Local Ranking Factors?
-
For Google, has anyone got a finger on how much of a factor the address type "service customers only at their location" versus "service customers at my business location AND customers location is" is as far as local search ranking especially for 3-pack results? (The former they hide the address the latter they show the street address) It seems to me the primary factors are obviously (a) proximity of user's location or location intent to the business location, then (b) natural organic ranking (age of business, domain authority, inbound links, quality content, relevance to the actual keywords searched for). But where does the address type rank amongst all the "secondary factors" like is business currently open, number of reviews and average rating, etc. etc. My guess would be reviews and average rating along with is business currently open would be third, and then address type would factor in - but for all I know the address type could be given much more importance than I am guessing?
-
Hi MrSem,
By open/closed for business do you mean a permanently closed business, or something you look up when it's after hours for a business? Any further details?
BTW, I mentioned I would have more coming soon on this topic of SAB challenges. Just published: https://moz.com/blog/sabs-decreased-local-search-visibility
-
Excellent insight Miriam which basically is confirming what my gut was. As you point out though, it really depends on how competitive the local pack is. But that's why I say "all other things being equal". I think it's safe to say if the competitor is the same proximity, reviews and ratings are equal and all other on-page and off-page seo signals total up to being equal, the business with the visible street address wins the tie and even beats other businesses with some better ranking factors in other areas but probably not many or very significant ones.
An interesting test would be, street address shown, versus currently open/closed for business. Which between those two do you think carries more weight?
-
Hi MrSem,
Awesome topic, and coincidentally, something I've been thinking about quite recently. Local Search Ranking Factors 2017 continues to cite hiding your address as a negative factor: it's #18 of the negative ranking factors section of the survey. There was a time in which it was extremely evident that hiding the address was dinging businesses (I'm thinking back to about 2010). Since then, I've personally felt that Google dialed this factor back, but the fact that some of my colleagues are still seeing enough negative impact from this for it to make it into the LSRF survey makes me suppose they are seeing things more frequently than I am. I can't assign an exact degree of negativity to this factor. In fact, it might vary from pack-to-pack, depending on the strength of the players.
Now, here's another twist to this. Hidden addresses are quickly become a really severe liability in a whole new way. When Google's Home Service Ads come to town, claimed listings for SABs who are complying with Google's hide-address guidelines appear to be gone from the local packs/local finders. Joy Hawkins has some examples of this here: https://whitespark.ca/blog/is-google-going-to-remove-3packs/ and I plan to write more on this topic soon. If you or your clients are being impacted by this artefact of the HSA program, I recommend watching Mike Blumenthal and Mary Bowling discussing this here: http://localu.org/blog/changing-landscape-for-service-area-businesses-sabs/
So, at this point, yes, I've got to declare hiding the address to be a behavior that can negatively impact service area businesses in a variety of ways, and it's quite difficult that compliance with Google's guidelines could appear to "punish" these business models, but that's about where we're at right now.
Hope my reply, and some of the resources I've linked to, help. And I hope our community will chime in with their opinions. I truly believe this topic deserves much discussion!
-
Hi Mrsem,
I imagine the address type isn´t a factor for local pack rankings because either one goes to local relevance and i cant see how one would be more relevant over the other. Say i am looking for a hairdresser, google shows a local pack with hairdressers in the area they identified i am searching from why would a business that "service customers only at their location" be more locally relevant than "service customers at my business location And customers location".just a different kind of service. No statistical data to back this up though. Will be interesting to hear other opinions on this.
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
-
Local SEO - 2 Locations
Hi SEO pros, If I'm undertaking SEO for a company which has a single website (no location specific pages) and 2 office locations I'm curious on a couple of points: 1. Obviously setting up 2 locations in GMB is a must, but in terms of citation building is it just a case of needing to input 2 citations into every directory (one for each address) 2. Link building - assuming this doesn't change much from when you're ranking for one location? 3. Schema markup - Do i need to create 2 x local business schema and input both into the headers? 4. On-page SEO - trying to rank for 2 locations I'm assuming is much more difficult as you can't optimise both location keywords throughout the site - does anyone know a way around this?
