How to rank well in Google Maps (local)

[bragadocchio]

Hiya,

My ears were burning.

I'm working on trying to translate another three of those recent Google patent applications which are specifically about local search into a little more easily understood language. I'll probably post something longer on my blog, but try to get some discussion about some of the aspects of them happening here and elsewhere.

[earlpearl]

I reviewed about five different terms in Google Local/Maps trying to discern any reason for a site ranking higher or lower in Local rankings and why certain businesses tend to rank higher or lower than their distance from a starting point.

The only constant was that local references wherein a site's address and/or phone number seem to be requisite to "get in the game" and get a site ranked similarly from a starting point as other competing businesses/sites.

Bill Slawski describes these references in one of his blog posts; http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=245

I compared a number of different businesses and locations. Even a few references with address/phone number are sufficient to receive ranking in local that is roughly commensurate with the distance from a starting point. Lack of references tends to drop a site toward the bottom of a list.

I discussed this in more depth at seorefugee.

Of further interest, a few references and entry into local provide a site with dramatic visability within Google Local/Maps even without active optimization for the site/location.

For instance my business/site competes on roughly equal footing with a local competitor within Google Local with the difference in whether one ranks first being the distance from the starting point. My site has a reported 8 times as many local references as the other site.

Additionally I searched for the two businesses within the organic searches using a combination of the business service and the major city we service.

I looked at a variety of organic searches using the city name and the exact phrase for the service that was used in Google Local. I varied the searches with service first city second and city name first business service second.

While my bus ranks 1st across the board the other business ranked below 100 in each case for organic results.

Google Local is an excellent way to get some good visibility even without optimizing the site for organic results.

Dave

[A.N.Onym]

I agree that local search hasn't been yet either been deeply analyzed by the SEMs or has not been thoroughly discussed as other topics (such as duplicate content, for instance).

I don't think there should be algorithmic differences between the organic Google SERPs and Google local/maps, because their aim is to the same thing - to provide relevant information. When the search query includes a geographical term, they should return basically the same information.

I haven't yet experienced with targeting the local search myself, but I suspect that you can reap more by targeting the long tail of locality. That's what you have been munching on lately, I suspect, by mentioning your counties, cities, etc. It'd be interesting to know if you mention all the counties, cities and even streets (this one is interesting in particular) on your website and what changes to your SE traffic it may bring.

But I don't agree you don't need to optimize your site to get listed in the local search. You still need to provide as maximum local information as possible for your visitors (not the search engines).

And yes, I did forget to mention that you could benefit from using local geographical terms in the incoming linking text to gain some benefits. However, I am getting an impression that simply working on one thing won't get you an instant boost in Google. Work on all aspects of your website and then, maybe, you'll get up in Google SERPs.

The point of not leading to another forums looks like good manners to me, if we can discuss the stuff here (Hello, Bill ). If anything, it'd be fair to discuss the local search at SEObytheSEA

[earlpearl]

AN:

I look at this stuff pretty extensively. My SEO focus derives out of a regional business that I operate.

I looked at 5 different phrases using Google Local/Maps. In each case sites w/references (not necessarily links in all cases) received "preferential treatment" (ranked higher than sites w/out references).

I only took a hard look comparing organic local rankings versus Google Local/Maps rankings for one phrase. Its one where my business competes.

While my biz has over 70 "references" and the other site has 9 they seemed to be treated equally within G Local. Either site would rank higher contingent on the distance from a starting point.

On the other hand I compared rankings for organic searches using the business term I used in the Google Maps/Local search and using the location as Washington DC. I did a number of regular searches for those combinations with the business term first and either Washington DC or DC second and then did a series of searches w/the geo description first. I checked on the other site's ranking using McDar's keyword tool. In each case the competitor was ranked under 100.

It would be great to learn of other examples. My comment was based on one observation.

On a side note, Michael Martinez has twice written at SEOMOZ that there have been reports coming from Google that they used up to 200 indicators for Serps. He subsequently reported that there were up to 300 indicators.

