The pest control map pack playbook.

Why the profile outranks the website

For "pest control near me," the map pack sits above every organic result and takes most of the clicks. Google ranks it on three axes: relevance (does your profile say you do this work?), proximity (are you near the searcher?), and prominence (reviews, velocity, engagement). You can't move your shop, but relevance and prominence are entirely buildable.

Categories and services: say the quiet part

Primary category: Pest control service. Add every secondary that's true — bird control, animal / wildlife control if you do exclusion work. Then the services list, which most operators leave half-empty: every pest, named — ants, carpenter ants, bed bugs, cockroaches, mice, rats, wasps, hornets, mosquitoes, termites, wildlife exclusion — each with a sentence and, where you'll stand behind it, a from-price. The services list is machine-readable inventory: it feeds "provides: bed bug extermination" justifications in the pack and gives AI assistants something to quote.

Reviews: velocity beats count

A profile with 200 reviews that stopped eighteen months ago loses to one earning eight a month. The system: an automatic ask after every completed job (text, with the direct review link), a reply to every review within days — and in the replies, the pest and the neighbourhood named naturally, because replies are indexed text. Never gate the ask (filtering happy from unhappy first violates Google's policy); just ask everyone, consistently.

Photos, posts, and Q&A: signals most profiles skip

• Photos weekly — trucks, techs, completed exclusion work, before/after entry-point seals. Profiles with steady photo uploads earn measurably more calls and direction requests.
• Posts for the season — wasp-season notice in May, rodent-proofing in September. Posts expire; the cadence is the point.
• Seed the Q&A — ask and answer your own top ten ("Do you treat bed bugs?", "Do you serve LaSalle?"). Otherwise strangers write your FAQ for you.

Service-area settings: the honesty dividend

Service-area businesses set the towns they cover — and the pack rewards accuracy. Claiming a two-hour radius dilutes proximity relevance everywhere; claiming the polygon your trucks actually run concentrates it. Match the GBP service area to the same drive-time reality your ad geo should use, and the two engines reinforce each other.

The mistakes that cap rank

• Keyword-stuffed business names ("Acme Pest Control — Best Exterminator Hamilton") — suspension bait since the 2024–25 enforcement waves.
• Duplicate listings from old addresses or lead-gen sites splitting your reviews and confusing the graph.
• A dead website link — the profile brings the lead; a slow or unclear site loses it. Half the marketing problem is a landing problem.
• Ignoring the questions — unanswered public questions are unanswered sales calls, visible to everyone.

What it feeds beyond the pack

The same profile clarity that wins the map pack is what AI assistants read when someone asks "who should I call for wasps in Guelph?" Reviews, services, and consistent local mentions are the citation diet of the answer engines — one discipline, two surfaces. The diagnostic scores your profile against the three operators currently holding your pack.