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

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.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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