I'm guessing, based on looking at Local SEO for some time that these many additional indicators might be utilized in various "sub categories" such as Local, wherein Google established some methods, different from general SEO, to establish rankings.

I'm just suggesting this may be a case where that is in play.

I'd love to learn of other observations and experiences with this.

Finally, my site is fairly well optimized for the generic business and locally. The site has many first page results for relevant industry terms in all 3 engines and many #1 rankings for relevant geo/business terms in the 3 major engines.

The most qualified traffic comes from a long tail of many phrases combining geo terms and relevant business terms. It is extraordinarily long tail. While I may see roughly 1,000 searches/month for these long tail combinations It would be surprising in any one month to have more than 20 visits from one specific term. The site is optimized for the industry, and geographically for DC, Maryland and Virginia including the full state names and the initials.

With that in mind no one phrase dominates. Actual Local Traffic from G, Y or MSN Local is comparable to the most popular for any single phrase.

Overall Local usage and traffic to the site represents about 1% of all searches. In that the combination of geo phrases and business terms are roughly 1/3 of all searches, Local comprises about 3% of the most qualified searches. In that regard it is as important as any one phrase.

Of course this is from only one site. I review a number of other local sites on which I assist but don't look at them as closely. Statistics are roughly similar.

My experience is that G, Y, or MSN Local are small but incremental enhancements to a local site. At this time users don't often turn to Local.

This is similar to the studies that suggest about 1% Local Usage.

But Local could grow in usage. Local results sit at the top of a page in valuable page real estate for many local oriented searches. The engines know better than we do as to the usage of local and possibly more importantly its growth in usage over time.

Also Local results lend themselves to being a source of advertising revenues in the future. I'd be interested to know how much local usage other webmasters see.

Dave

Dave

[bragadocchio]

I think that there are still issues that need to be ironed out in local search for it to work better than it does now, but it seems to be improving.

Here are some areas that may help its growth:

1. Use of handhelds by travelers - as more people turn to their phones as sources of information about a place, local search will become more important. Business travelers, vacationers, and other folks looking for a place to eat or shop or fulfill some other activity in a region that they aren't familiar with will take advantage of the convenience of local search.

2. Replacing Phone Books - when you have a keyboard at your fingertips, why do you need a phone book, especially when it may not provide some of the information that local search, or a web page from local search results might?

3. Too much noise in web search results - search for pizza new york in organic results and you get things like recipes, the wikipedia article for New York styled pizza, comparisons between New York and Chicago style pizza, and even my blog post about local search. If you are searching to buy a slice or a pie, you probably don't want those.

4. Movements to add functionality to local search. One of the other patent applications involving local search and handhelds describes some additional information and functionality for mobile searches, such as a click-to-call with more than one phone number - one for takeout, one for reservations, another for general information. These types of things may make local search more attractive.

5. The ability of businesses to provide more information to Google through the Local Business Center should also help make Google's Local more useful.

Another of the recent Google local search patent applications talks about creating geo-relevance profiles for pages that contain business information and geographic information, and how those can be used as a "training set" so that pages with clearer geographic information can be used to help identify the location of business on pages that contain less clear geographic information.

So a page that mentions a business is located on "Castro Street" in the "Bay area" may benefit from other sites that include more geographic information such as the existence of other Castro Streets in other Bay areas, but also show zip codes, street addresses, etc.

I don't think there should be algorithmic differences between the organic Google SERPs and Google local/maps, because their aim is to the same thing - to provide relevant information. When the search query includes a geographical term, they should return basically the same information

There may be some difference, based upon such things as wanting to show information that a searcher using local search can act upon. For instance, if they can show places that might be closer to the searcher, they may want to try to do so. Or if they can provide information about sites that have clear addresses or phone numbers, or lots of reviews, or other things that can mean a better user experience, that may play a part in what they show.

