URL ranks in US pretty well except in target city area. Please advise.

[Davit1985]

Hi everyone,

I have a weird problem that has been bothering me for the last few months. One of our urls:

https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html

Ranks for keywords such as "car service to lax", "lax car service", etc. It does pretty well from any location that we check: page 1, position 5-7. But here is the interesting part, when a searcher in actually in Los Angeles it does not show up at all, even on page 4. So if you're anywhere else in USA you'll see our landing page on page 1 position 5-7 but when you're in Los Angeles where we actually want the people to see the landing page it's no where to be found. I added our local office address at the bottom, also added a link to our local Yelp page hoping that might send some kind of signal to Google but as of now no luck. Has anyone experienced anything like this and what is the solution? What do we have to do to fix this weird problem.

Thanks in advance

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Davit,

I see! Yes, I do think you should start a new thread specific to technical issues, as they are different than the original scope of this thread. You could get some fresh eyes on it!

[Davit1985]

HI Miriam,

The problem we were discussing before goes away when you 301 redirect a url to a new one.  Even if you change one letter or something of that sort. At least that is a shot term solution that we found after running many tests. Regarding the text on the site, we are keeping it the same for the time being as majority of our business 90% plus is done in DC and by changing the text of the home page we will for sure lose a lit of traffic. We will make the changes once ready. La and other markets were tests and we have to take it slowly to ensure our day to day business is not negatively effected by drastic changes.  As you suggested i created a now topic and hope coders will be able to answer some of my concerns.

[MiriamEllis]

Hello Davit,

Nice to hear from you again, and good for you for investing in your website.

My apologies, but I'm not a code writer, so I'd not be the best person to ask about this.

I reviewed this whole thread before looking at your new website, and while the layout is certainly nicer, I'm still seeing some of the same issues we highlighted with the website homepage clearly focusing on DC, when your issue was that you wanted to do better in the LA area. I'm also still seeing some need for the text, itself, to be edited.

I recommend that you start a new thread here in the forum to specifically ask coders to come look at the technical issues that are concerning you. I'm sure you'll receive helpful replies. Wishing you good luck!

[Davit1985]

Thank you.

[MiriamEllis]

Sounds good, Davit. And if you're unable to find a company you're satisfied with, DM me. I can likely make a referral for you to somebody good.

[Davit1985]

Thank you Miriam,

I will take all your suggestions into consideration and fix them one by one. Regarding the site redesign we are currently actively searching for a good agency to work with, it has been 3 months of searching but  so far the companies that we find are offering simple sites and we're looking for someone that can provide what we're looking for.   Thanks again for your in depth research and help.

[ClaytonJ]

Hi Davit

Reviewing this as intriguing.

Agree with all above, it is likely your site in circa July/August 2018 received a penalty or was re-evaluated (downgraded) by google. The decline last year over a month - July/August was about 25% for customer queries your site was ranking for - not perfectly aligned with the medic update, but it is close. The irony is applying the upgrades to the medic update, many detailed above - should place your site in a better position for long term growth.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Davit,

Thank you for the follow up. I'll number my replies again, for organizational purposes:

1. I think we're fairly safe in assuming that the distance of your business from Google's automatic Maps zoom level is playing a role in this. I actually have to zoom OUT (not in) to begin seeing competitors in your neighborhood show up in the local finder, so, I think we're safe in saying you are falling outside of Google's automatic radius for these queries for both local and non-local users. Only remedy for this would be to get a new office in a better location.

2. I also confirm that when I take myself to the Little Armenia area of the map, you do begin to show up.

3. That being said, in spending some time looking at your business these past few days, I am seeing a few things that I want to surface for your consideration:

• Your website is not doing a good job right now of sending local signals. It may be confusing Google that you have a listing for Washington DC pointing to your website home page where it's not clear that you're located in Washington DC and it's also mentioning that you are in Los Angles. I would highly recommend overhauling your homepage content to mention both locations, and then create a unique page for each of the two offices, optimized only for each respective office. Right now, when I go to your website, I feel like I have no idea where your company is and Google may be feeling confused by this, too.

• I mean this very kindly - your website could use some work to appear like a world-class entity. Both in terms of visual presentation and text, right now, your website is not representing your business as professionally as it deserves. Car hires can be a luxury affair, and that luxury feeling just isn't present yet on the site. So, investments in this could be important for you.

• So many of your competitors who are ranking for these terms either have exact match business names or are altering their names to appear to match (which is spam, and if you see cases of this, report it). So, this is one thing that could cause you not to perform quite as well, with your business name. DCAcar isn't a keyword, but there's not much you can do about this unless you were to legally rebrand your business.

• So many of your competitors are listing themselves as physical businesses instead of SABs, getting pins on the map and the appearance of greater solidity. I don't have the time to explore this in-depth, I'm afraid, but I wondered while I was taking a look how many of the businesses with visible addresses actually qualify to have their addresses visible. I recommend you look at that, and determine whether what I'm assuming is your business being run out of a residence could also be holding you back in some way.

