exactly what Share of Local Voice is, how it is calculated, what a good score looks like, and a practical checklist to improve yours.

What Is Share of Local Voice (SoLV)?

Share of Local Voice is a geo grid visibility metric. It answers one question: across a grid of search points around your business, how much of the available map-pack visibility do you capture for a given keyword?

The term was popularized by the geo-grid rank tracking category (Local Falcon coined "SoLV"), and it has become the standard way to summarize a heat-map scan into one number. Rather than reporting a single rank, a geo-grid tool searches your keyword from dozens of coordinates laid out like a checkerboard over your target area, records where you appear in each one, and rolls those results into a percentage.

Think of it as your "market share of attention" on the map. A SoLV of 100% means you show up in the top positions at every single grid point. A SoLV of 12% means you are essentially invisible across most of the area you want to serve.

Why one rank number is misleading

Local rankings are personalized by location. You might rank #1 when you search from your own front door and #18 from a neighborhood three miles away. If you only check rank from one place, you get a flattering but useless number. SoLV fixes this by sampling many locations and giving you an honest local search visibility score for the whole area. This is the core idea behind geo-grid rank tracking.

How SoLV Is Calculated

The math is simpler than it sounds. A geo-grid scan produces a rank at every grid point. SoLV converts those ranks into a percentage using a weighting where higher positions earn more credit and anything outside the top 20 (or wherever you cap it) earns zero.

A common approach works like this on a results scale of positions 1 through 20:

Each grid point gets a score based on its rank - position 1 is worth full credit, and credit drops as the rank gets worse.
Points where you do not appear at all score zero.
You average the scores across every grid point and express it as a percentage.

Here is a simplified example on a small 9-point grid where position 1 = 1.0 point and the value scales down to 0 by position 20:

Grid point	Your rank	Point score
1	1	1.00
2	3	0.90
3	5	0.80
4	8	0.65
5	12	0.45
6	20	0.05
7	Not found	0.00
8	2	0.95
9	Not found	0.00

Add the point scores (4.80), divide by the number of points (9), and you get a SoLV of about 53%. Different tools weight the curve slightly differently, so treat SoLV as a trend you track over time rather than a universal constant. The direction of travel matters more than the exact decimal.

SoLV vs. ARP (Average Rank Position)

You will often see SoLV reported next to ARP, or Average Rank Position. They measure related but different things:

Metric	What it tells you	Best for
SoLV (Share of Local Voice)	% of total possible visibility you capture across the grid	Tracking overall market dominance and progress over time
ARP (Average Rank Position)	Your mean rank across all grid points where you appear	Understanding typical ranking quality
Coverage / found %	% of grid points where you appear at all	Spotting dead zones and reach gaps

I read all three together. A business can have a decent ARP but low SoLV if it only appears in a small cluster of points. In ProMapRanker, every geo-grid scan reports SoLV, ARP, and coverage side by side so you can see the full picture in one view.

What Is a Good SoLV Score?

There is no universal pass mark because it depends on competition density and grid size. A SoLV of 40% in a dense downtown with 60 competitors is far more impressive than 70% in a rural town with three. That said, here are realistic benchmarks I use:

0-20%: Largely invisible. You are likely only showing near your storefront. Big opportunity.
20-45%: Competitive but inconsistent. You win some neighborhoods and lose others.
45-70%: Strong. You dominate your core area with room to expand the edges.
70%+: Market-leading for that keyword and grid.

One critical caveat: your score is only meaningful relative to your grid size and spacing. A tight 3x3 grid hugging your address will always flatter your SoLV. A 7x7 grid covering your true service radius gives a tougher, more honest read.

How to Improve Your Share of Local Voice: A Checklist

SoLV moves when the underlying Google Maps ranking factors improve. Relevance, distance, and prominence drive the map pack, and SoLV is downstream of all three. Here is the step-by-step process I run for clients:

Run a baseline geo-grid scan. You cannot improve what you do not measure. Scan your primary keyword across a grid that matches your real service area and record SoLV, ARP, and coverage.
Optimize the Google Business Profile. Complete every field, pick the right primary category, add services, write a keyword-relevant description, and post weekly. Follow a full Google Business Profile optimization pass before anything else - it is the highest-leverage work.
Fix the dead zones. Look at the grid points scoring zero. These are usually on the edges of your radius where distance hurts you. Build location-relevant content and citations for those neighborhoods.
Earn more reviews, steadily. Review velocity and recency are prominence signals. A consistent flow of recent reviews lifts visibility across the whole grid, not just one point.
Build local citations and links. Consistent NAP across directories and links from local sites raise prominence, which expands how far out you can rank.
Re-scan monthly and watch the trend. SoLV is a tracking metric. Compare scan to scan to confirm your work is paying off and catch competitor surges early.

If you would rather not run this loop yourself, the team behind ProMapRanker offers a done-for-you local SEO service at rankite.com that handles the GBP work, citations, reviews, and reporting end to end.

Track maps and AI visibility together

Search behavior is splitting between Google Maps and AI assistants. ProMapRanker now reports SoLV-style visibility for both, so you can track map-pack and AI rankings on one grid and see whether ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are recommending you in your service area too.

SoLV in Practice: A Quick Example

I recently audited a dental practice that "ranked #1" by their own check. Their first real geo-grid scan came back at a SoLV of 28% on a 5x5 grid. They were #1 within half a mile and invisible past it. Three months of focused GBP optimization, 40 new reviews, and citation cleanup pushed SoLV to 51% and coverage from 44% of points to 88%. New-patient calls roughly doubled. The single rank number never would have revealed that gap, and never would have shown the progress.

FAQ

Is SoLV the same as Share of Voice in regular SEO?

No. Traditional Share of Voice estimates your slice of organic search traffic or ad impressions for a keyword set. Share of Local Voice is specific to local pack and map results, measured across a geographic grid of search points rather than a single national ranking.

What grid size should I use to measure SoLV?

Match the grid to your real service area. A 5x5 grid with 1-mile spacing suits most single-location service businesses; tighten the spacing for dense urban areas and widen it for businesses that serve a large radius. Keep the grid consistent between scans so your SoLV trend stays comparable.

How often should I check my Share of Local Voice?

Monthly is the sweet spot for most businesses. It is frequent enough to catch competitor movement and confirm that optimization work is landing, without burning through scan credits on noise. Run an extra scan after any major change, like a category switch or a new location.

Can I improve SoLV without paying for ads?

Yes. SoLV is organic. The biggest levers are a fully optimized Google Business Profile, steady recent reviews, consistent citations, and local content. Ads can supplement reach but do not change your organic Share of Local Voice.

Start Measuring Your SoLV

You cannot manage local visibility from a single rank check. Run a real geo-grid scan, get your honest Share of Local Voice, and watch it climb as you optimize. Start free with 250 credits and run your first scan in minutes, or grab a free GBP audit to see exactly what is holding your visibility back.