[A.N.Onym]

It may, indeed, be a good way idea to filter irrelevant results from the organic SERPs if the search query includes a geographical term and some consumer product to show a local shop or something. That is, a search engine should 'guess' the intent the visitor had when typing in the search query.

However, there is local search for that.

And, of course, such a solution might harm the relevancy for those, who Google didn't guess the intent right (they were writing up a research on 'new york pizza', for instance).


Well, there shouldn't be radical differences in organic and local search at least.

I wonder how websites can help Google to recognize their location more precisely. Using street address? Driving directions? Host a site locally?

Probably a more effective way to get noticed is to get linked with streets and towns as the anchor text, but that could be done without the specific local search. Does a local search add anything here?

Perhaps our fellow forum members could share their experience with attracting local search engine traffic as well

[earlpearl]

Based on some quick preliminary observations by Bill, as noted at seobythesea, by Matt at smallbusinsssem, and my own observations it seems that Google Local/Maps and organic google searches with the same geo description don't necessarily match.

We should see a lot more observations before making solid judgements. While I haven't totally absorbed the readings on google local (egnor patent) provided by Bill, it seems that "references" that focus on the authority of a site (address and/or phone number) are very different than more accepted methods for general seo. That the egnor patent does not mention anchor text and links as do other patents for general search makes me suspiceous that the 2 methods are different.

In my review of "references" in google local/maps every single one had an address and/or phone number attached to it.

It may be that links that include this info serve a dual purpose, both as backlinks relative to normal serps and as a "reference" for Google Local/Maps.

One funny sidelight. With that as a possibility I just picked up a backlink that normally would never include the address/phone number information. But I requested and added the phone number in anchor text and got it. I wonder how that will impact my biz site.

I look forward to other's comments and observations on this phenomena.

Dave

[earlpearl]

I took a look at a day's traffic relative to this thread and a different one wherein google is showing a map for your site for an organic search that provides the business name and location. But regardless of that, there are some interesting differences between a search w/in regular google and a search in google maps/local., (at least from my perspective).

my biz site gets a long tail of activity for its main business term, the plural of the term and about 8 other major variations on the business service. Each of these is a potential conversion. The site is optimized w titles, metatags, content and anchor text for a variety of these phrases and Virginia, VA, Maryland, Md, DC and Washington DC.

the best traffic comes in on a very long tail basis.

Today I looked at 40 of these terms off the logs. Each was different.

Of the terms over 30 of them would have shown the site #1 in google.

conversely the site/business would rank all over the board if each search was conducted in google maps. Some of that is to be expected from distance. on the other hand for some of the business terms where the site ranks first in regular search for the geo term and business term it didn't even show up in the local/map rankings (nor did competitors). I wonder if that is because there is no street/address/phone number reference for that twist on the phrase.

having been able to optimize for a state name for normal search is very advantageous. Conversely, my business is far from a focal point for either Virginia or Maryland and that distance is something I couldn't overcome.

After looking at these terms this way...I'm just glad that the vast majority of users don't migrate to Google Maps.

I'd love to hear from your observations.

[A.N.Onym]

The thing is that Google has already integrated Google maps in organic SERPs: you either see a Google map or "Local results for.." and a couple of addresses from Google maps with distance, physical addresses and phones.

I don't think there is anything we can do besides providing adequate information to our visitors anyway, so I don't think you should worry if you do anything you can do to do that. Extra local links can't hurt, though.

[Big Bill]

Originally Posted by earlpearl

As I use google maps (google local) to search for my business I take a variety of locations around my geo area (washington dc).

Initially I thought that local applications list businesses in order subject to their distance from the starting point. But that is not the case. There is some sort of internal serps/rankings methodology that will give certain businesses higher rankings over others regardless of distance from a site. I wonder if any of you have a feel for those elements.

Dave

In the UK, try spending money. I rank two or three in the world in Google for seo uk
but I'm not listed even under my own postcode (where, incidentally, I'm the only occupied household) in Google Local. You might want to read this for some insight as to why... http://www.kruse.co.uk/google-local-1.htm

BB