⚡ Do Service Areas Impact Rankings? | Case Study to Test a Google Business Profile Theory
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- If you’ve been following Whitespark, you know that our annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey has always been clear on service areas:
Setting service areas on your Google Business Profile DOES NOT help you rank better in those areas.
Or so we thought 🤔
I recently got into what you would call a “Twitter beef” with a local SEO guy who claimed that service areas do, in fact, impact local rankings. He said that people who believe that service areas have no impact “blindly follow the pack”, whereas he and other local SEOs have long known that they do because they have done their own research.
So, I decided to respond with my own research. Here are my findings that will hopefully settle this debate once and for all!
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I’ve never had success with zips. Cities worked better.
You think that setting a city as a service area will have a ranking impact? I’m highly skeptical, but would test.
*Yes, cities work best because of the coverage. Plus you get to list more vs using zip codes*
I don't think service areas alone can impact the map rankings. If it was that easy, everybody would have just easily ranked further from their actual business locations. The purpose of the service area is to let your customers know where you can actually provide services. It's for the customer not for the search engine.
100% - that's exactly what it's for, but sooooo many SEOs still think that it impacts ranking and add service areas to "optimize".
oh my gosh! I know that company! I live in Fresno! I've used Local Falcon as well. Wondering if anyone has any comments about that software.
I haven’t tried all the different grid ranking software, but I am happy with Local Falcon for now. It does the job while I wait for the glorious release of Whitespark’s grid ranking tool - coming soon!
Thanks for this! Do you know if google treats "Service Area" businesses different from others? Do some businesses -- like therapists -- need to have addresses shown and verified in order to even play at all? That seems to be what we see in my industry, but there's a lot of confusion about this whole thing. Especially since Covid, therapists want to work at home with no address shown and still rank.
Hi Becky! I know we're emailing about this, but I wanted to reply here too. I do not believe that Google treats different business categories differently when it comes to SAB settings or anything else on GBPs. The only exception is hotels. They have a whole separate system. But, I could be wrong about this. More research required.
@@WhitesparkCa Thanks, Darren!
*I didn't see or hear whether you had a page on the site that referenced the locations in your test. It might be worth testing again 🤔*
but then it would be the location pages on the website that improve my rankings, not the service areas on the profile
@@WhitesparkCa *It would be nice to see a test of the reverse: location pages without the service areas added. That would make for a more conclusive test with empirical data, yes?!*
Great video! I am still adding service areas lol
Go for it!
It’s not going to work or we wouldn’t need Google ADs .
Where are the 2024 Local Search Ranking Factors?
The last time they were updated was March of 2023.
There won't be a 2024 edition. The 2025 edition will be released in early January.
haha it didn't surprise me that you took the challenge. But what about if the reviewer comes from that zip code, does it make any change with the ranking? -Vernon
Maybe! But then the ranking gains would be because of the review, not the service areas.
Thanks for the video, Darren.
you're welcome!
Great video! I am still adding service areas lol
but why? lol
... Darren, you do realize that you literally cannot remove all the service areas for a SAB, right? That statement makes no sense because, last I checked, google will simply *not save such an edit*.
Hmm. I did it. Got no error. But after saving it set my service area to all of the US, even though the service area section was empty.
@@WhitesparkCa Huh... I'll definitely have to run a test. I know that there's a bunch of things google will simply not save if empty (main category, postal code or street address for a non-SAB, phone number...), so I just assumed this still did that. It definitely make trouble if you try to hide the address without having a service area properly set (though the nature of that trouble has changed over time).
Why does Google have us enter the service areas at all then if they do nothing with that information? I would need to see more extensive testing than with one business profile before I know what to believe. I would like to know, however, the average time it takes Google these days to show a new business listing. Because I put one up for a client a couple weeks ago and it's verified, with updates, two new reviews, and ... it is not being shown, even at the bottom of them barrel in the maps page and there is not a lot of competition. Hmmm - ? Anybody have thoughts on that?
My thoughts on this FWIW. If you are in a specific city, ex Gotham, and looking for a plumber, you'll get the usual nearby preferred results. But in the justifications section of the map listing (where you see attributes like appt required or services offered etc), it *may* show the city that the plumber serves.
If the plumber added Gotham, Bludhaven, Central City into the areas served of GMB, this may encourage G to pop "area served: Gotham" into the justification section.
I haven't done any testing on this, just providing a thought on how it might roll out. The justifications section IMO helps with CTA.
They DO do something with the service areas: they show customers the area you're willing to service. They show it with a red outline on the map. That's the point of the feature. From Google's documentation: "When you list your service area, it lets customers know the geographic area where you can provide your products and services."
support.google.com/business/answer/9157481?hl=en
They just don't use the service areas for ranking. They only use it to show your service area on the map.
Thoughts on your ranking question: I bet you're ranking #1 *somewhere*. Rankings are heavily based on how far the business is from your location. You might be located on the north side of the city, but the clients business was verified on the south side. So if you're searching from your house, they're unlikely to show in the rankings. Use a free tool to check rankings from the zip code of the business and you'll probably see them ranking better: freelocalrankingchecker.com/
personally, I don't think you gave this test enough time. I have a hunch that if you "aquired" a review(s) from someone in that zip code, added some content to a location page specific to that zip code - etc., got a local link from that zip code in addition to this service area page, you'd see better movement. ;)
But if I got the review or updated content, then it would be those things that impacted the rankings, not setting the service areas.
*I agree that the test was too short. Also, I think it would have performed better if there had been a page on the site that referenced the locations in the test.*
What about the the rankings were way better before you removed all the service areas
which chart are you referring to?
@@WhitesparkCa you showed a local falcon grid before you deleted all the service areas and was better than your attempts to improve no service areas
@SeanFaganRareBooks and then 3 days later it was better again. That’s just normal ranking fluctuation. You need to see more significant changes to draw any conclusions.
@@WhitesparkCa thank you
love the energy! Always be testing..
Thanks, Darren. Two things scared me, though: your shirt and the picture of the devil horn girls above your bookshelf. Lol
I am sorry I scared you with FASHION 😄
very few will get the reference to your Always Be Testing... but pretty good imitation.
Haha. Thanks! I watched it like 10 times before doing my version.
We used to use that whole monolog in a trainer training workshop back in the 2000's. Ive heard that 1000 times