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
-
Pages canonicaled to another appearing before the canonical on google searches
Hello, When I do this google search, this page(amandine roses category) appears before the one it is canonical-ed to(this multi-product version of amandine roses). This happens often with this multi-product template, where they don't rank as well as their category version(that are canonical to the multi-product version). Can someone maybe point us in the right direction on what the issue may be? What can be improved?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | globalrose.com0 -
Google Search Console > Security Issues
Hi all, *Admin please feel free to remove or add this to any existing post. I have searched the community for any similar questions. While checking in the Google Search Console, under the "Security Issues" (lone section) I have found Google pointing out specific pages of our website where the message we are seeing is "Content injection - These pages appear to be modified by a hacker with the intent of spamming search results." The Learn More link takes us to https://developers.google.com/webmasters/hacked/docs/hacked_with_spam?ctx=SI&ctx=BHspam&rd=1 We've never injected spam code or have not been injected with any spammy code so what baffles me is why would Google pick this up when we have mentioned to them very clear that our code is secure and not hacked. Has anyone received a similar message and had any luck removing the message correctly? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SP10 -
Key word with city or town or local search for a nation wide website
Hi We need some expert advise here, we are dealing with batteries, tyres, online at nation level in india, and we have dealer registered with us at local places... and also we dont show the dealer details on the product page, once the order is recieved will be pass on the deal locally... we want rank well in the local key words search as many of times user search for "buy car battery in bangalore" here is bangalore is one location.. We want to develop one url like this www.abc.com/car-battery/bangalore/productname.html and also i will add breadcrumb like this car-battery>Bangalore > Productname which will be canonical to www.abc.com/productname.html (where product details are there). Pls suggest is this way i should go.. or??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
How to maximize CTR from Google image search?
I'm getting good, solid growth in my Google SERPs and Google search traffic now, but I do notice that 70% of my high ranking search results are images and the CTR on those is only 3-4%. All my images are illustrative and highly relevant to my travel blog, but I guess that hardly matters unless they get CTR so people see them in context. Has anyone seen or done any good research on what makes people click through on Google Image Search results? What are the key factors? How do you optimize for click-through? Is it better to watermark your images or overlay label them to increase likelihood of click-through? Thanks, Tony FYI the travel blog in question is www.asiantraveltips.com and a relevant Google search where I rank highly is "songkran 2016 phuket".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
How to Get Google to Recognize Your Pages Are Gone
Here's a quick background of the site and issue. A site lost half of its traffic over 18 months ago and its believed to be a Panda penalty. Many, many items were already taken care of and crossed off the list, but here's something that was recently brought up. There are 30,000 pages indexed in Google,but there are about 12,000 active products. Many of these pages in their index are out of stock items. A site visitor cannot find them by browsing the site unless he/she had bookmarked and item before, was given the link by a friend, read about it, etc. If they get to an old product because they had a link to it, they will see an out of stock graphic and not allow to make the purchase. So, efforts have been made about 1 month ago to 301 old products to something similar, if possible, or 410 them. Google has not been removing them from the index. My question is how to make sure Google sees that these pages are no longer there and remove from the index? Some of the items have links to them and this will help Google see them, but what about the items which have 0 external / internal links? Thanks in advance for your assistance. In working on a site which has about 10,000 items available for sale. Looking in G
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ABK7170 -
Only ranking well when "UK" is added to search term
Hi, what does it mean when a lot of our keyword phrases rank only when "UK" is typed in the search term? For example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Solid_Web
"boxes" (not in top 50)
"boxes UK" (38) "big storage boxes" (45)
"big storage boxes UK" (33) We haven't attempted to SEO the pages for search terms with "UK" appended to them. Our domain is a co.uk domain. So, what reasons could there be that are we ranking in such a way?0 -
Duplicate content across hundreds of Local sites and they all rank #1
Usually when we discuss duplicate content, we're addressing the topic of penalties or non-indexing. In this case, we're discussing ranking high with duplicate content. I've seen lots of dental, chiropractor and veterinarian sites built by companies that give them cookie cutter sites with the same copy. And they all rank #1 or #2. Here are two companies that do that:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | katandmouse
http://www.rampsites.com/rampsites/home_standard.asp?sectionid=4
http://mysocialpractice.com/about/ The later uses external blogs to provide inbound links to their clients' site, but not all services do that, in fact, this is the first time I've seen them with external blogs. Usually the blog with duplicate copy is ON SITE and the sites still rank #1. Query "Why Your Smile Prefers Water Over Soft Drinks" to see duplicate content on external blogs. Or "Remember the Mad Hatter from the childhood classic, Alice in Wonderland? Back then, the process of making hats involved using mercury compounds. Overexposure could produce symptoms referred to as being" for duplicate content on chiropractor sites that rank high. I've seen well optimized sites rank under them even though their sites have just as much quality content and it's all original with more engagement and inbound links. It appears to me that Google is turning a blind eye on duplicate content. Maybe because these are local businesses with local clientele it doesn't care that a chiropractor in NY has the same content as one in CA, just as the visitor doesn't care because the visitor in CA isn't look at a chiropractor's site in NY generally. So maybe geo-targeting the site has something to do with it. As a test, I should take the same copy and put it on a non-geo-targeted site and see if it will get indexed. I asked another Local SEO expert if she has run across this, probably the best in my opinion. She has and she finds it difficult to rank above them as well. It's almost as if Google is favoring those sites. So the question is, should all dentists, chiropractors and veterinarians give it up to these services? I shudder to think that, but, hey it's working and it's a whole lot less work - and maybe expense - for them.0 -
How can we get a site reconsidered for Google indexing?
We recently completed a re-design for a site and are having trouble getting it indexed. This site may have been penalized previously. They were having issues getting it ranked and the design was horrible. Any advise on how to get the new site reconsidered to get the rank where it should be? (Yes, Webmaster Tools is all set up with the sitemap linked) Many thanks for any help with this one!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d25kart0