22 September 2026 · 6 min read · Oscar Markham
Why your competitor outranks you, and what it actually takes to pass them
The question comes up on nearly every first call, usually with a specific competitor named. It is answerable, and the answer is rarely the one people expect.
They have been there longer
A domain that has existed for a decade, with pages that have been in the index for years, carries accumulated trust that a new site does not.
This is the one you cannot shortcut. You can beat it, but you beat it on relevance and specificity rather than by out-existing them.
People link to them and not to you
Check by searching for their business name and seeing where else it appears — directories, local news, suppliers, association pages.
For most small Irish businesses, both of you have almost none, and whoever gets the first ten has a real advantage. It is the most under-exploited gap in local search here.
Their reviews are better
For anything decided in the map results, this is frequently the whole answer. Count theirs, count yours, look at the dates.
A competitor with thirty recent reviews against your four is not outranking you because of their website.
Their page is genuinely better for that search
Look at the page that actually ranks, not their homepage. Is it specifically about the thing being searched, or is it a general services page?
Frequently they win because they have a page about exactly that, and you have a paragraph about it. That is the most fixable of the four.
Working out which applies
Search the term. Look at the page that ranks, their review count and date, and whether anybody links to them.
One of the four will be obvious. Then fix that one rather than doing everything at once, because doing everything at once means never knowing which worked.
Written by Oscar Markham, founder of Dublin Growth Digital. We run lead generation for Irish estate agents and trades, reported every Friday in enquiries and booked work.