The short version. On 1 October 2026 I started local SEO for a Canberra bathroom renovator based in the inner south. By 14 October it showed up on Google Maps across a much wider part of Canberra, and in the full Maps list it was top 10 for 12 of the 21 tracked searches, up from 2 (one of them its own name). On 14 October it was not in Google’s top-3 map box for any of them. Two weeks is a start, not a ranking won, but it shows you do not have to wait six months to see local SEO move.
Six months for what?
Ask around Canberra and you will hear the same line from most local SEO companies: give it six months, often longer, before you see anything. That is half right, and the half that is wrong costs local businesses a lot of money.
Some of it is slow: reviews come one finished job at a time, links have to be earned, and a website takes months to build standing in ordinary search. I have written before that any agency telling a new business it can top a competitive search in eight weeks is either selling something or has not looked.
The other half is repair, and repair is fast. If Google has two listings for a business, old details or a vague category, it cannot be sure who the business is or what it does. Those fixes are quick to make, and here Maps responded within two weeks. If an agency tells you to expect nothing for six months, treat that as a filter, not a time frame.
Three years of “managed local SEO”
Before 1 October, this business had not been ignoring SEO. For about three years it had been paying an agency more than a thousand dollars a month for managed local SEO (his figures, not mine). Most of what it got for that was blog posts on the website. That is not nothing, but it is the slow half of the job done on its own, while the fast half, making sure Google knew which business this was, was left broken: two listings, an old address on several directories, and a profile that did not say clearly what the business did. The maps below are what three years of that bought.
Where it started: 1 October
Maps results depend on where the customer is searching from, so I check 49 points across Canberra, a 7×7 grid centred on its home suburb. On 1 October, unless someone searched its name, the business was effectively invisible: across five service searches it made the top 10 at one point in the whole city, 10th for “bathroom renovator”, next to its base. Three of the five did not show it in the top 20 at all. And Google had two listings for it.
What I did
This first round is Business Profile optimisation: building a trustworthy digital identity, so Google is sure it is one real business. That meant one listing instead of two, the right name, address, phone number, hours and categories, and a start on bringing other listings into line. The round is still under way. The new website was not live by 14 October, so none of this comes from it.
What moved by 14 October
A point outside the top 20 counts as 21st, so the average moves slowly; the number of top-20 points shows the change better.
| Google Maps search | Average, 1 Oct | Average, 14 Oct | Top-20 points (of 49), 1 → 14 Oct | Best point, 14 Oct |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| bathroom renovator | 20.4 | 18.3 | 10 → 26 | 7th (top 10 at 2 points) |
| bathroom renovation company | not ranked | 19.9 | 0 → 14 | 4th, at its home suburb |
| bathroom renovations | 20.9 | 20.3 | 1 → 7 | 8th, at its home suburb (15th on 1 Oct) |
| ensuite renovation | not ranked | 20.9 | 0 → 2 | 16th |
| laundry renovation | not ranked | 20.9 | 0 → 1 | 16th |
“bathroom renovator”, 1 October 2026 (left) and 14 October 2026 (right). Yellow is 4th–10th, orange 11th–20th, red outside the top 20; the pin is the business. Map data ©2026 Google.
“bathroom renovation company”, 1 October 2026 (left) and 14 October 2026 (right).
I also track 21 searches a customer might type, such as “bathroom renovations canberra”, checked from its home suburb in ordinary results, the top-3 map box and the full Maps list. In the full Maps list it was top 10 for 12 of the 21 on 14 October, up from 2 on 1 October (one is its own name, which it already led). Counting every result type together, top-10 results went from 4 to 17, but read that one loosely: 1 October was the tracker’s first run, so some “new” rankings in ordinary search are gaps in that run rather than gains, and the ordinary results are still for the old website.
What has not moved yet
- The top-3 map box: 0 of 21 searches on 14 October.
- Most of the city: for “bathroom renovations”, the most competitive of the five, it was in the top 20 at only 7 of 49 points on 14 October, and for “bathroom renovator” the two western columns of the grid were still outside the top 20. Gains are strongest near its base. From there, searches naming other areas slipped in the full Maps list by 14 October: Queanbeyan 21st (down 11), Woden 29th (down 7), Belconnen 29th (down 6), Tuggeranong 27th (down 3), and Gungahlin dropped out. Queanbeyan is next door and fell furthest, so distance is not the whole story.
- Reviews: a handful on 14 October, against 22 to 110 for the top competitors that week. On 14 October it was 7th to 11th in the full Maps list for many searches, and getting into the top three from there depends mostly on reviews.
- Enquiries: rankings are not enquiries. The agreed measure is enquiries by source (calls and forms).
What to expect next
The first monthly report adds enquiries to the same grids and searches. The biggest single lever now is asking every customer for a Google review after each job. When the new website goes live, ordinary search starts from a new baseline; that is the slow part. In September I wrote that I judge a change at four weeks, not four days. This is two weeks, so read it as a direction, not a verdict: some of it will wobble, and every number here is a snapshot of its day. And I cannot promise another business the same two weeks.
Closing remarks
My view: six months is a fair time frame for the slow parts of local SEO, and a poor excuse for the fast ones. The first thing I check for any local business is whether Google is sure who it is. Fixing that is quick work, and in my experience it is the part most often left broken, because nobody owns it once the website is handed over.
None of this is clever. Google was given one listing with the right details, and within two weeks it started showing the business in more places around its base.
Two weeks like this is not a finished job, and I would be wary of anyone who sold it as one: the top three is still ahead. But if you have been told to wait half a year before you see anything at all, ask what happens in the first month, and ask to see your starting line.
Related reading
- Does Google know who your business is? A Canberra local SEO check
- We’re becoming an SEO company. Here’s the starting line.
- SEO in Canberra
- I checked 160 Canberra trade websites
Want to know where your business starts on Google Maps? Tell me about it.