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
-
How do Nation wide business win Local?
For example, this site https://www.kvetinyhned.cz for selling flowers is ahead of the sales of local stores that have a site but aimed only at sales in a certain area of the store
Local Website Optimization | | Martin11Martin0 -
Local SEO Over Optimization
We are targeting a bunch of services for our local business that works in and around their location. I'm concerned about over optimization and need some guidance on whether these points should be resolved. The company is based in a city and works mostly in the city but also in the surrounding areas. Currently, the site has 6 services pages (accessible via main nav) targeting the same location i.e. “Made Up Service London”, “Imaginary Service London” (with URLs and H1 tags etc. in place containing this location). However this is soon going to become 9 services pages, I am concerned that the repetition of this one location is starting to look spammy, especially as its where the company is based. Initially, I also wanted pages targeting the same services in other nearby areas. For example “Made Up Service Surrey”, “Imaginary Service Essex”. This has not happened as the info available has been too sporadic. I was going to add links to relevant case studies into these pages to beef up the content and add interest. To that end, we came up with case studies, but after a while, I noticed that these are also largely focused on the primary location. So out of 32 case studies, we have 19 focused on the primary location again with URL’s and H1 tags etc containing the location keyword. So in total, we have 25 pages optimized for the location (soon to be 28 and more if further case studies are added). My initial feeling was that the inclusion of pages targeting services in other locations would legitimize what we have done with the main pages. But obviously we have not got these pages in place and I question whether we ever will. What is my best course of action moving forward?
Local Website Optimization | | GrouchyKids1 -
Local Site Linking to Corporate Site In Main Menu - Bad for SEO?
Hi, We have 'local' websites for different countries (UK, DE, FR, AP, US etc.) and a corporate website, the local websites are going to be linking back to the corporate website in the main menu (think about us, terms and conditions kind of pages). Any local products will have their own pages on the local website but global products will be linked back to the corporate website. We will be placing an indication the user will be going to another website next to those menu links that go to the corporate website. Is there any drawback to this for SEO? Should we use nofollow in the menu structure of regional websites for these links? Thanks for your help.
Local Website Optimization | | UNIT40 -
Need an Local SEO's expert opinion regarding a client trying to improve their rankings.
I have a business i'm working with right now who wants to improve their rankings in a very competitive legal niche. Are there any Local SEO gurus out there that would be willing to explain in a paragraph or two what's going wrong? Let me know if you'd like to help and I'll PM you the domain.
Local Website Optimization | | BrianJGomez0 -
Which is the best, ".xx" or ".com.xx" in general and for SEO?
Hi, I'm working for a digital marketing agency and have traffic from different countries. We are planning to make different websites for each country. What is the best SEO practice to choose the domain between ".xx" or ".com.xx" from Spain, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru?
Local Website Optimization | | NachoRetta
I think that the ccTLD is better always, for example ".es" better than ".com.es"0 -
How can i optimize my pages for local areas if we are not in that area?
Hi Mozers! So I watched a video about Matt Cutts he talks about creating multiple web pages just for one keywords is an absolutely no go. So I was wondering we serve a clients in NZ Australia and USA, If we target phrase like Psychic Readings California, Psychic Readings San Diego etc (USA) Psychic Readings Melbourne, Psychic Readings Sydney (AU) Psychic Readings Auckland, Psychic Readings Wellington (NZ) What is the best practice or right way to go about structuring my pages to do this without going against googles guidelines. Many thanks
Local Website Optimization | | edward-may1 -
Does building multiple websites hurt you seo wise? Good or bad strategy?
HI,rategy. So I spoke to a local Colorado seo company and they suggested to find whatever keywords is the most searched under my GWT's and put .com behind it and build other sites for other keywords. I was curious about this type of strategy. Does this work? This seo guy said I could just get a DBA bank account and such for each domain name etc. I am not wanting to mislead anyone, but I am curious if for the sake of promoting other services, if creating other websites with partial and EMD's are worthwhile? Another issue I worry about is if I put my companies phone number, then next thing you know there is 3 or 4 sites that use that same phone number. To me this does not build trust with Google. But being I am learning, maybe this is a common strategy, or doomed from the start. Just curious what you think. Would you build other sites to try and rank for other services? Or keep one sites and maximize it? Thank you for your thoughts. I just do not want to pay $3000 per site if it will hurt not help.
Local Website Optimization | | Berner0 -
Local SEO Tools for UK
Hi guys I'm looking for any recommendations for local SEO tools in the UK? I keep stumbling across a variety of different tools but they all seem to cater for the US market only. Any tools or tips would be greatly received!
Local Website Optimization | | DHS_SH0