If I check in at my sushi joint, am I going to affect their rankings, and end up in a crowded sushi dive?

[RobertFisher]

In answering a question, I got to pondering something: When we check in with an app like a Yelp, does that affect the rankings? In other words, is more and more check in activity (assume without leaving any review first) going to have an effect like more and more click throughs? Has anyone done any type of study or measure of this? Thoughts? Ideas?

Interesting, Thanks,

Robert

[MiriamEllis]

Wait...doesn't EVERYONE read about SEO for fun???

Heh-heh!

Glad that was a good find for you, Robert!

Miriam

[RobertFisher]

Damn Miriam,

What do you do for fun...read SEO?!?!?! Thanks, you always find the gems. 
Robert

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Robert,

Funny topic, and a good one!

Chris Silver Smith wrote a good post on this last year, in which he states:

It may not ever be possible to know for certain if Google is using quantitative check-in data for calculating rankings along with all of their other factors. As Danny Sullivan has noted before about this kind of data, "correlation isn't causation“.

I think you'll enjoy this piece, Robert:

http://searchengineland.com/are-check-ins-a-local-ranking-factor-112222

I've not seen anything more recently than this that made me feel anything has changed since Chris wrote that, so hopefully, it will be a good read for you about the current feelings on check-ins. Hope you're having a good weekend!

[RobertFisher]

Loved your point re alpha and strange UI.

It all is something to ponder though. Thanks

[sprynewmedia]

The phasing made me chuckle...

Holding the obvious impact of normal conversations on marketing aside, one would guess higher positive social interactions would lead to a higher profile.

It wouldn't be a smart business strategy of these sites to not allow people to find hot spots but just continue to order by an arbitrary string of letters. (when you think about it, alphabetical order is really strange UI )

Given scheme.org has clear mark up for ratings,  I would further assume this would impact the SERPs, particularly in that location. This requires that the SE can see the data and that the site has sufficient trust/authority )

Testing this would be tricky however since you are talking about brick  and mortar places. It would be pretty elaborate and potential cruel to try making a fake restaurant out rank a real one. I would expect checkins from a single account would have limited effect or people would be gaming their listings.