Does the proximity to the center of the city have anything to do with higher rankings in local results ?

[mnkpso]

Does the proximity to the center of the city have anything to do with higher rankings in local results ?? If yes then how ?

[JarnoNijzing]

Dear mnkpso,

as far as I know there is not correlation between your position in a city and higher rankings for local results. It all depends on the searcher. For instance if we take Londen (lovely city) and you are located in the very north of londen and you went looking for a restaurant in Google changes are you are only finding restaurants in the north of londen. Google would like to offer you useful information and if you are located in the north why would Google give you results in the far south part of londen ?

So again, I do not know of any correlation between proximity to a citycenter and higher rankings.

just my 2 cents

regards

Jarno

[toddmumford]

Hi Mnkpso,

Google often shifts the impact of each element / factor in terms of how they are applied to both local and non-local results.

However, that being said, experience shows that distance from the centroid does in fact play a role in local search engine rankings. David Mihm, one of the foremost experts in Google Local, has cited this here, in his study.

Additionally, we find that there is a correlation between the physical address distance from centroid and ranking.

It is important to note that distance from centroid is only one metric, and although a valuable and important one, in and of itself cannot entirely influence results.

Hope this helps,
Todd

[AlanMosley]

I would say yes it does, simply because displaying outliers on the map is difficult.