What Mystery Local SEO Factors Are At Play Here?
-
Absolutely perplexed on the ranking factors for Google Maps (hence also the 3-pack in normal search results).
Are seeing search queries that return 3-pack and organic result like this and wondering why these sites are getting 3-pack preference?Not that sites 2 and 3 are no closer to the test user's location than Site 4. All 4 sites have a street address showing.3-pack result:#1 - Site 1 - No reviews. Same distance as Site 4 to user. #2 - Site 2 - 1 review for 1 star. Farther from user than site 4. #3 - Site 3 - 2 reviews for 5-star average. Farther from user than site 1, 2, and 4.#4 (not show in 3-pack) - Site 4 - 6 reviews with 6 star rating, closer to user than site 2 and 3.Organic results below 3-pack:#1 - Site 4#2 - Site 4#3 - Other site#4 - Site 1Sites 2 and 3 not in top 10 organic non-map resultsSo what would be the most likely ranking factors keeping making site 1-3 rank above site 4 in the 3-pack/map results?If on-page and backlink factors were at play, you'd expect to see sites 1, 2 and 3 higher than site 4, and in the case of site 2 and 3 at least in the top 10 of the organic results. All sites were similar distance to the user.
-
Well there's another 'mystery listing' in the same search now. Same case, business is not in close proximity, no reviews, poor orgranic rank. It is starting to look like indeed Google rotates in a random listing - sort of like it gives newer advertisers/ads some exposure in the Adwords auction to build some analytics data to see how effective the ad is (to see if they can make some money off it.)
This sort of makes sense from the 3-pack standpoint because businesses listed there will obviously get higher CTR and then would be self-perpetuating so to speak so that if the 3-pack was solely based on reviews, organic rank, CTR, and other aspects, the businesses in the 3-pack would almost never change. So they need to add some sort of random rotational function to give other businesses a "chance" to demonstrate their relevance. So one of the 3-pack spots may be rotating newer listings despite have little or poor local ranking factors such as organic rank and reviews. Just my educated guess based on lots of observations.
-
In addition the schema on the contact page uses the address:
2310 Central Ave, Irwindale, CA 91010 USA
Also not Los Angeles
-
I found the Wild Rabbit company at one point (may still be) had an address in Duarte, about 20 miles E/NE of Los Angeles.
Domain is registered in San Gabriel.
Business license has Woodland Hills and San Gabriel addresses.
If it's a proximity to center point thing I would guess they verified address is NOT one of these addresses.
-
Another thing I noticed about the original search is that there is heavy filtering going on at the automatic zoom level of the map. Once you zoom in, tons of other companies appear. So, this could point to Google lacking confidence in these results.
I found this pack interesting enough to share with Mike Blumenthal, who smartly pointed out the Google has no category for "drone company". Just a theory, but this could possibly be leading Google to have to rely on the signal of what is in the business title, and the company ranking #1 has added the keyword "drone" to their title (though it doesn't appear to be part of their legal business name, and is, of course, then not allowed). So, this could have something do do with the mysteriousness of this pack.
To see the centroid of a city, look it up in Google and click on the map. The spot where Google has placed the city name is the centroid. In this case, the centroid of LA is in the extreme east of the city borders. The company we're looking at lists no address on its GMB listing or website. The website just shows a map of LA. The GMB listing describes the business as being in Glendale, which is a bit to the north of the centroid. You could compare this to the revealed locations of the other two companies and see what you think. It's a good question you've raised.
At any rate, there seems to be a lack of Google confidence in these results.
-
Yes, that's an interesting observation.
Try searching: drone companies in los angeles ca
White Rabbit is still #2 but at least you see a more representative set of listings in the maps results.
Maybe the stark difference in map results between two very similar searches gives us a clue as to what's going on, but I've yet to figure it out.
One thought is for any city search Google has to use some specific location as the "center point" to determine proximity (for us users not physically in Los Angeles). Maybe the actual verified address of White Rabbit is nearest the point Google is using for the center of Los Angeles?
Wonder if there is a way to determine what Google is using as the center point?
-
Hey, that is a good mystery pack! Something seems odd about it. Do you notice that even when you click through on the map, there are only 3 companies, total, showing in the local finder view? Are there really only 3 drone companies in LA? I find that very hard to believe. For some reason I can't identify, Google is acting like it only knows of 3 such companies that match the query. I was expecting to see dozens of them upon clicking through to the local finder view. So, something is odd there.
-
Okay, for those that want an example, I found a good one.
Search: Los Angeles Drone Companies
Why the heck is Wild Rabbit listed #1 in 3-pack?
