Page disappears from search results when Google geographic location is close to offline physical location

[RCF]

If you use Google to search georgefox.edu for "doctor of business administration", the first search result is http://www.georgefox.edu/business/dba/ - I'll refer to this page as the DBA homepage from here on. The second page is http://www.georgefox.edu/offices/sfs/grad/tuition/business/dba/ - I'll refer to this page as the DBA program costs page from here on.

Search: https://www.google.com/search?q=doctor+of+business+administration+site%3Ageorgefox.edu

This appears to hold true no matter what your geographic location is set to on Google.

George Fox University is located in Newberg, Oregon. If you search for "doctor of business administration" with your geographic location set to a location beyond a certain distance away from Newberg, Oregon, the first georgefox.edu result is the DBA homepage.

Set your location on Google to Redmond, Oregon
Search: https://www.google.com/search?q=doctor+of+business+administration

But, if you set your location a little closer to home, the DBA homepage disappears from the top 50 search results on Google.

Set your location on Google to Newberg, Oregon
Search: https://www.google.com/search?q=doctor+of+business+administration

Now the first georgefox.edu page to appear in the search results is the DBA program costs page.

Here are the locations I have tested so far:

First georgefox.edu search result is the DBA homepage

• Redmond, OR
• Eugene, OR
• Boise, ID
• New York, NY
• Seattle, WA

First georgefox.edu search result is the DBA program costs page

• Newberg, OR
• Portland, OR
• Salem, OR
• Gresham, OR
• Corvallis, OR

It appears that if your location is set to within a certain distance of Newberg, OR, the DBA homepage is being pushed out of the search results for some reason.

Can anyone verify these results? Does anyone have any idea why this is happening?

[MoosaHemani]

I believe no one can answer exactly what it is but one can only answer as per the experiments and what has happened to one in the past!

Google recently said that they will drop down your rankings if people are going to click on your website and bounce back within few seconds and select another result. If we keep this rule for local results that would be like if people from certain location find the page irrelevant, Google will probably rank it down and the same page if responding well for another location Google will rank it higher on that location.

I can be completely wrong but this is one of the thousand possibilities

Hope this helps!

[RCF]

Yes, that's the only vaguely plausible explanation we've come up with too, though it's not very satisfying and it's impossible to prove.

Thanks for the suggestion, Moosa!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi RCF,

Here is what I see:

Searching for 'doctor of business administration' with my location set to Redmond Oregon, http://www.georgefox.edu/business/dba/ is coming up #8 organically.

Doing this same search, but with my location set to Newberg, Oregon, I see http://www.georgefox.edu/offices/sfs/grad/tuition/business/dba/ coming up #2 organically.

It looks like my exact rankings may not be identical to yours, but at least my searches appear to confirm that the 2 different pages are surfacing with the 2 different locations being set.

Unfortunately, I agree with Moosa that it's very hard to hit on a precise reason for why Google would be favoring your tuition page over your home page when a user's location is set to the town the in which the institution is located. I do have a suggestion, though. Why not try putting Newberg, OR in the title tag of the page you'd like to be ranking highest for Newberg-located searchers, mention it in the H1 tag, and mention it more than once in the copy. I'd also recommend that you put the complete NAP (name, address, phone) in the body copy of the page, though I see it's already in the footer. Perhaps by increasing the optimization for Newberg on this page, you might strengthen the pages chances of ranking the way you want it to? Just a suggestions.