• I didn't immediately see duplicate listings for your business, but it's harder to surface them for SABs. This would be worth looking into or having a good local SEO dive into for you.

• I'm concerned that Check Listing is surfacing almost no citations for you. It won't surface GMB because you're an SAB, but have you not done much work creating citations? https://moz.com/local/details/JTI1NUIlMjUyMkRDQWNhciUyNTIyJTI1MkMlMjUyMjkwMDI3JTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyRENBY2FyJTI1MjIlMjUyQ251bGwlMjUyQyUyNTIyOTAwMjclMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjI4ODg4MDA4MTMwJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIydXMlMjUyMiUyNTVE

• Point for point, there are metrics in your Google Business Profile that need to be brought up to competitive levels. You need more reviews. You have no Q&A. Your description about the east coast doesn't make sense and could be making LA users think you are on the east coast. You need lots of good quality photos, etc. It's great you're using Google Posts, but your overall profile deserves some more investment.

• If you are seeing fluctation in when you appear/don't appear on an ongoing basis, remember that Google does test things and could be doing quite a bit of testing in your industry/highly-populated local. This doesn't rule out a problem, but it's something to keep in mind.

• Finally, I want to reiterate that what I'm doing here isn't a substitute for an audit. I'm taking a glance instead of diving deeply to discover if there could be any type of penalty or other problem associated with the business. I do recommend that you take all of the above into consideration, but that you also find a really qualified Local SEO to conduct a full audit for you. What we've done here is to get a basic picture of things that might be barring you from achieving your ranking goals, and we've identified some areas where you can improve, but I hope you can take this to the next step of hiring a heavy hitter to create a professional audit for you and found a strategy for you on its more thorough findings.

Thanks for the chance of taking a look! I hope this has been useful.

[Davit1985]

Hi Miriam,

Please see below our findings from last night.

Desktop Location is LOZ FELIZ

Car service to LAX Desktop/Organic checked till 5 page-None,Desktop/Local with untouched map-None, Desktop/Local with map moved to Little Armenia - 1st page 3rd hit,  Desktop/Local zoomed out(5km) - 2nd page 7th hit---Car service to LAXMobile/local - zoomed in to East Hollywood and Atwater Village are 5th, Mobile/organic - None---Car service near meDesktop/Organic. checked till 4th - None, Desktop/Local - 1st hit----

Car service near meMobile/Organic - None, Mobile/Local - 1st hit.Please let me know if you need anything else.

[Davit1985]

Hi Miriam,

Thanks for your patience and your help, it mean the world to me. Sorry for getting back to you late. But we are getting conflicting results from the same location. We will be doing another test today and I will compose a detailed report of our findings tonight or the latest tomorrow. Thanks again,

Davit

[MiriamEllis]

Good eye noticing this, Don_Quixote. I planned to mention that very thing in following up with Davit after learning his response to my question. I see what you do, that the street address appears to be residential, with no business signage. It's totally fine to run a business from home, though, as long as you are just using one location to do so and not using multiple residences to make the business appear like a true multi-location entity. Good eyes on that, though!

[ClaytonJ]

Hi, intriguing, can I inquire - do you know precise date or approximate date your client disappeared from the SERP in local search.

Is there a reason why no google map on the contact page?  Also the address looks like a "non-business" address..  is it a genuine business at that address?

[Davit1985]

Miriam,

Thank you for looking into our problem and spending your time to do some research. I am currently in Washington DC but my LA fleet manager will be back for work on Monday I will ask him to do the search and get back to you right away. I did the same thing you did from Washington DC and when searching for "car service to lax" I get exactly the same result as you. There are there pages for the local pack but we are no where to be found. In organic I see our url ranking in #4 on page 1 that might be a bit biased as google might rank us higher since it knows we always click on our url. I also conducted another search just for fun.

I searched for "car service from lax" the same thing almost except instead of "to" we use the word "from". I see our site on position #4 but in this instance there is no local results. Google shows local results when searching to LAX but not FROM.

The only way I can see our business in local results is by searching "car service los angeles" I find us on the page 4 of local results.(4th tier). Again a terrible place but at least it comes up. To tell you the truth I am not much worried about the local at this time, I was just confused why the organic result is such a mess.  I think if we get an office close to LAX we will fix the problem with  local results at least I have that feeling but I just can't understand the organic situation at all.

I will write to you again Monday or Tuesday with our findings. Again thanks a million and enjoy your weekend.  I think if we get an office close to LAX we will fix the problem with

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Davit,

Thank you for reading that other thread. It immediately came to mind in reading your question, and when I see more than one report of mysterious ranking behavior, that's when I begin to wonder if Google has created some kind of new filter or is even experiencing a bug. The behavior that both you and the other poster are describing that is similar is that you rank well when searching from other parts of the country, but not from the business' own location. That's definitely mysterious, but the details of your business will tell us whether the scenarios are related or totally dissimilar..