They are listed position 13 in organic SERPS. They have no reviews. They aren't showing their physical address (so no pin on map). They are in the HUGE market of Los Angeles. The don't have the words 'drone' or 'company' in their page title or content (only in their meta description). They aren't in any of the major directories (other than Yelp) like yellowpages.com or superpages.com
Baffling
-
Hi SEO1805,
Without seeing the actual result, this is shooting in the dark, but I'd look at filters (Possum), factors like domain authority, and the possibility of spam either positively or negatively impacting the results.
If you can share the SERP you're looking at, that might help us dig down a bit deeper on this.
I also recommend doing a complete competitive analysis between the site ranking #1 and the one you are marketing. (See: https://moz.com/blog/basic-local-competitive-audit)
-
Yes, we all realize there are most likely hundreds of ranking factors although I would guess the 80/20 rule applies that 20% of the ranking factors make up 80% of the "weight" in the ranking algo.
One thing we no for sure is that Google's objective is to provide the most relevant search results given the user's intention. So for those of us that are intimately familiar with a specific business or subject area niche and all the players, we can compare the results to our human evaluation of what the real world situation is. You may know company A is the leader in the category with the best service and value and a long-standing history, great customer kudos, etc. So the results should steer you towards that company.
In my 17 years experience, i find it remarkable how on the mark the organic results are on Google. It really puts Bing and other search engines to shame. However I guess the point of this thread, speaking in general terms now, is that I'm not seeing that same AI ability transferred over to the local citation rankings on the 3-pack and Maps Search Results.
It's really in my mind not rocket science. Their organic algo IS rocket science in my opinion but tweeking it for local results is in my opinion a far simpler task by comparison. (a) Take advantage of your existing algo and make that a large part of your local ranking, (b) make proximity to user's location intent much stronger, (c) make backlinks on authoritative local directories or organizations stronger (BBB, Dunns, Chamber of Commerce, etc.) (d) add a bit more importance to user reviews.
What other factors could be as important or more important than those from a local search standpoint? This should be a fairly straight forward exercise in simple logic.
To me it looks like Google has not invested the same brain power in tweaking it's local rankings that it has in it's normal organic ranking algo and so going forward I would expect more significant changes to the local search algo by comparison.
-
First sorry for the typos. I did come up with one difference I know of... citation age. Site #4 is a newer business. But it is in all the aggregators and has proper local schema markup.
No significant pattern regarding page length. That seems to me would be another factor used in the regular organic results so wouldn't make sense Site #4 would rank so much better if it was being demoted on 3-pack due to page length. Site #4 does beat out 2 of the 3 sites in the 3-pack for many other similar searches though. So citation and/or domain age can't be that big of a factor.
I was always under the impressions that closeness to user's location was #1, most normal organic ranking factors was second most important, and reviews were last.
I guess another explanation could be the do some random round robin to agree similar to the Adwords auction in order to test CTR of newer ads.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Proper SEO structure for Franchise/ Franchisee websites
Hi Neighbors, Franchise website design and development can be difficult, there’s no doubt about it. I had to find the right balance between a unique and unified brand identity, and a localized experience that accurately reflects the individual franchisees and their efforts. Due to the many benefits, I have structured the to read _domain.com/location _ domain.com = TLD /location = subfolder (location page) I have also built a customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) and have given each location access to manage their location page (subfolder). To accommodate local SEO optimization, franchisees have complete control in terms of optimizing their location page (subfolder). Title tags, meta description, Alt tags, etc... Will any local optimization performed in the subfolder (location page) be stiffened because it was not done in the TLD but in the subfolder ?
Local Website Optimization | | Jeffvertus1 -
Raise in ranking but drop in visibility, also question about wordpress themed SEO
Hello,
Local Website Optimization | | SharonEKG
my first question is, i started working in August on a website for furniture repair and services that is a local business and who ever setup the website and did the SEO before me implanted the front page content and many other pages in the theme itself, we got Yoast premium and i mostly get bad rank of the page both from Yoast and Moz im guessing because it is simply cant find the links and content that is on the page since it is in the theme code. should i recommend the company to do a makeover and move everything to the actual wordpress page?
Also many changes has been made to the website, too many to track and i have seen in the past month an continues drop lower and lower of our visibility, but yet in the past week and half huge jump in some rankings. some of them are for hard to rank keywords, a jump of sometime 20/30+ up the ranks.
since i dont have a track of all the changes has been made, is there a way to know what cause it? Also one last question,
i have implemented google tag manager and been configuring it for the past month and now i have finally getting close to track all metrics we would like to track, i have removed all google analytics codes that i knew of and managed to find through search through the theme and plugins but yet when i fire up tag assistant it shows two codes the tag manager and analytics, i know it could interfear each other or give false/double readings. is there a way to track it and remove it? i have went through all theme files.. and cant find it.. Thanks!0 -
Page Title Local SEO - 2 places
Hello guys, I am from azores are 9 islands in portugal. I live in São Jorge is one island. My question is. If one person seach by Azores Canyoning or São Jorge Canyoning. Because Azores is one region and São Jorge is one island inside Azores. And i want have this two exact keywords in title page. Canyoning is a service. Azores Canyoning - São Jorge Canyoning | Brand Name what is best way to write this title? Or is not good?
