Places ranking for a non-locational phrase?
-
http://www.google.co.uk/search?ie=UTF-8&q=coach+hire&pws=0&gl=GB
The link above takes you to a SERP for a general phrase with no hint of locations involved (Coach Hire).
However oddly enough there is a single google places listing that has pooped up at #4.
Liverpool Minibus Coach hire
<cite>www.localcoachhireuk.co.uk/</cite>
Now if this was "Coach Hire London" I would expect places, and indeed there is a list of places.
But how do you get a places listing ranking for a phrase without a place name?
Also of interest is the fact that this website doesn't even exist! It is a 301 redirect to another site.
Google seems to be picking up the 301 since it shows the redirected site in the page snapshot and has no pages indexed for this domain.
So an un-indexed site with a 301 redirect is #4 for the top phrase in this industry. I have no doubt that this will only be a temporary thing but it would be interesting to know how it was possible.
-
The recently leaked google doc seems to have the answer.
#9 here explains it (partly) - still frustrating though that black hat redirects are working!
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/16-insights-into-googles-rating-guidelines
-
The thing is that this site isn't even indexed since it doesn't have a single page - only a 301 redirect.
They only SERPS they appear in are a few places spots, 2 of which I have found that the search phrase doesn't have any locational elements in.
I had been of the understanding that places results only appeared when you have a place in your search phrase but this seems to dispel that theory.
-
I assume the rank well for the term and in general, have all the googles places filled out correctly. but i am only guessing, i have wondered myself and others simular. I dont think it temporary either.
I would point out report a problem to google. Dont let others have an unfair advantage.
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
-
Seem to have dropped completely out of the rankings
Hello there, I have a site that seems to have totally dropped out of the rankings i.e. it is now not even ranking for the name, at which it has been number 2 forever! In Moz Pro it is at 0% visibility and no keywords being ranked. No big changes in terms of the site, the pages appear to be being indexed and as far as I'm aware no dodgy backlinks. The only change lately is that we have linked it to Google Console, added 2 content pages and done a Google Adwords campaign. These pages have been used as the landing pages for this campaign - could that have had this effect? Could this be a RAG (Random Act of Google) or something else??? The site is homefarmlogs.co.uk. The is also a homefarmlogs.com - could this be causing a problem??? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Best wishes, Sarah.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Frog-Marketing1 -
Evolution of rankings over the course of time
Hello, Has anyone got experience on how rankings behave to climb all the way to the top once your do a redirect and change the design and content of your page entirely ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Page rank and menus
Hi, My client has a large website and has a navigation with main categories. However, they also have a hamburger type navigation in the top right. If you click it it opens to a massive menu with every category and page visible. Do you know if having a navigation like this bleeds page rank? So if all deep pages are visible from the hamburger navigation this means that page rank is not being conserved to the main categories. If you click a main category in the main navigation (not the hamburger) you can see the sub pages. I think this is the right structure but the client has installed this huge menu to make it easier for people to see what there is. From a technical SEO is this not bad?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AL123al0 -
Wrong Pages Ranking
Good Afternoon We had an issue a while ago with the incorrect pages ranking in Google for some of our key terms. For example the page ranking for the term in Hotels in Spain was an individual information page for one particular hotel in Spain rather than the top level page which is optimised for "Hotels in Spain" The individual property page was ranking around 36-40 so we tightened up all the internal linking structure to ensure the term "Hotels in Spain" was pointing to the correct page and de-optimised the individual property page for the term. After a few weeks, everything seemed to be working and we were ranking top of second page for correct page however, ranking report today has reversed our good fortune and the incorrect page is ranking in a low position Any further suggestions or advise would be very much appreciated. Ideally, I don't want to remove the page that is ranking as it's still relevant for a search for that particular hotel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ham19790 -
Reclaiming Ranking positions in Google
We have a website we are working on that was ranking well in Google but since having a hosting upgrade has completely dropped in rankings. When a hosting upgrade was made, the developer added an incorrect robots.txt file that restricted the site from being found, hence resulting in lost rankings. We have since sorted out that issue so the robots.txt is OK. However, ranking results have yet to be reclaimed. We are unsure why these rankings haven't rebounded back, as it has been a while now. The site is https://www.brightonpanelworks.com.au. We have since also attempted to add a sitemap however to help the site be better crawled and to regain rankings, however, it appears that sitemap generators are having problems creating a sitemap for this site and we are not sure why. And we are not sure whether this may relate to why Google has not picked up on pages and ranking results have not be restored. If you have any ideas as to how we can reclaim rankings to the strong positions they were in previously, that would be much appreciated. We believe we may be missing something here that is not allowing webpages to be picked up and ranked by Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo0 -
How to rank if you are an aggregator or a directory of resource?
Most of the SEO suggestions (great quality content, long form content, engagement rate/time on the page, authority inbound links ) apply to content oriented site. But what should you do if you are an aggregator or a resource directory? You aim is to send the user faster to other site they are looking for or provide ranking about the resources. In fact at a very basic level you are competing for search engine traffic because they are doing same things. You may have done a hand crafted, human created resource that is better than what algorithms are showing. And your site likely to have lot more outgoing links than content. You know you are better (or getting better) since repeat visitors keep coming back. So in these days of Search engines, what a resource directory or aggregator site do to rank? Because even directories need first time visitors till they start coming back again.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maayboli0 -
Compare the rankings
Hi All, I have an example 2 domains are targeting the same keyword, one of them ranks higher then another. Here is the image from OSE http://www.freeimagehosting.net/udq2f Would you be able to tell ( based on the image )which of the domains is winning , "domain 1" or "domain2" and what exactly the " looser " should do to improve its rankings Rgds Webdeal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal0 -
Suggestions for good ranking
Hello, My blog http://www.pakearning.com/ was having page rank 1 and now its doped to 0 and less ranking, please review my site and help me how can I improve ranking and traffic ? Suggest me what to do for best ranking ? Directory submission ? articles submission ? also for home page, how much keywords are good ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | softcorner0