If your heatmap pins appear far from your real location, drag each pin to the correct spot, run a new heatmap, and delete the old ones. If a pin instead shows 20+ or a short competitor list, that almost always mirrors exactly what Google Maps returns for that keyword and coordinate.
📍 How to Move a Heatmap Pin That Landed in the Wrong Location
Service Area Business profiles sometimes generate heatmap pins hundreds of miles from your actual service area (for example, 250–375 miles from Sterling, Virginia). This happens most often when the target keyword is broad or matches distant markets where Google Maps still surfaces your business. When pins sit in the wrong place, your local rankings on that grid look inaccurate. Reposition the grid to your real service area and regenerate the heatmap so your local rankings reflect where you actually serve.
- Open the heatmap at the keyword level so you can see the individual pins.
- Click the pin that is in the wrong location to select it.
- Drag the pin to the exact location where you want the heatmap created (your real service area).
- Run a new heatmap for that location.
- After the new heatmap finishes generating, delete the heatmaps that were previously created in the wrong location.
Watch a short walkthrough here: https://jam.dev/c/59baecaf-343f-4331-92ab-26181ff21aa1.
Once the new heatmap finishes, your pins sit at the correct coordinates and your local ranking data reflects your true service area.
📌 What the 20+ Ranking on a Heatmap Pin Means
When the Local Rank Tracker scans a heatmap grid point, it retrieves the first page of Google Maps results for your target keyword — a maximum of 20 businesses. The number on the pin is your business's rank within those results.
- Your business appears in the top 20 results: the pin displays your exact rank (for example, 7 or 14).
- Your business is absent from the top 20 results: the pin displays 20+, which means your business ranked beyond position 20 — effectively Not Found for that grid point.
The number on the pin is always your ranking position at that location, not a count of how many competitors appear in the popup.
Sparse results vs. a 20+ ranking
A sparse result means Google itself returned fewer than 20 competitors for that keyword and coordinate, so the popup simply lists however many businesses Google served (for example, 2, 5, or 8). The pin still shows your ranking position — or 20+ if your business is not among those few results — while the shorter competitor list reflects Google's limited coverage at that point.
🔍 Why the Competitor Popup May Show Fewer Than 20 Businesses
Each grid point scans Google Maps from a precise latitude/longitude coordinate, and Google does not always return 20 results. If Google's index has limited coverage for your keyword at that coordinate — because local supply is sparse, competition is low, or relevance signals are weak — it may return only 2, 5, or 8 businesses.
When your business is not among the results Google returned at that point, the pin shows 20+. Search Atlas treats any business absent from Google's returned set as ranked beyond position 20 for that grid point, and labels the pin 20+ accordingly — whether Google returned 3 results or 20. This is the correct interpretation of Google's data, not a gap in tracking.
🧪 How to Verify Sparse Results Are Google-Side Behavior
Confirm that sparse pin data matches real Google Maps output by following these steps:
- Note the coordinates of a pin that shows a small competitor list or a 20+ ranking.
- Use a browser location-spoofing extension (such as Location Guard for Chrome) to set your GPS position to those coordinates.
- Open Google Maps and search for the same target keyword.
- Compare Google's live results to the businesses shown in the heatmap pin's popup.
The results will match. When Google returns only a small number of businesses for a keyword at a given location, the heatmap popup reflects exactly that — because Search Atlas reads the same data Google serves.
⚙️ What Search Atlas Can and Cannot Control
Search Atlas accurately mirrors what Google Maps returns for each scanned coordinate. It cannot:
- Retrieve businesses Google did not include in its results for that keyword and location.
- Expand Google's pagination beyond the 20-result limit per location scan.
- Override Google's local ranking order for a coordinate.
Because of this, the most reliable fix for unexpected pin data is to confirm the pin is in the correct location first, then rerun the heatmap.
⚠️ Known Limitations
- Heatmap sharing via iframe may load indefinitely (status: reported to engineering).
- Heatmaps in Report Builder may load slowly for large datasets; if PDF downloads appear incomplete, break the report into smaller date ranges.
🎯 You now know how to drag a misplaced heatmap pin to the right spot, rerun and clean up the old heatmap, and read what a 20+ or sparse pin really means. If pins still appear in the wrong location after rerunning, contact support to confirm you are seeing post-fix data.