Do any Local Rank Trackers Report This Way?
-
I'm having trouble finding a local rank tracking service with useful reporting. I've tried several and for the money, have gravitated toward's Whitespark's service as for $25/month I can track unlimited locations. But their report is indicative of what I've seen time and time again in my 18-year experience as a Software Developer and Internet Marketer. Whomever is making the design decisions isn't a Seasoned (Local) SEO, and/or probably hasn't done their homework well enough by talking to seasoned SEOs.
Their Summary Report looks like this (see attachement).
When I'm doing Local SEO I'm looking at a lot of reporting data but among that, probably the most important is:
How many of the listings moved up into position #1-3 on Local Finder which is also usually the Local 3-Pack (sometimes a 2-pack explaining the discrepancy in the first two rows between the number in the #1-3 column.)
I also want to know how many listing moved UP into the #4-10. And vice versa, what fell out of #1-3 and #4-10.
The problem with the format of this report, if a listing falls from #2 to #5, it will be a decrease in #1-3 and an INCREASE for #4-10. This would give me the false impression that a listing that was below #10 came into the #4-10 when in actuality the increase in #4-10 was because of a decrease in #1-3!! One situation is positive the other is negative.
What I want to know is how many listings (totals without getting out the calculator):
- moved up into #1-3 (White Spark does this via the Increase column in the Local 3-Pack row)
- moved up into #4-10
- moved down out of #1-3 to #4-10
- moved down out of #1-3 to below #10
- moved down out of #4-10 to below #10.
Does anyone know of local tracking services that give you this kind of data in this way?
-
Hey there. I'm Darren Shaw, the founder of Whitespark. I do most of the planning and design of features for our software. I think I'm a decently seasoned local SEO, but I'm embarrassed to say that I hadn't considered what you are saying in this post. You're absolutely right that we should report ranking movements in the way you propose, and I will get my dev team working on it right away. We'll have this change implemented within the next couple of weeks. Thank you for the excellent suggestion! You can contact me anytime at darren@whitespark.ca if you have any other thoughts, questions, or suggestions.
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
-
Multiple Local Domains and Location Pages Question
Hello Everyone, So we have a priority site (domain.com) but also a geo-specific site for another location we have (domainNYC.com). Assuming both have completely unique content, different contact information and it’s justifiable to have a second domain (i.e. resources, brand/link equity…etc.) would it be recommend to also use the sub-folder approach on our primary (meaning domain.com/nyc)? And then potentially linking to domainNYC.com (just the once, not overdoing it)? Or just play it safe and keep them separate. Our concern is doing both sub-folder and separate domain might cannibalize on local searches resulting in us essentially competing with ourselves for those terms. The benefit would be leveraging the priority domain and driving visitors there. We could always ‘noindex, follow' the sub-folder page so users have access to the address on the primary domain too but wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts or suggestions as well as how it could pertain to linking (scarcely). We have found a lot of information on choosing one over the other but not as much for whether both is recommended so any extra insight would be very appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you in advance for the help! Best,
Local Listings | | Ben-R0 -
Do you need contact details (NAP) on every page of your website for local search ranking ?
We’ve got a clients site which doesn't have the contact details on every page, all the contact details are on the /contact page which is using the schema.org local business markup Some sites that our outranking us locally have their contact details on all pages, where as others only have it on the contact page also. Is having your contact details on every page a ranking factor for local search ?
Local Listings | | mike8780 -
The Local Stack Rollout - A New Day In Local
Hey There, all my fellow Local SEOs! Yesterday morning, I was searching for a car wash and was really puzzled to see my search return snack pack-style results, given that I wasn't looking for a restaurant, hotel or an entertainment venue. Sure enough, what I had run into was the rollout of Google's latest local SERPs, which for the sake of clarity, let's call the Local Stack. This is happening in multiple countries and across thousands of keywords and your local clients (or your local business) are likely to be affected by it, so I thought I'd post a heads-up here. Good Reading: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/08/06/7-pack-becoming-3-pack-with-mobile-like-snak-pack-rollout/ http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/08/07/thoughts-about-the-new-local-stack-display/comment-page-1/#comment-859275 http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/35481-goodbye-7-packs-only-3-packs-no-phone-address-all-local-results.html http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/35515-new-local-3-stack-local-pro-opinions-roundup-change-rocked-our-world.html That last one has a bunch more great links in it. In June, I wrote a post here on Moz itemizing my concerns about the Snack Pack and its impacts on the hospitality/entertainment industries. Now, these same concerns are coming to me local-search-wide, with the rollout of the Local Stack. My early days key points from looking at the new Local Stack: No phone numbers without clicking through to Local Finder, which I consider to be really poor usability, given the invention of the cell phone and the way we use it call businesses. No links to the Google+ Local page, meaning that consultants like ourselves may have a really hard time explaining the value of creating a Google listing when so few SERPs will now actually lead to that listing. 3 chances to rank when your city has dozens or even hundreds or businesses in a single industry seems next-to-impossible. It's not a good reflection of the diversity of the business scene in the real world. There aren't 3 Italian restaurants in San Francisco or 3 lawyers in Boston. There are scores of them. Google's Local Stack is a poor reflection of the real world, in my view, and makes every city look like a one horse town. On the other hand, the baldness of the Local Stack is making the 'more' link at the bottom of it really jump out at me, and if you click through, up to 20 businesses will show with the Local Finder. So, I'm a bit torn on this. Are the 4 businesses that just fell out of prominence with the removal of the 7 pack worse off or are 13 businesses now jumping for joy because they are in a sort of pack today that they weren't in 2 days ago? I guess this depends on how willing consumers are to click that 'more' link. Given the meagerness of the Local Stack, organic is likely a great deal more important now for every local business, but I'm concerned by SERPs I'm looking at which are mainly taken up by directories rather than any actual local business websites. So, those are some first thoughts from me and I would totally love to hear yours on this thread as you are trying to assess how you see this impacting your clients or your business. It's definitely a new day in Local!
