When someone searches "immigration lawyer" on their phone, the first thing they see is usually the map with three firms under it. So we wanted to see what the firms in those spots actually have in common.
We searched "immigration lawyer" in English and "abogado de inmigración" in Spanish in 8 cities: Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, Dallas, Miami, New York (Queens) and Salt Lake City. For each search we saved the top 20 firms on Google Maps, with their reviews, rating, photos, categories and distance from where we searched.
What do the firms in the top 3 have in common?
Here is how the top 3 compared with the firms in spots 4 to 20, in the English searches:
| Top 3 | Spots 4 to 20 | |
|---|---|---|
| Reviews (median) | 448 | 122 |
| Photos (median) | 26 | 9 |
| Extra categories on the profile (median) | 3 | 1 |
| Main category is "Immigration attorney" | 96% | 87% |
| Distance from the search point (median) | 0.6 miles | 0.8 miles |
| Rating (median) | 4.85 | 4.8 |
| Profile claimed by the firm | 100% | 93% |
The top firms have a lot more reviews and a lot more photos. They almost all use "Immigration attorney" as their main category, and they fill in more of the other categories that apply to them. All of them had claimed their profile.
Ratings were nearly the same (4.85 vs 4.8), so they didn't separate the firms in our data. When everybody has 4.8 stars, 4.8 stars doesn't set you apart.
Why didn't the firm with the most reviews always win?
Because reviews are only one part of it. In all 16 of our searches, at least one firm with more reviews than a top 3 firm was sitting lower on the list. In Houston, the number one result had 450 reviews. The firm in seventh place had more than 2,400.
Google explains why in its own help page on how local ranking works. It looks at three things:
- Relevance: how well your profile matches what the person searched.
- Distance: how far you are from the person searching.
- Prominence: how well known you are. Reviews count here, and so does what Google finds about you across the web.
So a firm with fewer reviews can beat a bigger one if it is closer to the person searching, or if its profile matches the search better. Google also says plainly that there is no way to pay for a better spot on Maps.
Do Spanish searches show the same firms?
Not at the top. Only 12 of the 24 firms in the English top 3 were also in the Spanish top 3 for the same city. Further down the list there is more overlap: about three out of four firms in the English top 10 were also in the Spanish top 10.
The Spanish top 3 also had fewer reviews: a median of 221, about half of the 448 in English. That means the review gap you need to close may be smaller in Spanish.
One more thing we noticed: in the Spanish searches, 29% of the top 3 firms had "abogado" or "inmigración" in their name, compared with 11% of the firms below them. Be careful with that one. Google's rules say your profile name has to be your real business name, and adding extra words to it is not allowed. If your firm is actually called "Abogado de Inmigración Martínez," that is fine. If it isn't, don't add it.
Does local SEO work for law firms?
Yes, for the parts you can control.
You can't move your office closer to every client, so distance is mostly out of your hands. But relevance and prominence are not. Your categories, the services you list, the description, your photos, your hours, how many reviews you get and how you answer them, and what your website says about each kind of case are all things a firm can work on. Most of these are the same things where the top 3 stood out in our data.
What local SEO can't do is guarantee a spot. Anyone who promises you the top 3 is promising something Google itself says nobody controls.
What can a firm do this month?
- Check your main category. It should be "Immigration attorney." Then add the other categories that are really true for your firm, not every legal category on the list.
- Ask every happy client for a review. Make it easy with a link or a QR code at the front desk. Reply to every review, the good ones and the bad ones.
- Add real photos. Your office, your team, the front of the building. The top firms in our data had about three times as many photos as the rest.
- Fill in your services one by one: family petitions, work permits, citizenship, asylum, deportation defense, whatever you actually handle.
- Say you speak Spanish in your description and services, if you do. Spanish searches show a different top 3, with fewer reviews to compete against.
- Make sure your website backs it up. A page for each kind of case, in English and Spanish, gives Google more reasons to match you to a search.
What should a law firm SEO proposal include?
If you hire someone to do this, the proposal should say in numbers what they will do on your Google Business Profile and website every month. For the Maps part, that means:
- What they will change on your profile in the first month: categories, services, description, photos, hours.
- How they will help you get more reviews, and who answers them.
- How many posts they will publish on your profile each month.
- Which searches they will track, in which part of your city, and in which languages.
- A monthly report with the calls and direction requests that came from your profile, not just a screenshot of rankings.
- That the profile stays in your firm's name, and you keep it if you leave.
We go through the rest of what a proposal should cover, and what agencies charge for it, in How much does SEO cost for an immigration law firm?
How we got these numbers
On October 12, 2026 we ran 16 Google Maps searches: "immigration lawyer" in English and "abogado de inmigración" in Spanish, in 8 cities. Each search was run once, on mobile, from one point downtown, and we kept the top 20 results. The data comes from DataForSEO through OpenSEO. One sponsored listing was left out.
Keep in mind that Maps results change depending on where you are standing, which device you use and the day you search. A firm that is third from downtown may be first two miles away. These numbers show patterns across 320 results, not a formula. Firms that do well on reviews and photos may also be doing other things right that we can't see from the outside.
You can download every listing we collected, with its position, reviews, rating, photos, categories and distance: immigration-lawyer-google-maps-2026-10.csv.