Local Website Optimization | | Flaske0 -
Local SEO - Multiple stores on same URL
Hello guys, I'm working on a plan of local SEO for a client that is managing over 50 local stores. At the moment all the stores are sharing the same URL address and wanted to ask if it s better to build unique pages for each of the stores or if it's fine to go with all of them on the same URL. What do you think? What's the best way and why? Thank you in advance.
Local Website Optimization | | Noriel0 -
Does multiple sites that relate to one company hurt seo
I know this has been asked and answered but my situation is a little different. I am a local electrical contractor. I specialize in a service and not a product. Competition is high in the local market due to the other electrical contractors that have well seasoned sites with very good DA/PA. Although new to the web I am not new to the trade. Throughout years almost back to the AOL dialup days I have been collecting domain names for this particular purpose. Now I want to put them to good use. Being an electrical contractor, there are many different facets of work and services we provide. My primary site is empireelec.com A second site I threw online overnight with minimal content is jacksonvillelightingrepair.com. Although it is a fresh site, there is minimal content and I have put almost zero effort in to it. It appears to be ranking for keywords a lot quicker. That leads me to believe I should utilize my other domain jacksonvillefloridaelectrician.com and target just the keyword Jacksonville Florida Electrician. It leads me to believe I should use jacksonvillebeachelectrician.com for targeting electricians in jacksonville beach. And again with jacksonvilleelectricianservice.com I can provide a unique phone number for each site. Am I going about this all wrong? Everything I read says no,no,no but I feel my situation is a little more unique.
Local Website Optimization | | empireelec1 -
Improving SEO with no blog
I have a client who understands the value of content for SEO - however getting them to provide some content has proven an impossible task. I've tried every way to make it easy for them. I've offered to come over to their office myself and see if I can just take 15 minutes of their time and record their answers to a few questions. The response is that's a great idea, we'll set up a time...and no time is ever good. So I've thought, what can I do without them? Unfortunately, their industry is so technical and so niche I'd need to have a law degree to even begin to understand exactly what they do, and as they are in law it's probably better to have no content than content with something even slightly incorrect in it. For now, all I can do is summarize and share news from a government website to their social media accounts. It's not highly effective. Their on-page SEO for the main site is completely optimized. I've placed them in every free listing I can possibly find - both industry and local sites. I have them update me on any local events, conferences and/or trade shows they attend for possible backlinks. What else can I do? I suppose I fear that if I can't provide them any additional results, they will stop seeing the value in SEO services, and I'd have a hard time disagreeing as I can't think of what else to do for them. Thanks for any help!
Local Website Optimization | | everestagency1 -
Local SEO for National Brands
Hi all, When it comes to local SEO in 2015, I appreciate that having a physical location in the town/city you wish to rank is a major factor. However, if you're a national brand is it still possible to rank for local searches when you're based in one location? The reason I ask is that, although our service is national, the nature of what we offer means that it is not inconceivable that people would search for a local variation of our top keywords. Other than the standard things - location in the content, the H1/H2s, title tag, meta description, url etc. - is there anything national businesses can do to help? Thanks in advance. John
Local Website Optimization | | NAHL-14300 -
How to approach SEO for a national umbrella site that has multiple chapters in different locations that are different URLS
We are currently working with a client who has one national site - let's call it CompanyName.net, and multiple, independent chapter sites listed under different URLs that are structured, for example, as CompanyNamechicago.org, and sometimes specific to neighborhoods, as in CompanyNamechicago.org/lakeview.org. The national site is .net, while all others are .orgs. These are not subdomains or subfolders, as far as we can tell. You can use a search function on the .net site to find a location near you and click to that specific local site. They are looking for help optimizing and increasing traffic to certain landing pages on the .net site...but similar landing pages also exist on a local level, which appear to be competing with the national site. (Example: there is a landing page on the national .net umbrella site for a "dog safety" campaign they are doing, but also that campaign has led to a landing page created independently on the local CompanyNameChicago.org website, which seems to get higher ranking due to a user looking for this info while located in Chicago. We are wondering if our hands are tied here since they appear to be competing for traffic with all their localized sites, or if there are best practices to handle a situation like this. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | timfrick0