Hey There!

Thanks so much for taking the time to contribute to this discussion. The geographic variations you mention sound normal to me, but the issue of the companies consistently ranking highly for no apparent reason is interesting. Are you saying the search is yielding a onebox (just one result) or a normal pack? Is the name of the business an exact or close match of the keyword phrase you're searching for? Is the business right in the middle of a cluster or similar businesses? Sounds like a good puzzle!

Good luck, Jason!

Hey Jason!

So glad those tips helped you identify an industry centroid that may be a contributing factor. Way to go! Some thoughts on this:

1. Go into this knowing that it can be VERY difficult to overcome something like this and that your best bet here is likely to be a full, professional audit by a skilled Local SEO consultant. A good place to look for one is the Contributors box on the right side of last year's Moz Local Search Ranking Factors. Here are some questions for you to ask yourself, either for your own purposes, or to share with a consultant.

2. Are you 100% certain that you are located inside of the official city limits? As I mentioned on your other thread, do the Maps lookup of your city name and be sure you are inside of the pink city border instead of outside of it. If you're outside, then the goal of ranking in the Local pack for that city/keyword combo is likely out.

3. If you are inside the city borders, how far are you from the industry centroid? Are any other players as far away as you are and still ranking in the top 10 or so results?

4. If so, do an audit of any competitor that is as far away as you are, but is managing to rank in the top 10 on the Map. Identify every piece of information you can that might be contributing to their rank (age, domain authority, reviews, vibrant content, citations, etc.). Mine this data to see if there is a pattern or a weakness you can identify that you would be able to use to your advantage, with the goal of helping you get into the pack.

5. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the industry centroid is the sole cause of what you are experiencing. If you're outside the city borders, then, yes, that's probably the main cause, but if you're inside the borders, a business which is supremely strong enough should have hope of overcoming an industry centroid bias. But, remember, there may be multiple causes contributing to low rankings.

6. Finally, don't forget that user-as-centroid is likely to overcome industry-centroid bias, in that your customers who are physically closest to you on their phones may be seeing a different set of results, which do include you.

Just some quick thoughts. Hope they help!

Hi Kristen,

Yeah, I just don't think Google+ really caught on the way Google might have hoped. But Posts could totally be interesting, if it becomes widely available.

Hi Blake,

What I'm suggesting with those links is that you need to do a thorough analysis of any competitor to discover whether their high rankings are a case of geography, organic strength, reviews, citations and a host of other factors ... or, if the pack in question has been spammed. If the former, you then know what the factors are that are contributing to rank and can identify which factors (if any) you can target to surpass the competitor. If the latter, then you can always report spam to Google. There are believed to be several hundred factors that contribute to rank, and a Local SEO or local business owner who is feeling astonishment over being outranked by what appears to be a weak competitor needs to sit down and put the time in to discover whether these high rankings are the result of strength that Google is responding to, or the result of spam that Google is failing to catch.

In the scope of a forum, it's not likely that a community member is going to be able to take the time to do a full competitive analysis for you, so I'm hoping the links I've provided will get you started on doing one. I totally get how frustrating it can be to find your business or your client's business in this scenario of being outranked, but fortunately, we can use skill to divine the probable cause of this outcome and, hopefully, figure out how to overcome any issues, whenever possible.

Hope this helps!

Hi Blake,

These 2 threads may help you diagnose competitors' rankings:

https://moz.com/community/q/do-you-know-what-s-triggering-your-local-packs

https://moz.com/community/q/top-local-organic-rankings-but-nowhere-to-be-found-on-google-snack-pack

Hope these help!

Hey Bob,

Thanks for clarifying, and this does not surprise me:

I added keywords to the business titles of Google My Business listings and I saw a big improvement on categories the business didn’t already appeared on.

Good to test this out, but also important not to leave it that way, as adding extraneous keywords is a guideline violation (one which Google may not catch for years, but which they will definitely red flag once they notice it). So, your test confirms what is very easy to see in the local packs - that business title spam is still very much a ranking factor and that Google is still not up the task of policing this.

On the advice from the Google rep, yeah, they really shouldn't have been telling you to post on Plus, given the divorce of local from Plus, unless they felt your business model fits the whole communities thing Google is now promoting with that. Plus has kind of died in terms of its usefulness to local businesses, unless they fit a very specific model. Personally, I'm feeling a lot more excited about this new Posts things. Have you seen this: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2016/03/04/googles-newest-social-sharing-environment-google-posts/

It's a limited test right now, but it could be game-changing. Thanks again for the detailed response, Bob!

Hi Bob!

