Your reviews aren’t the problem

I pulled the Google Map Pack for “estate planning attorney” in a mid-size Southern metro last week, and the results weren’t what most firm owners would expect.

The firm ranking first had 58 reviews. The firm at third had 129. The firm at fourth had 170. And one firm in that same pack had 515 reviews and still wasn’t number one. The firm with the fewest reviews of the group was the one winning.

That’s the part most attorneys miss: Google’s local results aren’t a straight reputation contest. Reviews matter. They build client trust, they lift conversion, they tell Google your firm is real and active. But reviews don’t automatically make you relevant for every search.

Google is trying to answer a specific question, from a specific person, in a specific place. Someone who searches “estate planning attorney” gets firms that look unmistakably like estate planning attorneys. Someone who searches “elder law attorney” gets elder-law signals. Someone who searches “Medicaid planning attorney” gets Medicaid-planning signals. That sounds obvious until you see how most firm marketing is actually built: the firm says it handles estate planning, elder law, probate, Medicaid planning, and guardianship, but its Google Business Profile says “estate planning,” its homepage says “estate planning,” and its directory listings say “estate planning.” The other services are thin, missing, or bundled onto one catch-all page.

Then the owner wonders why the firm ranks for one search and vanishes on the rest. The answer usually isn’t that Google hates the firm: it’s that Google doesn’t have clean, consistent evidence that the firm is relevant for the other searches. That’s the pattern I want to show you: not theory, not a generic checklist, but a real anonymized teardown.

One firm in that market is a genuinely strong estate-planning practice: 4.8 stars, nearly 60 reviews, and a spot near the top of the map pack for “estate planning attorney.” Google clearly understands it as a credible estate-planning option, and it’s already done enough right to compete.

But when I checked “elder law attorney,” the same firm was buried around number eleven. Same for “Medicaid planning attorney.” Same firm, same city, same reputation. Completely different visibility.