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Stars or No Stars on Google Maps

on April 21st, 2008 by Michael D Jensen

I was in Huntington Beach over the weekend looking for a yummy local Mexican food restaurant. I started on my iPhone, but I get no reviews or ratings information from Google Maps, so that wasn’t any help (hint hint Apple/Google!). We decided to ask a real live “local” resident, so we swung by the Hyatt resort and asked one of the guys out in front. He referred us to Mario’s Mexican Restaurant and it turned out to be a great choice. I was 1/3 through my chicken chimichanga and full to the brim!

As I go back and do some searches from a browser now, I noticed something interesting with certain listings showings stars for ratings and other listings not showing any stars. I started wth a regular search for mexican food near huntington beach, ca in Google, which only shows the number of reviews. After clicking on the map to be able to see more clearly where the restaurants were located, I noticed that some “ratings” stars appeared for only 5 of the 10 listings (the first 4 and then listing 8). I investigated further and compared a few features:

1) Number of reviews - The first four with ratings stars had 6 reviews, 9 reviews, 20 reviews, and 16 reviews respectively. At first thought, okay maybe the cut off is 5 or less reviews? Scrolling down the last of the star listings had 6 reviews but just above it a listing had 8 reviews. I also verified this with other search queries with other food types and city locales. Can’t be the number of reviews…

2) Spread of ratings with fewer reviews - My next thought was, okay maybe the listings with fewer reviews had more spread out ratings so Google thought it might be less accurate. Looking at the first listing with 6 reviews, they had 2 ratings of 1 star, 2 ratings of 4 stars, and 1 rating of 5 stars. Looking at other listings (and other food types and cities), this didn’t seem to be it either.

3) Number of Reviews with Star Ratings - I looked back and noticed that not all of the reviews in the listing with 8 reviews actually had ratings, in fact only 4 of them did. I looked at the listings with 6 reviews, and now noticed there were in fact only 5 reviews, but all of them had rating stars. Looking at several other listings in other food categories and cities, it looks like 5 reviews with ratings is the cut off! Eureka!

Rating Stars Google Maps

5 Reviews with Star Ratings = Stars Appear on Google Maps listings

The restaurant we ate at just so happens to be at 4 reviews, all with rating stars. I left my own review with rating stars and will be watching to see when the stars appear as a final test for my hypothesis!

UPDATE!

Just 10 minutes later, Google updated the search and now shows the star ratings for the restaurant I added a review for, proving my hypothesis! You need 5 ratings reviews to have your stars appear.

5 Reviews for Star Ratings to Appear

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Google Maps and Live Local Search Using City Center as Primary Ranking Factor

on April 4th, 2008 by Michael D Jensen

There are several ranking factors involved that determine the sort order of business listings in local search. Mike Blumenthal has written about the 10 Likely Ranking Factors in Google’s Local Search Algorithm, and it is a great resource even now being 1 year later. I’d like to compare the rankings between Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, and Live.com Local, looking solely at bias towards “city center” or not.

To find “city center” on any of these local search engines, just type in the city name. For the examples below, I used my hometown of Vancouver, Washington. For example, here is city center in Google Maps.

I used several different queries, but the ones on the map below are for “pizza, vancouver wa”. The same bias towards city center in Google Maps and Live Local were found with other search terms like “jeweler”, “thrift store”, “bank”, etc.

Google Maps

Notice the patterning of the results focused around city center (noted by the big red arrow). The results aren’t exclusively city center oriented, but it appears to play a significant factor in the ranking of Google Maps results.

City Center Google Maps

Live Local

Live Local doesn’t seem to be very creative in their ranking results. As you can see below, all the results are solely based on city center. This is nice if you are at the city center, but not if you are looking for the best pizza place or plumber to call. (Nice write-up by Matt McGee on MSN Local listings)

City Center Live Local

Yahoo! Local

Yahoo! does a great job at using other factors including online customer ratings (from Yahoo! listings only) and keyword matches and/or categorical selections in business listings. There does not appear to be much in terms of a city center ranking factor. This is great news for Local Search Marketers, which means we don’t have to convince our clients to move their whole office. ;) This also gives rise to the need of services like LeaveFeedback.org that helps local businesses to get more online customer reviews and ratings.

City Center Yahoo Local

Some extreme Local SEO tactics include moving your office or getting a UPS box near city center. For some types of businesses with predominantly phone call-ins (like a plumber), I don’t see a harm in this. But if your business is a walk-in business (like a restaurant), I would be upset if I traveled to the city to find a UPS store instead of your office.

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