Likely, you need to have a full audit done, Davit, and a forum can't replace investing in that, but let me take a quick gander here and tell you what I see:

1. Searching from my location in NorCal for "car service to lax", I see you ranking 7th organically.

2. You are not in the local pack for this search, and clicking through on the pack to the local finder, I am not finding you in the 3 tiers of results at the automatic zoom level. So, this counts as a pretty strong organic ranking but a strangely absent local ranking.

3. I zoom in one level on the map. Google shows me two tiers of results and you are not there. I zoom in two levels, and you're still not there. I zoom in a third time and you are still not there, and Google is showing me irrelevant results like a UPS store and an auto parts store. On my 4th zoom, Google is showing me just two results, and they are irrelevant to my search - an automobile club and an auto parts store. So, what I've learned from this step is that your business does not appear to be suffering from the known earmarks of the Possum filter, which can result in filtered rankings at the automatic zoom level if two businesses are located near one another and share the same category. Rather, your business never appeared in the local finder no matter how many times I zoomed in.

4. Next, I'm looking at your address in comparison to the address ranking #1 in the local pack. Google tells me that you are 23.6 miles away from your top competitor which is listed as LAX Town Car Service at 1 World Way, Los Angeles, CA 90045. You are 26.9 miles away from the #2 business, LAX Car Service -MGCLS located at 7828 Kittyhawk Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90045. And, you are 23.9 miles away from business #3, LA Confidential, at 101 World Way, Los Angeles, CA 90045. We've just learned that your business, located at 5322 Russell Ave #27, Los Angeles, CA 90027 is well over 20 miles away from the competitors Google is ranking in the local pack for me, as a distant searcher. You are not even in the same zip code as these three brands.

5. Now, let's look up "los angeles" in Google and look at the map. You are 6.8 miles from Google’s centroid of the city which is located near City Hall at 200 N Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Your top competitor is even further away from City Hall, at a distance of 18.6 miles. So we are definitely seeing more an industry cluster than a city centroid cluster for your core search term. These are kind of old concepts, but sometimes I still find them to be applicable. You are within Google’s mapped boundaries of “los angeles” and are not in that cutout area they are making around Hollywood. So, city centroids and mapped borders are not excluding your from rankings, but significant distance from Google's industry cluster of businesses for your search term could be a factor.

6. Exploring that last concept further, at the automatic zoom level for your search the furthest away Google is going for a listing for your search term is Flat Rate Car Service in West Hollywood at 8000 Sunset Blvd #45, Los Angeles, CA 90046. It is 12.1 miles from your top competitor on World Way. So, we see that, at least for my search from my location, Google is not setting a search radius that would include you in it, at 23.6 miles away from the top ranking business. From this, it’s reasonable to state that you may simply be too far away from Google’s 12 mile cluster of businesses for my search term. Good information.

7) However, all of the above being stated, the fact that you don’t come up at all no matter how many times I zoom in on the map is still sticking with me. If I am not able to see you in the local finder for my search at a great distance from your business and you are not able to see yourself in the local finder from your searches within LA, but you are ranking #7 organically, it’s at this point that I begin to become concerned that a local penalty of some kind could be at work. So, now, I want you to do something for me. I want you to search for this same term, “car service to lax” while standing inside of your place of business on Russel Ave. and verify for me that you are unable to find yourself AT ALL in the local pack. Then click through to the local finder and observe the results carefully, zooming in one level at a time, as I did in the above exercise. Tell me if you are not seeing yourself at all, even if you zoom in as many levels as Google allows you. Come back to me, please, and tell me what you see.

[Davit1985]

Hi Miriam,

Thanks a lot for your quick answer. I did read the whole thread but I am thinking our situation is a bit different. Let me explain why. Also frankly I did not find a solution to the problem either:)

1st the site was not redesigned, total number of links per Link Explorer is 52. 29 followed and the rest no follow. No manual penalty in our Google  Search Console. I have checked that many times. Also same question as you raised in the other post why would we rank for the keyword all over USA but not in LA if we were under some kind of penalty. The anchor text for those few links seems pretty diversified. We do have some exact match keywords but a very small percentage of total. I am a Moz PRO member for almost 5 years. Would it be possible to have someone look into our situation to shed some light on what is happening here. It would mean the world to me. If you need any other info I would love to post it here or I can send it via email privately.

Thank you,

Davit

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Davit,

Hmm...what you are describing sounds so much like this other recent thread. Please, read through this and let me know whether what it's describing is the same as what you're experiencing, or, if it's different, how so: https://moz.com/community/q/local-seo-penalty