If your Melbourne business has dropped out of the Google Local Pack recently, you are not alone. Over the past 12 months, businesses across the CBD and inner suburbs have seen significant declines in their local pack visibility, and most of them have no idea why.
The Local Pack, those three business listings that appear at the top of Google search results with a map, is prime real estate. Appearing there can mean dozens of enquiries per week. Losing that spot can feel like someone turned off the tap overnight.
What Changed in the Melbourne Local Pack
Google has made a series of updates in 2025 that have disproportionately affected Melbourne businesses. The changes fall into a few key categories.
Distance and Proximity Weighting
Google has increased the weight it gives to a searcher’s physical location when returning local pack results. This sounds helpful, but it has created real problems for businesses that serve multiple Melbourne suburbs. A plumber based in Fitzroy might no longer appear for searches from Collingwood, even though they service that area every day.
Review Velocity and Recency
Melbourne businesses that stopped actively collecting Google reviews are now feeling the pain. Google’s 2025 algorithm updates place greater emphasis on recent reviews, not just volume. A business with 200 reviews, all from 2022, may rank below a competitor with 40 reviews collected over the last six months.
Business Category Precision
Google has tightened how it interprets primary business categories. Businesses that chose broad categories like “contractor” or “consultant” are seeing drops. Specificity now matters more than ever.
What Melbourne CBD Businesses Face Specifically
The CBD presents a unique challenge. With high business density, Google often shows results from businesses in surrounding suburbs rather than the CBD itself, because those businesses have stronger location signals relative to the searcher. This is counterintuitive but it is happening.
For businesses in Melbourne’s outer suburbs like Dandenong, Frankston, and Werribee, the challenge is different. Lower search volumes mean fewer signals, and Google defaults to showing more established listings rather than newer or less-optimised ones.
How to Recover Your Local Pack Position
- Audit your Google Business Profile. Make sure your service areas are specific and your categories are precise.
- Start a consistent review collection process. Ask customers within a day or two of their experience.
- Add weekly posts to your Google Business Profile. Activity signals matter.
- Build local citations on Australian directories. Consistency across NAP (name, address, phone) is fundamental.
- Create suburb-specific landing pages on your website to support your local authority claims.
The Bigger Picture
Local pack rankings are not something you can set and forget. The businesses that hold those top three spots in Melbourne are the ones treating local SEO as an ongoing process, not a one-time setup task.
If you are serious about recovering and holding your position in the Melbourne local pack, working with an SEO team that understands the Melbourne market is worth considering. Learn more about our Melbourne SEO services and how we approach local pack recovery for businesses across the city.
