1.2. Analyze Competitors

Your competition is three listings, and they change from corner to corner

Domino’s is not your competition. Neither is the pizzeria with twenty thousand followers, if it's twelve kilometers away. Your competition is the three listings that show up on the map when someone searches for "pizza" standing four blocks from your door.

Google builds that top three using relevance, distance, and prominence. Distance shatters any list recalled from memory: the exact same user, two neighborhoods over, sees three completely different pizzerias. Your goal is that top 3 from the spots where your customers actually live.

Build the list from four points

Incognito window and logged out: with your account open, Google shows your own business and browsing history, skewing the research.

Open Google Maps, drag the map to a specific intersection, and search from there. Four spots: your corner, the nearest office district, the subdivision where your orders come from, and the busiest traffic hub in town. At each spot, run three queries: "pizza," "pizza delivery," and "pizzeria" plus the neighborhood name.

Twelve lists of three. Note down the exact name, category, rating, and number of reviews. Whoever appears eight or more times is a real competitor; whoever appears once is just a neighbor. Five names are more than enough.

Fifteen minutes per listing

Everything is public and viewable directly from the map.

• Primary category, the word appearing beneath the name. If all five say “Pizzeria” and you say “Restaurant,” that's your first fix: the category dictates whether your listing displays menus, reservations, and orders, and it's changed in 3.1.
• Reviews and date of the latest one. BrightLocal surveyed 1,002 US consumers in 2026, and 74% look for reviews written within the last three months: a market leader with 600 reviews whose latest one is from five months ago is softer than it looks. That’s where 3.2.
• Owner responses in the last ten reviews. In that same survey, 80% prefer a business that replies to every review, and 50% are turned off by canned templates.
• Photos by category. Google recommends a minimum of three exterior, three interior, three food, and three team photos. Almost no one reaches twelve.
• Active buttons: menu, reservation, ordering. Starting July 1, 2024, Google no longer processes orders; it only redirects. Whoever hasn't added their own link gives away the click and the commission to an aggregator.
• The link to their website. Open it, don't just assume. Google shut down business.site websites in March 2024, and since June 10 of that year they return a 404: there are pizzerias that have spent two years sending customers to a dead page.

Ten minutes per site

For the one that does have a website, three questions: is the menu in text or a scanned photo, can prices be seen without downloading a PDF, and does it answer parking, Sunday hours, gluten-free crust, and delivery times? Google's AI mode breaks down each query into subtopics and searches for them separately: a JPG menu does not exist for anyone who isn't already seated. Seer measured a 2.1% click-through rate for the page cited in the AI overview, versus 0.9% for the one that only appears below.

For your website's traffic, the free Similarweb extension is enough; SpyFu ($39 USD per month) and BuzzSumo ($199 USD) solve problems a pizzeria doesn't have.

The gap takes five forms

• Functional: no one in the top 3 has their menu uploaded or a reservation link.
• Recency: the leader hasn't received a review in months.
• Service delivery: no one replies, or everyone replies with the exact same phrase.
• Commitment: nobody says "gluten-free," "open until one," or "own parking lot."
• Service area: all three listings for your neighborhood are Downtown, and none of them deliver here.

A gap only counts if you can prove it and sustain it for six months. And if a competitor ranks up with a name stuffed with keywords, don't copy them: slogans, city names, or phone numbers there are the number one cause of suspension.

From spreadsheets to decisions

• Wrong category: fixed today, with the warning that editing it may trigger business re-verification.
• Under twelve photos: this week, using your phone.
• Menu via image: upload the PDF to the menu editor, Google converts it using AI, and publishes it in 24 to 48 hours.
• A promise nobody else makes: a custom website answers it completely.
• “Best pizzas in town” lists where you don't appear: you win by getting into them, in 4.2.

Repeat the sweep in 30 days from the same four locations: if your name appears on more lists, it worked. If those three hours a month don't fit into your week, that's exactly what an SEO service within the monthly plan at 2,500 pesos.