How come I get different rankings on same word in local search results of Google?
-
Dear fellow Mozzer's, for one of my clients I get different local results in Google.
My client is a real-estate broker and when I search on "real-estate agent" + the city name we are on top. So whoohoo you would say BUT when Firefox has the exact city name determined as the location I am in and I only use "real-estate agent" I get also the local results but we are listed as number 8??
Hope anyone can give me insights as I have no idea what's causing this. Thanks in advance for your help!
-
You are very welcome, Mark!
-
Hi MIriam, thanks for answering my question, the article also looks promising, many thxz.
-
Hi Mark,
This is a good question about a common phenomenon. So, basically, you are performing 2 different types of searches.
When you search for 'real estate agent', by itself with no geo modifier, you are performing what I would call an 'organic search', and leaving any geo personalization up to Google. I'm not in the Netherlands, but this appears to me to work the same in the US. So, the local results you are seeing for a broad organic search like that are coming from Google's identification of your location, rather than a signal of intent you would be sending to the search engine by including a city name.
But, when you add your local city name to your query, you are clearly telling the search engine that you are interested in local results. This is actually a different type of search than the first example I've given.
Also, you can perform a third type of local search. For example, let's say you live in Los Angeles, but are looking for a real estate agent in San Francisco. You may, again, get slightly different results when you search for 'real estate agent san francisco' because you're not actually located in San Francisco.
So, each type of search is different, and Google is going to display somewhat different results for each query type.
I have a fabulous article for you to read more about this phenomenon. Here is Nyagoslav Zhekov's piece on this from August. Think you will really like it:
http://www.ngsmarketing.com/the-two-types-of-local-search-and-how-local-seo-should-reflect-them/
Read that through, as I'm sure it will give you some very good information.
So, basically, what a question like this boils down to is...if I rank at the top in one type of search, and lower down in a different type of search, what factors are at play that are affecting this? This will require an analysis of your own marketing efforts as well as an analysis of your competition. From this, you may be able to discover that in one set of results, on-page SEO strengths are enabling some businesses to outrank others, where as in another type of search, off-page factors such as proximity to centroid, linkbuilding, citations or reviews are the reason for some businesses outranking others.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Mark
Consider this
real-estate agent San Jose
and
real-estate agent
are not the same keywords. While you may search for real-estate agent from San Jose, the results are based on the actual keyword searched for.
Localized results do offer more "local" feeling but they do not auto append city names to keywords. Which would make since, you maybe in a suburb and not necessarily want to only see San Jose agents..
Hope that helps
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 rank an ecommerce site for search terms starting with how where why
Hi guys, I just got a new SEO job for an e commerce store, the client is asking to rank the site for keywords like where to buy used phone, where to sell my used phone for for best rates and so, the question is how can i achieve that, can anyone help me with some concrete suggestion? Thanks in Advance,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mkhurramali0 -
How to get product info into Google Search Result box
Hi, in the last couple of weeks I get more and more search results with a product and prices of retailers below (see sample attached). Are there Schema parameters one could use to have a bigger chance to appear there? Thanks in advance Dieter Lang 0EYJtRJ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Storesco1 -
Some sitemap xml apprears in google search
some sitemap, i have observed, that google is showing in the result for our website.. wht is wrong? any idea?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
How Google organic search results differ in Local Searches?
We all know Google displays nearby results by locating our ip address. My question is how does these results differ? For eg 1. If someone from Newyork search for "chinese Restaurant in Newyork" 2. Someone from California search for "chinese Restaurant in Newyork" 3. Someone from California changes his location to Newyork and search for "chinese Restaurant in Newyork" What are the factors the Google SERP looks into to display the result in local terms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rajeevEDU0 -
What can you do when Google can't decide which of two pages is the better search result
On one of our primary keywords Google is swapping out (about every other week) returning our home page, which is more transactional, with a deeper more information based page. So if you look at the Analysis in Moz you get an almost double helix like graph of those pages repeatedly swapping places. So there seems to be a bit of cannibalizing happening that I don't know how to correct. I think part of the problem is the deeper page would ideally be "longer" tail searches that contain the one word keyword that is having this bouncing problem as a part of the longer phrase. What can be done to try prevent this from happening? Can internal links help? I tried adding a link on that term to the deeper page to our homepage, and in a knee jerk reaction was asked to pull that link before I think there was really any evidence to suggest that that one new link made a positive or negative effect. There are some crazy theories floating around at the moment, but I am curious what others think both about if adding a link from a informational to a transactional page could in fact have a negative effect, and what else could be done/tried to help clarify the difference between the two pages for the search engines.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | plumvoice0 -
Can too many NoFollow links damage your Google rankings?
I've been trying to recover from a Google algorithm change since Sep 2012, so far without success. I'm now wondering if the nofollow on external links in my blog posts are actually doing me damage. http://www.smartdatinguk.com/blog/ Does anyone have any experience of this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benners0 -
Will changing a subdirectory name negatively effect local ranking?
We submitted a group of 50+ franchise stores into UBL to fulfill directory listings back in September. We are now looking at changing the some of the URL structure to include city names. Example: website.com/store/store-name(not city) to website.com/location/city-store-name Will changing the subdirectory and resubmitting to the directory aggregators negatively effect their search results? Thanks, Jake
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AESEO0 -
I have a .com site but I am only ranking good on google for Canada and not the USA.
We are located in Canada but sell our products world wide. We are ranking ok on google.ca but are not in the top 50 on google.com. Is it due to my ip address? Is there any tips that you can give me to help up my rating for google.com. Any info you can provide me with will be amazing. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | drewzal0