How is a site really ranking when taking into account Google places?

[creativeguy]

When I do a rankings search for one of my sites on Google and it appears high in Google places, SEO Moz tracks this as its ranking - but is this its organic ranking?  My clients are wondering if things have changed and so am I?  Does ranking in the Google places/map appearing on front page of google count as your ranking for that keyword?

Client keeps ignoring the Google places ranking and goes looking for a placement farther down...

Please explain this probably simple question to me...

and if you have official Google references for this, please include them.

I appreciate it a lot...

be blessed

ben

[Cyrus-Shepard]

This is almost a philosophical question, like "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?"

In this example, if Google shows Places results in its regular SERPs, does it matter the format? Most would argue that a #3 position is #3, no matter how it's formatted. The general public won't recognize the difference, and all indications are that click-through rates are about the same.

Regardless, to answer your question about how SEOmoz tracks rankings, the PRO platform tracks rankings in a way that is location-agnostic which means that in most cases, localization isn't a factor and "traditional" Places listings don't show up.

That said, for many queries with local intent, Google will display results that mimic Places listings, like this result here.

Whatever Google returns as the result to SEOmoz crawlers, this will be recorded as your rank. So long answer short, the PRO platform doesn't distinguish between regular SERPs or Places SERPs, as long as those results are returned by the search engine for your query.

[RobertFisher]

Creativeguy,

The Places rankings and the organic are not the same. See Dr. Pete on Counting to 10 the Google Way

I have a lawfirm that is F in Google 7 pack for a specialty they have. So CertainLawfirm.com is in places for business bankruptcy. Further down on the same search in organic, they are ranked 5th. The url for that organic ranking is CertainLawfirm.com/business-bankruptcy/

So they are organically 5th for that keyword and they also show up for that term in Places.

Gets crazier every day and Dr. Pete does a great job explaining it.

Best

[ResslerMotors]

Most listing I see now are the hybrid ones.  Meaning they attached your Places page to your website, but the click thru still goes to your website. If that is the case, then that is where you now rank.