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis4 -
SEO issues with Physician and Practice not ranking for their own names
I've inherited an SEO client who's got all kinds of ranking problems. Currently his name Dr. Laddis shows up for his old practice, Saratoga Cardiology Associates (http://saratogacardiology.com/) instead of his current one Cardiology Specialty Services (http://cardiologyspecialtyservices.org/ ) He's also showing up with a G+ for the old practice that's listed as closed. The 2nd listing is for his bio on the hospital page.(<cite class="_Rm">https://saratogahospital.org/doctor/theodoros-laddis-md-facc/ )</cite> Then come the usual Dr directories. His YouTube channel shows up. But his actual website isn't until the middle of the 2nd page. I'm also having similar issues getting the practice to show up in search (http://cardiologyspecialtyservices.org/ ). As I was coming on board, they also had a name change from Saratoga Cardiology Specialty Services to Cardiology Specialty Services. Their G+ local business page has the custom URL for Saratoga Cardiology Specialty Services but the name on the page is Cardiology Specialty Services. Their website is actually part of the hospital multisite with a URL redirect. While the site shows up for "cardiologist Saratoga" their G+ page doesn't show up.(https://plus.google.com/+Saratogacardiologyspecialtyservices/about ). I've also done on-page SEO and am still in the process of submitting to directories. Any thoughts on what the hangup is or what I can do to clear up this mess would be appreciated.
Local Listings | | IT-dmd0 -
Address Format for Local SEO
Hi, Ive been reading how important it is to get the address of a business consistent and written in the right format to help with Local Search Engine Rankings. Is this correct? If this is the case, are there any online generators to help create this html in the right format to put into a webpage. Thank you.
Local Listings | | Ampweb0 -
Default Local SEO question: Does Google really do improptu check ins?
I have a client who has multiple locations within his state, many of which are satellite offices. Although they don't have anyone working at these satellite offices full time, they have office space available to them their, someone who can take calls/mail and do use the space frequently in person. We've been in the process of cleaning up duplicate and incorrect listings in directories to get on the map in the SERPs in these markets, but the local SEO outfit we've hired has come back with a problem I found surprising. In order to clean up the duplicate & incorrect Google+ profiles that we've got out there for these offices, we evidently need to work with an actual Google moderator. This moderator has said that the satellite offices in question are actually not real business locations and are in violation of G+ guidlines. The local SEO I'm using says that it's not uncommon for Google to actually send someone out to do an in person improptu visit when they are suspicious that a listing might not belong in their listings, and I find this really surprising. Do any of you have any experience with whether this is the case? FWIW, this is a real business that could have someone working remotely in these offices remotely if that's what it took to make Google happy, but they'd rather not and certainly don't need to in order to offer their services in these markets.
Local Listings | | LeeAbrahamson0 -
Anybody know of a way to speak directly to a Senior Level Associate in the Google Maps Dept?
I have a client who's Places listing is marked as being permanently closed (has been for three weeks). We were ranking in top spot on local for 2 years +/- and now nothing. Nowhere. Where we do show up, it says permanently closed. (They are not closed). This is the response I received: "After investigating your problem, we've found that it is being caused by a technical issue and our engineers are pursuing a resolution. At this time, they do not have an estimate on when the issue will be resolved, but please know that they are actively working on improving the Google Maps and Google+ Local experience for our users." This was three weeks ago. Here is listing: https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Davis+Law+Firm,+LLC/@35.0796228,-106.6070767,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x4750748d0724dd7c?hl=en Any suggestions?
Local Listings | | jasonleerogers0