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Do different match types really "compete against each other"  I would think not.  Are you really saying if theres:  [some keyword] and +some +keyword  that Adwords won't only send the closest match type to the auction and ignore others, or, if the bid for [some keyword] is $1.00 and for +some +keyword is $10.00 then you are effectively bidding $10.00 on some keyword.  However this is rare someone would make the broad match bid higher than a closer match type, so in reality I don't see a realistic scenario where a broad match is "competing" against an exact match  to effectively raise the CPC.    If the broad match bid was $0.99 and the exact match was $1.00 the exact match still goes to the auction with $1.00 max CPC.  You only send one keyword to the auction correct?

I want to be clear that I'm not referring to a re-crawl, but a re-index.  Now I realize there are a gazillion ranking signals and most of the stronger signals are probably not on-page signals (although page title, headers, and anchor text combined is probably a relatively strong signal) so that for most situations, on-page changes are going to like move you from the middle of page 2 to top 3 (except for obscure - low competition long tail keywords of course.)

So is there a delay between re-crawl and re-rank (I'll use that term instead of re-index).  I also realize the rank can change based on changes on the other sites in the SERPS.  I suppose the re-rank delay could be verified by taking a 'sacrificial' page and totally changing the title, headings, and other on-page items to a completed different keyword theme and see how long it takes for the rank to go down for the previous keyword theme and up for the new theme.

I would think Google would quite possibly add a delay, even a random delay length, to discourage people from constantly requesting re-indexing of a single page to see the rank change.  Granted the change if any would be small since on-page signals as I mentioned are a sliver of the signal pie.  So most SEO's I would think would be of the opinion this 'trial-and-error' is a waste of time?

Well there's another 'mystery listing' in the same search now.  Same case, business is not in close proximity, no reviews, poor orgranic rank.  It is starting to look like indeed Google rotates in a random listing - sort of like it gives newer advertisers/ads some exposure in the Adwords auction to build some  analytics data to see how effective the ad is (to see if they can make some money off it.)

This sort of makes sense from the 3-pack standpoint because businesses listed there will obviously get higher CTR and then would be self-perpetuating so to speak so that if the 3-pack was solely based on reviews, organic rank, CTR, and other aspects, the businesses in the 3-pack would almost never change.  So they need to add some sort of random rotational function to give other businesses a "chance" to demonstrate their relevance.  So one of the 3-pack spots may be rotating newer listings despite have little or poor local ranking factors such as organic rank and reviews.  Just my educated guess based on lots of observations.

In Google Search Console, when you request the (re) indexing of a fetched page, what's the average amount of time it takes to re-index and does it vary that much from site to site or are manual re-index request put in a queue and served on a first come - first serve basis despite the site characteristics like domain/page authority?

In addition the schema on the contact page uses the address:

2310 Central Ave, Irwindale, CA 91010 USA

Also not Los Angeles

I found the Wild Rabbit company at one point (may still be) had an address in Duarte,  about 20 miles E/NE of Los Angeles.

Domain is registered in San Gabriel.

Business license has Woodland Hills and San Gabriel addresses.

If it's a proximity to center point thing I would guess they verified address is NOT one of these addresses.

Yes, that's an interesting observation.

Try searching: drone companies in los angeles ca

White Rabbit is still #2 but at least you see a more representative set of listings in the maps results.

Maybe the stark difference in map results between two very similar searches gives us a clue as to what's going on, but I've yet to figure it out.

One thought is for any city search Google has to use some specific location as the "center point" to determine proximity (for us users not physically in Los Angeles).  Maybe the actual verified address of White Rabbit is nearest the point Google is using for the center of Los Angeles?

Wonder if there is a way to determine what Google is using as the center point?

Okay, for those that want an example, I found a good one.

Search: Los Angeles Drone Companies

Why the heck is Wild Rabbit listed #1 in 3-pack?

They are listed position 13 in organic SERPS. They have no reviews. They aren't showing their physical address (so no pin on map).  They are in the HUGE market of Los Angeles. The don't have the words 'drone' or 'company' in their page title or content (only in their meta description). They aren't in any of the major directories (other than Yelp) like yellowpages.com or superpages.com

Baffling

Yes, we all realize there are most likely hundreds of ranking factors although I would guess the 80/20 rule applies that 20% of the ranking factors make up 80% of the "weight" in the ranking algo.