Local Listings | | Jack11661 -
This page should be ranking but it's not even in top 50
Please help! Ive been trying to rank this page https://www.visitmanchester.com/where-to-stay/hotels It appeared on age 2 for a day and disappeared again. It's like it's being algorithmically kicked out. Can anyone see why?
Local Listings | | Andrew-SEO0 -
NAP question and Google local.
Hello, My client has successfully grown one of their event venues locally (lets call it venue A) and on the back of that bought two more venues (B & C). Then created an umbrella company to manage all three. He now wants to market the umbrella company and so redirected the original successful venue domain (A) to the new umbrella company domain. The umbrella company is located at the same address as the original venue A. So it shares the same address, phone number, website as venue A but a different name. All this done before me. He has a Google local page for the original venue - venue A- and changed the domain on it to the new one. He also has Google local pages for the other two venue locations. But doesn't have a Google local page for the umbrella company. Now he finds rankings are down. Looking around I can see that his citations are all based on the original successful venue name A - but he has changed the website URL on many of the citations to the new domain.So a bit of a mess as we have a mixture of addresses, same phone number for all 4 , different business names for all 4, same website for all 4. If all the venues plus the umbrella company are in the same city, but have different names and addresses but the same phone number (for bookings) and web address, are they allowed a Google local page each? I suggest just having a Google local page for the umbrella company and remove the others as they are not actually separate businesses although they do have different addresses. But unsure if this is correct or necessary. Not sure how to progress with this one and any help appreciated?
Local Listings | | AL123al0 -
Local SEO For Agents
My company has local offices all over the United States, similar to what you would find with insurance, financial advisory services or real estate. We would like these individuals to rank in their local communities. A few questions: (1) Do we need to set up a unique local website for each of these agents or can we build a unique page for each of these agents on our main website. (2) Agent(s) within a city can each provide their services to individual in or near that city, but they don't offer their service regionally or nationally. (3) The agents are generally home based and while there is no concern having their phone number listed, there is some issue with showing a private home address. How does this limit local search and are there any alternatives. Thanks in advance
Local Listings | | APFM0 -
Local Citation Building Services Similar to Yext
I have several clients looking for local submission services similar to Yext (since they are already subsribers). Can anyone suggest a service similar to Yext for an SBO. Likewise, do any of you know any local citation services that are similar to Yext, but specifically for the hotel/hospitality industry? I was considering localeze.com, but I'm skeptical because I believe the citations I will be getting there will be similar to the ones I'm getting on Yext. Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Local Listings | | maxcarnage1 -
Local Citation with multiple offices
We have 5 different offices and each has its own google+ page and yell page. At first they were ranking poorly and the wrong offices were coming up for searches in that town so we change the name to :
Local Listings | | EJmoz
BusinessName (Location1)
BusinessName (Location2) Etc. those listing all starting to rank top for searches in Location1 and Location2. We have now been told that it is bad for our overall SEO to have the business name appearing differently in different listings and this led me to look at Moz Local. My question is should I remove the (Location1) from the Google+ business listing so that all our offices have the same name (but obviously different addresses) even though it appears to have a negative impact on rankings? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks0 -
My Google business show up on map but does not show up on list and local search on Google.com
Hello all, how are you doing ? My Google business show up on map but does not show up on list and local search on Google.com main keyword: nail salon in Sevierville tn nail salon in Sevierville pedicure in Sevierville nail salon in pigeo forge my website : www.sassy-nails.com http://plus.google.com/+Sassy-nails please help me that
Local Listings | | sassynailservice0 -
How do URL's influence Google Rankings?
Hi There, I have a new client who wishes to rank in Google UK for 'Antique Fireplaces London'. Currently they rank 49th. They do not know their logins for Google Local (where they have 40+ positive reviews). And have very mess social activity (which i am trying to sort out). The domain is around 8 years old - website has just been redone (drupal) where a lot of the former SEO errors were corrected) but they seem to be outranked by much newer websites that have much lower domain authority and less inbound links. My client also has much more recognition in online trade magazines and newspapers than most of their competitors. Would buying some additional domains with the keywords they wish to rank for help? Or will this look dodgy to google? Any other quick tips to give them a boost?
Local Listings | | skehoe0