Thanks so much for joining the discussion. Are you saying you added keywords to the business titles of Google My Business listings and saw a rise in rank/visibility? Or are you saying you removed keywords? Just want to be sure I'm understanding.

Was the chat with Google support desk some months ago? Google has disconnected Plus from Local, so I'm concerned you may have received outdated advice from Google's support, if it's the case that they are still telling people to post on Plus.

I'd love to hear more, on both points.

Hi Kristen!

Wow - yes! That's exactly the type of case I find interesting, too. Sadly, as you point out, the old keyword-stuffed business title can still boost a business, despite the guidelines (and, is, of course, something one could report to Google!). I like that you've noticed those authoritative links. Could be a real factor there. It would be interesting to know what would happen to these results if the naming violation were reported and acted upon. You could actually track that and see, then, if that had been the main factor, or if the authoritative links were still enough to keep the business ranking highly.

I'm very appreciative of you contributing what you've noticed, and hope we'll hear more from others

Hey To All My Local Pals, Here

Recently, I watched a totally fascinating LocalU video in which Mike Blumenthal introduced a hypothesis that there may be a way to analyze what, specifically, is triggering a specific local pack. Now, Mike is stating that correlation is not causation in explaining this, but basically what he starts talking about at around 4:40 in the video is that what you are seeing rank well in the local packs may be demonstrably caused by what you see ranking organically beneath the pack, or may be caused by totally different signals.

Mike says,

_"If you're seeing the top 10 results are all IYP industry sites, and there's a pack showing, and the highest local site is 24 or something in organic, it's unlikely that that's what's triggering the pack. And so then you want to look at third-party triggers and see if that's what's actually triggering the pack." _

Obviously, all of us who do Local are familiar with the idea that a tremendous variety of elements contribute to pack rankings, but I am particularly intrigued by the idea of looking at the organic result beneath a pack and determining that there is little or no correlation between them, and this then driving one to look elsewhere for contributing factors.

In a recent response to another thread here on Q&A, I discussed some common local pack ranking failure causes when organic rank is high. What I'd love to see is whether, if you look at some of your clients' desired packs, can you tell if organic signals are driving them, or can you see that it's not organic signals driving the pack, as Mike suggests. What, in those cases, does appear to be driving the packs?

I'd be so interested in a discussion on this. What do you see? What do you think of Mike's suggestions?

Super! So glad it helped. Spammers beware!

Hi Eric!

You are right on that Bing's guidelines are actually pretty similar to Google's. Just wanted to take a second to mention, though, that the practice of creating fictitious suite numbers is not recommended and not necessary. Back in the day, Google did have the worst time parsing out individual practitioners or businesses at a shared address, with merged listings often resulting. This is no longer the case; Google has really improved in being able to parse this out, provided practitioners follow some basic safety steps like obeying naming conventions, having unique phone numbers, choosing different categories and ensuring that each practitioner has his/her own landing page on the website.

The recommendation to create fictitious suite numbers stems from the days when merging was such an issue, affecting thousands (millions?) of medical practices, legal practices, real estate firms, etc. in their ability to list themselves properly on Google. But, these days, it's much more important to be sure that you're only listing a real-world address, and you can do so with pretty good confidence that Google will understand that lawyers A, B and C all work at 123 Main St, and that the listings won't merge, provided you've followed all the guidelines to the letter.

Hope it helps to know this, and I hope you'll keep participating as we all continue learning Local together - a never-ending process!

Hey There!

Yes, I so agree ... Bing's guidelines are very spare, but they do allow practitioner listings, just like Google. Here's an example in the wild:

Practice: http://www.bing.com/mapspreview?&ty=18&q=ERA Herman Group Real Estate Denver CO&ss=ypid.YN873x122958186&ppois=39.7200508117676_-104.957397460938_ERA Herman Group Real Estate_YN873x122958186~&cp=39.720051~-104.957397&v=2&sV=1

Practitioner:http://www.bing.com/mapspreview?&ty=18&q=Greg Nelson ERA Herman Group Denver CO&ss=ypid.YN873x8442726587853295792&ppois=39.719539642334_-104.957099914551_Greg Nelson ERA Herman Group_YN873x8442726587853295792~&cp=39.71954~-104.9571&v=2&sV=1

Best practice: just as with Google, be sure you've got a unique phone number for each agent (not shared with the practice or any other agent) and be sure you're linking practitioner Bing Places to practitioner landing pages on the website. Also a good idea to not share categories, whenever possible.

I'm with you in wishing Bing's guidelines spelled things out more clearly, as Google's do.

Hi Richard,

Sounds like good old spam to me, from your description. Definitely report it. This should help:

http://imprezziomarketing.com/seo-blog/google-maps/new-way-to-report-issues-on-google-my-business/