The Problem
The shop had a strong brand and loyal regulars, but it was losing every customer who did not already know the name. The searches that actually bring in high-margin European service work, "Porsche brakes," "Audi repair near me," "European auto repair," were owned by Yelp, a couple of directory sites, and one competitor. Worse, Google's AI Overview was answering those questions by citing the aggregators and skipping the shop entirely. Every one of those searches was a $1,500 brake job or a major service walking straight to someone else, and the owner could not see it happening.
The Map, Before and After
This is a rank grid. Each pin is a point across the shop's service area, and the number is where the shop ranked for its core search at that spot. Dark pins are positions 1 to 3. The dashes are searches where it did not rank at all.
Position 1–3 Position 4–10 Position 11–20 Not ranked
What We Won, Search by Search
| Search | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| european auto repair near me | Not ranked | #2 |
| Porsche repair near me | #21 | #1 |
| Porsche brakes | #11 | #2 |
| Porsche service | #21 | #2 |
| Audi repair near me | #21 | #3 |
| Audi service | #18 | #1 |
| BMW repair | #22 | #2 |
| Mercedes-Benz repair | Not ranked | #3 |
| Volvo repair | Not ranked | #2 |
| Land Rover repair | Not ranked | #3 |
| Volkswagen repair | Not ranked | #2 |
| brake replacement near me | Not ranked | #3 |
| import car repair | Not ranked | #2 |
| auto repair near me | Not ranked | #3 |
The Solution
Rebuilt the Google Business Profile
Correct categories, service areas, real photos, and the details Google weighs for local ranking, fixed from the ground up.
Built a page per brand
A dedicated, properly structured page for each marque the shop services, so "Porsche repair" and "Audi repair" had a real, rankable home instead of one generic homepage.
Won the buyer-intent searches off the aggregators
Local content, schema, reviews, and engagement signals aimed squarely at the brake-and-repair searches that Yelp and the directories had been hoarding, including the ones AI Overviews were citing.
The Business Result
Map-pack visibility is not the point. Calls are. As the rankings climbed, the phone followed.
Representative results. Client specifics available under NDA.
For a specialist local business, the win is not "rank for auto repair." It is to own every brand-and-service search a high-value customer might type, across the whole service area, and to take those searches back from the aggregators that had been collecting them.
Anonymized to protect client privacy. Rankings shown are representative of the target outcome; figures available under NDA.