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booya. I think I was remembering an earlier iteration of this, perhaps before the GetListed acquisition. But that's essentially what I'm looking for. Thanks Rand. Don't know why I didn't see that particular link.

Have a good one. Take care of my home Seattle for me.

The 'Top Citations Sources' lists look the most familiar to me, but I could have sworn there was something like this that showed top citation sites not only by category, but also by their popularity in a specified state.... Maybe I'm misremembering. Maybe it was a dream. Pretty sure the phantom link came from you Rand, so if you don't know what I'm talking about then I'm definitely making things up over here. haha

Thanks

Rand and others have shared a link to a free service where you type in a state location and it shows a list of the most used local listings & review sites for that area. I can't find this service or link anywhere. Was this a service that was on getlisted.org that no longer exists??

Anyone know where it is or where it went?

Thanks Miriam, I appreciate the response, and the article you wrote.

Here's commiserating with all the other SAB SEO's out there who's jobs seem to get harder with each Google update!

Cheers

I realize this thread is a couple years old, but feel it's still a relevant topic. Also, insofar as there are two issues at play here, let me say I agree with Chris' assessment about client relations.

I also do SEO for service-area businesses, and have been working on localized landing pages for a few of my clients. I am not attempting to optimize for locations across state lines.

I've read the Google documentation and the forums at Webmaster Tools, and posts here on Moz, and I'm still unclear. I have two relevant examples of recent work I'd like people to weigh in on if possible... In both cases my list of places/ZIPs is prominently placed, nicely formatted, and (i think) useful for users.

Case 1: A service area page for a company that only serves NW Ohio. Below the fold is a section

Counties & ZIPs We Serve. Then a list of the counties, below each county is a list of the ZIPs in that county the company goes to. It's a construction contracting company that has a specific geographic range, and so we felt it would be best to be specific, so clients could find their County & ZIP before contacting. Is this KW stuffing to Google?

Case 2: For a page targeting a larger city that is known for valuing it's local neighborhoods and independent local business, I have a list of neighborhoods within the city that we're targeting with a note to readers, 'find your neighborhood...' Is this KW stuffing to Google?

Thanks in advance

This makes sense, and is a good way of framing it. Thanks very much.

Your answer here made me see that my two tests (Indianapolis and Rossville) actually showed somewhat different algorithm principles.

I understand that with the increase of mobile and thus 'conversational' voice searches, the inclusion of a place name is less and less common. Thus with the 'Rossville' example, since 'Rossville' is ambiguous and was not differentiated from other Rossvilles I can see how others might creep in.

Even so, I would think Google would be programmed to first see that my location is set in Rossville, IN, and thus conclude that Rossville, IN must be the one I'm referring to. If every search was done on mobile, then I can maybe understand seeing Rossville, PA, and Rossville, GA in the SERPs. But even then, not in position 1 and 2 before Rossville, IN, where I am located...

So, when I specified a very unambiguous place name (Indianapolis), while my location is set to that same unambiguous place (Indianapolis, IN), would Google's algos look outside of Indianapolis, like it did with Rossville? It turns out the inverse process is happening here (I think). I went back to look at the results for 'foundation repair indianapolis' and found that the listings were extra-localized, starting with businesses that have an indianapolis address, and moving concentrically outward from there.

But again, we rank highly when location is set to Indianapolis, IN, and simply search 'foundation repair'. Apparently in this case, when a search string does not specify disambiguated place-names, Google produces items related to {foundation repair} in the general vicinity of {indianapolis}, based on the inferred location data, instead of the other approach which yields limited results within the city. This is surprising to me (though beneficial to us).

I'm probably constructing too detailed of a process here based on just a couple small tests. I'd love any other input. And sorry for the novel!! I'm trying to work all this out. It's an interesting discussion though. I hope it's helpful to someone in the forums.

Thanks for responding Miriam! I really appreciate it.

I suppose my conclusions may not have been expressed well, or made some jumps. First, yes, I was actually really surprised by how strong the inferred location data influenced the results when no place name was typed in the search bar!

It's the second part that surprised me though; that when a location is specified in the search, that the typed location name seems to supersede Google's gathered ip location data. I didn't expect it to work this way -- especially not to the degree of bringing up #1 and #2 listings from totally different regions of the country! Does this make sense or am I still missing something?! Haha

I've seen quite a few threads that orbit around my questions, but none in the last year, so I'll ask it

I'm seeing some strange results when testing various keywords with and without locations included. For a foundation repair company in Indiana, we've optimized for all the big cities, since the company services the whole state. Here's a sample of weird stuff:

Test 1: If I set my location (all other Google 'helps' turned off) to Indianapolis and search

'foundation repair' result is #3

'foundation repair indianapolis' result is #20

'indiana foundation repair' result is #18

Test 2: Location set to the small town the company is based in (Rossville, IN)

'foundation repair' result is #1

'foundation repair rossville' result is #3 behind other companies located in Rossville, GA, and Rossville, PA!!

I suppose I was under the impression that the ip location data Google gathers would weigh more heavily than how place names are optimized as part of keywords (or just that the physical location would supplant the place name typed into the search if it happened to be the same). But according to these tests, it seems that inferred location is by far a secondary factor.

I can deduce that we're more optimized than our competitors for 'foundation repair', but less optimized for keywords with place names in them (we feel like we'd be verging on stuffing if we did more).

Am I missing something here? Has anyone else seen this sort of thing?