Prominence

Prominence is Google's catch-all term for everything that makes your business look real and respected on the open web. It includes review count and rating, mention count across the web, link signals to your website, citation completeness and consistency, and indirect signals like Wikipedia presence or news coverage.

Of the three pillars (Relevance, Proximity, Prominence), prominence is the one you can most consistently improve over time. Review programs, link-earning content, PR, and citation cleanup all stack into a higher prominence score.

Prominence is the reason new businesses struggle. A two-week-old GBP can have perfect category selection and an ideal address, but if nobody on the web has ever mentioned it, Google has nothing to weigh against the 10-year-old competitor with 400 reviews. The first 90 days of any local SEO engagement is mostly about building prominence faster than the calendar.