One thing we no for sure is that Google's objective is to provide the most relevant search results given the user's intention.  So for those of us that are intimately familiar with a specific business or subject area niche and all the players, we can compare the results to our human evaluation of what the real world situation is.  You may know company A is the leader in the category with the best service and value and a long-standing history, great customer kudos, etc.  So the results should steer you towards that company.

In my 17 years experience, i find it remarkable how on the mark the organic results are on Google.  It really puts Bing and other search engines to shame.  However I guess the point of this thread, speaking in general terms now, is that I'm not seeing that same AI ability transferred over to the local citation rankings on the 3-pack and Maps Search Results.

It's really in my mind not rocket science. Their organic algo IS rocket science in my opinion but tweeking it for local results is in my opinion a far simpler task by comparison.  (a) Take advantage of your existing algo and make that a large part of your local ranking, (b) make proximity to user's location intent much stronger, (c) make backlinks on authoritative local directories or organizations stronger (BBB, Dunns, Chamber of Commerce, etc.) (d) add a bit more importance to user reviews.

What other factors could be as important or more important than those from a local search standpoint?  This should be a fairly straight forward exercise in simple logic.

To me it looks like Google has not invested the same brain power in tweaking it's local rankings that it has in it's normal organic ranking algo and so going forward I would expect more significant changes to the local search algo by comparison.

First sorry for the typos.  I did come up with one difference I know of... citation age.  Site #4 is a newer business.  But it is in all the aggregators and has proper local schema markup.

No significant pattern regarding page length.  That seems to me would be another factor used in the regular organic results so wouldn't make sense Site #4 would rank so much better if it was being demoted on 3-pack due to page length.  Site #4 does beat out 2 of the 3 sites in the 3-pack for many other similar searches though.  So citation and/or domain age can't be that big of a factor.

I was always under the impressions that closeness to user's location was #1, most normal organic ranking factors was second most important, and reviews were last.

I guess another explanation could be the do some random round robin to agree similar to the Adwords auction in order to test CTR of newer ads.

Absolutely perplexed on the ranking factors for Google Maps (hence also the 3-pack in normal search results).

Are seeing search queries that return 3-pack and organic result like this and wondering why these sites are getting 3-pack preference?Not that sites 2 and 3 are no closer to the test user's location than Site 4.  All 4 sites have a street address showing.3-pack result:#1 - Site 1 - No reviews. Same distance as Site 4 to user. #2 - Site 2 - 1 review for 1 star. Farther from user than site 4. #3 - Site 3 - 2 reviews for 5-star average.  Farther from user than site 1, 2, and 4.#4 (not show in 3-pack) - Site 4 - 6 reviews with 6 star rating, closer to user than site 2 and 3.Organic results below 3-pack:#1 - Site 4#2 - Site 4#3 - Other site#4 - Site 1Sites 2 and 3 not in top 10 organic non-map resultsSo what would be the most likely ranking factors keeping making site 1-3 rank above site 4 in the 3-pack/map results?If on-page and backlink factors were at play, you'd expect to see sites 1, 2 and 3 higher than site 4, and in the case of site 2 and 3 at least in the top 10 of the organic results.  All sites were similar distance to the user.

We are doing some local SEO for our business which is in 10 cities.  We have built a city page with unique content for each city and linked to a unique contact page with contact information unique for each city.  The content on our existing page is fairly thin.  2/3 of it is the same amongst all pages as our services are the exact same from city to city so the description ad menu of our services.  Then 1/3 of the content is unique to the city which is a stock photo and 1-2 paragraphs of text containing about 175 words.

We have another chunk of content for each city which is probably 2-3 paragraphs but each paragraph will be short so probably in total 200 words in 1-3 paragraphs.  The subject of the content is related to one of the most popular search queries that are location specific.  For example, if we were a company that provided say, environmental remodeling services in city X, this second chunk of content might be about required building permits when doing remodeling in City X and how to get them, how much they cost.  If the original content on the pre-existing landing page is already pretty thin, is the SEO effect going to most likely be better to add the content to the existing page or, even though it's less than 200 words, add the content to a separate page and cross link between the main city page and the city contact page.