Miles Apart is the geographic distance RankGear puts between neighboring points in a local search grid — how far the tool moves from one sampling location to the next when it checks Google Maps rankings across an area.
| Term | Miles Apart |
|---|---|
| Category | Local SEO and Maps |
| Also known as | Grid Spacing |
| Where it appears | Google Maps analysis settings |
What it means in RankGear
When RankGear checks how a business ranks on Google Maps, it does not query a single spot — it lays down a grid of sampling points across a region and reads the local pack at each one. Miles Apart sets the spacing of that grid: the straight-line distance between one point and its neighbor. A small value packs the points tightly around a center for a fine-grained read of a neighborhood; a larger value spreads them out to cover a city or metro with the same number of points. It works together with the grid size and the coordinate center to define exactly how much ground a single Maps analysis covers.
How to interpret it
Read the spacing alongside the rest of the grid setup, never on its own. The same business can look dominant at a point sat on top of its storefront and vanish a few miles out, because Maps rankings shift sharply with the searcher’s location — so the distance you chose between points determines how much of that falloff you actually see. Tight spacing shows you the block-by-block texture near a location but only samples a small footprint; wide spacing surveys a whole market but can skip right over pockets where visibility drops. Before comparing two grids or reading a pattern into the results, confirm the center coordinate, the provider, the spacing, the grid depth, and the exact business being tracked are the ones you intended.
Example
A coffee shop owner runs a 7-by-7 grid centered on the cafe with points set 0.5 miles apart, covering roughly a three-mile square of the surrounding neighborhood. The business shows up in the top three near its own block but slips to the bottom of the local pack toward the edges of the grid. Re-running the same grid at 2 miles apart stretches the coverage across the wider metro — now most outer points return no ranking at all, revealing how quickly the shop’s Maps visibility thins out beyond its immediate area.
Important considerations
- Miles Apart only defines spacing between points; the total area covered depends on it combined with the grid size (how many points) and the center coordinate.
- Map rankings are highly proximity-sensitive and can change with coordinates, zoom, provider data, and time — two runs of the same grid can differ.
- Individual points may return a ranking, a not-found result, or a provider error; a single point is a sample, not a verdict.
- Grid results are comparative snapshots of what a provider observed at those locations, not scores Google assigns, and a visible position at a point does not prove any single setting caused it.
Related terms
Part of the RankGear glossary · how RankGear measures · the 870 factors.