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Local Search Ranking Factor Statistical Research

Brian Carter | May 14th, 2009
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What I did was take three important keyword phrases for our local clients, get the top 20 local results, and compare those on these factors:

For the Google local portion:

  • Reviews
  • Number of incidences of parts of keyword in local business listing title
  • Photos/videos
  • User content
  • Webpages

localgraphs

For the destination URL:

  • Inbound links
  • Pagerank
  • Number of pages in site
  • Number of incidences of parts of keyword in homepage title tag

With all that data and my very naive statistical abilities (am I the only guy who wishes he had a statistics professor chained to a dingy, cobweb-ridden cubicle in the corner?) I created scatter graphs and found R2 values.

Unfortunately, the strongest correlation is still considered "weak" in statistical parlance. I suspect someone from Google will read this and laugh at my non-PhD-ish bafflement. Nonetheless, I know where to go next- so there will be a part two.

Strongest correlation: More reviews equals better ranking

reviewlocal

The correlation of two important SEO factors... also weak:

iblpageslocal

Other factors and correlative values (all weak, but strongest first):

  • Number of photos and videos (listed in local details): R2=0.2053
  • Number of webpages (listed in local details): R2=0.1862
  • Number of user content (listed in local details): R2=0.1788
  • PageRank: R2=0.154
  • Keyword element instances in local listing name: R2=0.079
  • Keyword element instances in homepage title tag: R2=0.0011

Next up, I'm going to examine:

  • More keywords for # of reviews, larger dataset to get more certain R2 value for this
  • Keyword prominence for homepage title and LBL name
  • Keyword integrity (whole keyword in order) in homepage title and LBL name
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Posted in Local Search

About the Author: Brian Carter

CEO of FanReach, Brian Carter has been an Internet Marketer, speaker, and social media trainer since 1999. Brian has been quoted and profiled by Information Week, US News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, and Entrepreneur Magazine. He is the author of the book How To Get More Facebook fans. He is both an adwords consultant and a facebook consultant. Check out his his free Facebook Marketing 101 course, and the full FanReach Facebook Marketing and Advertising course.

30 thoughts on “Local Search Ranking Factor Statistical Research”

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  1. Brian Carter says:
    May 16, 2009 at 5:16 pm

    Actually I just reviewed this- I have seen some volatility, but that’s not to be confused with the fact that for some reason, the top ten local are different in “Web” than they are in “Maps”. Go figure.

  2. Rich says:
    May 16, 2009 at 5:42 pm

    Fascinating, I just observed that, Thanx! And the results in Google Web are more than just the 10 pack from Google Maps reorganized. While the algorithm for Google Maps would be good to know, I think the Google Web 10 pack is the most valuable to decipher.

  3. Brian Carter says:
    May 16, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    Agreed- web 10 pack is more important. But for comparing data about the 11-20 that didn’t make it, have to go to maps.google.com.

  4. Rich says:
    May 16, 2009 at 6:17 pm

    And then there’s the odd attribute that sometimes you only 2 to 6 results on Google Web local search while there additional results. No doubt they’ve deliberately made this hard to game!

  5. Will Reinhardt says:
    May 16, 2009 at 7:35 pm

    I love it when science and SEO merge into a single element. A great article, and I look forward to the follow-up!

  6. earlpearl says:
    May 20, 2009 at 11:03 am

    Recently got a site reranked to #1 in G maps for the singular versions of the business phrase…but it is stuck at #2 for the plural. This applies to maps w/ both the city name…and without a geo reference and a map is inserted in organic results.

    Such subtle differences with so much need for attention to detail.

  7. Rich says:
    May 20, 2009 at 4:22 pm

    Curious, I’ve not found away to get Maps to keep both the singular & plural version of a keyword. It always filters out one of them.

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