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 to Do Local Keyword Research
I am familiar with how to do regular keyword research, finding opportunity based on competition, search volume, etc. For local search, do I go to all the trouble of finding hidden gems or just pick higher volume terms that have local intent. For instance: A search for "physical therapy" is a high volume term that Google thinks has local intent. If i pick a low volume national term, that has 11-50 avg searches per month, I have lower chances...and even less chance that someone is searching locally. What say ye? Nails
Local Website Optimization | | matt.nails0 -
What is the SEO effect of schema subtype deprecation? Do I really have to update the subtype if there isn't a suitable alternative?
Could someone please elaborate on the SEO effect of schema subtype deprecation? Does it even matter? The Local business properties section of developers.google.com says to: Define each local business location as a LocalBusiness type. Use the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible; for example, Restaurant, DaySpa, HealthClub, and so on. Unfortunately, the ProfessionalService page of schema.org states that ProfessionalService has been deprecated and many of my clients don't fit anywhere else (or if they do it's not a LocalBusiness subtype). I find it inconvenient to have to modify my different clients' JSON-LD from LocalBusiness to ProfessionalService back to LocalBusiness. I'm not saying this happens every day but how does one keep up with it all? I'm really trying to take advantage of the numerous types, attributes, etc., in structured data but I feel the more I implement, the harder it will be to update later (true of many things, of course). I do feel this is important and that a better workflow could be the answer. If you have something that works for you, please let us know. If you think it's not important tell us why not? (Why Google is wrong) I understand there is always a better use of our time, but I'd like to limit the discussion to solving this Google/Schema.org deprecation issue specifically.
Local Website Optimization | | bulletproofsearch0 -
Is there an SEO benefit to using tags in WordPress for my blog posts?
We have locations across the US and are trying to develop content so that we rank well for specific keywords on a local level. For instance, "long tail keyword search in state" or "long tail keyword search near 76244", etc. The goal is to develop those content pages via blogs to rank for those keywords. We are using Yoast and will be optimizing each post using that tool. My questions are: 1. Are there any benefits to adding a long list of tags to each post?
Local Website Optimization | | Smart_Start
2. If yes, do I need to limit the number of tags?
3. Do we need to block the indexing of yoast to those tags and categories for duplicate content issues? Any insight on the best way to optimize these blog posts with the use of tags or other avenues would be greatly appreciated.0 -
Looking for SEO advice
Hi, I have a website that has been built with SEO in mind from the beginning but it's failing to rank at all. We have checked everything and found nothing we see that would be negatively affected the SEO value. The link is http://www.fancydoorsedmonton.com/ Any insight on anything you may find would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | Web3Marketing870 -
Local food delivery SEO strategy
Hey guys, I'm working with a new company that doesn't have a brick and mortar storefront, they deliver. They basically deliver pre packaged smoothies in a VERY localized area (Vancouver, BC). I'm wondering how grandiose their goals should be re ranking for keywords that have non localized authority. What do I mean? Lets say their marketing pillars are "health education related to smoothies" "convenient veggies for smoothies" "(insert health benefit here) for smoothies". Should they be trying to compete for these keywords? Or should they really be trying to rank with keywords especially to Vancouver? Side note: What kind of effect does Country and Locality have on keywords that are generally used by content providers and not service related companies building out an inbound strategy? Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Anti-Alex0 -
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 -
Local SEO In A Different Language
I am pretty new to web design and SEO, so I am sure I have completely done this wrong. I work for a U.S. based equipment dealer and before I started working here my company incorporated in Canada under "(our main product) of Canada". Even before we had any SEO work done on our website, we ranked in the top 3 across Canada for our main product. The one exception to this was Quebec where we rarely got any traffic due to the language barrier. We started working to fix this last summer using the Montreal Consulate, our SEO company at the time and a translator. They each gave me the same French translation of our Company name and I had them translate the 8 most visited pages on our existing site. I then created a replica of our existing site, hosted it on the French translation of our name and started running inbound links to this site from our U.S. and Canada sites. The first thing I am wondering is if there's any issue with this practice? We have had good results so far and traffic from Quebec is way up across our three sites. The second issue I have is we just hired our first employee in Quebec and found a partner there. They are both adamant that the translation we are using is incorrect. I own the domain for the correct translation they are suggesting but I have no idea how to go about it. Any suggestions?
Local Website Optimization | | DohenyDrones0 -
2 Relevant local websites but closing one and redirecting it to an older site
We have 2 websites, 1 domain is about 10 years old and another is about 4 years old, the 4 yr old domain we are thinking of shutting down since its the same type of service we run but it was a 'keyword domain' that used to rank on 1st page but now its 4th page back. If we put the blog posts and other content + setup re-directs from the 4yr old domain to the 10 yr old domain, would this help the 10 yr old domain with more link juice that it might need for the extra boost? There isnt really any point having both websites up since both are about the same content and targeting the same local market.
Local Website Optimization | | surfsup0