{"id":2057,"slug":"proximity-uncontrollable-local-factor","title":"Proximity dominates local-pack and is uncontrollable — ~55% of weight","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","candid-team"],"topics":["local-seo-mechanics","proximity-as-dominant-local-factor"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Whitespark 2026 puts proximity at ~55%: \"A mediocre business one mile from the searcher will often outrank an excellent business five miles away.\"\n\nA separate Search Atlas machine-learning study of thousands of businesses independently estimated proximity at ~55% of visibility for positions 1-21.\n\n**Source:** Whitespark 2026 (vendor); Search Atlas (vendor, independent corroboration).\n\n**Confidence:** Industry-consensus.\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** PROXIMITY CANNOT BE OPTIMIZED. The widget must say this plainly when classifying a local difficulty case — a business simply far from the searcher cannot win some queries regardless of effort.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-smb-widget-difficulty-to-work-june-2026","title":"Research brief: SMB widget difficulty-to-work mapping — three tiers of work for three sizes of gap (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"tier-2-findability-and-trust","title":"Tier 2 — Findability + trust infrastructure (MODERATE GAP)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"rule-flag-uncontrollable-constraints","title":"Rule — Surface uncontrollable constraints (proximity, time, vertical) instead of selling around them","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-23T19:16:02.720Z","updated_at":"2026-06-23T19:16:02.720Z"}