Two averages, one big difference
Ask a local-SEO tool for a business’s average ranking and you’ll usually get a number that sounds better than reality — because most tools quietly only average the points where the business showed up at all. SeoMap reports two different averages side by side specifically to close that gap: ARP and ATRP.
ARP (Average Rank Position) is the average position across the grid points where the business was actually found in the top 20 results. It’s a normal, useful average — but it only describes part of the grid.
ATRP (Average Total Rank Position) is the average across every scanned point, including the ones where the business didn’t appear in the top 20 at all. Those not-found points still count toward the average instead of being dropped from it. That’s the deliberate design choice: ATRP is built to be the honest number, the one that reflects the whole service area rather than just the part of it where things look good.
Why this isn’t a minor technicality
Picture a 7×7 scan — 49 points around a business. Say it’s found in the top 20 at 34 of those points, averaging position 4.1 there. Report only the ARP, and 4.1 looks like a strong result worth screenshotting. But at the other 15 points — just under a third of the service area — the business isn’t visible at all. Fold those points into the average the way ATRP does, and the number that comes out is meaningfully worse than 4.1, because it now reflects the whole grid, not just the favorable third-to-two-thirds of it that ARP was quietly built from.
Neither number is “wrong” — they’re answering different questions. ARP answers “how well do we rank where we’re visible?” ATRP answers “how well are we actually doing across the whole area we care about?” A business, an agency, or a client deciding whether local SEO work is paying off needs the second question answered honestly, which is exactly the gap ATRP exists to close.
Reading ARP and ATRP together
The size of the gap between ARP and ATRP is itself informative. A small gap means the business is found almost everywhere it’s scanned — strong, consistent visibility. A large gap means a business posts good rankings in a shrinking core area while losing visibility entirely at the edges — a pattern a single-point rank check would never surface, and one worth investigating alongside Share of Local Voice (SoLV), which shows the same coverage gap as a straight percentage instead of an average.
Both numbers come out of the same scan automatically — there’s no separate setup, extra credit cost, or toggle to turn ATRP on. Every plan from Starter up reports ARP and ATRP together on every scan, precisely so the not-found points never quietly disappear from the story.
Check the formula yourself
Use the ARP/ATRP calculator with ranks, NF and errors. SEOMap uses 21 for not found; the calculator reports technical failures separately.