Keywords Ranking Varies When Search changes Location/City (Not Google Places)

[louieramos]

We have a client that are ranking well on most Australian cities for competitive keywords except Google Sydney. If you toggled the cities on the search field when you search for a keyword, their places are almost exactly the same except for Sydney on which they can't be found at all in the Top 100 results. The keywords are not city specific, they are general commonly searched keywords about health.

This is not a Google Places issue. The search result shows the right landing pages of the site for their respective keywords.

Any ideas or experience on this kind of situation.

Much appreciated

Louie

[spencerhjustice]

My first guess would be that they have a lot of spammy backlinks with the term Sydney in them. It's really hard to give good advice based on generalized information, but that's something that I would look into. I would look at their backlinks and anchor text with majestic seo and ahrefs.

[dotlineseo]

Hi Louie,

Yes you are correct if you search any keywords in Google then Google prefer location where are you searching from.

For ex. you are searching any keywords in Sydney location then Google mostly prefer to will show you Sydney results.

This is not applicable for all website Yes but applicable for around 70-80% results.

You can open Google.com.au  then put your keyword which you are searching then you will look

Web           Image        Maps         Videos         News           More             Search tool

You click Search Tool then you can set your location to find results.

If your client located in Sydney and Google Showing Sydney results i think will be better for your client.

Thanks,

Akhilesh

[louieramos]

Thank you, you've got a valid point. I will take that into consideration as I continue to do my evaluation.

[louieramos]

please make sure you understand the question before you even reply..

[dotlineseo]

I understood your point. You are simply saying your keywords ranking in google except Google Sydney.

[louieramos]

thats half of the story, you didnt understand the other half that is why your answer is very far from the question

[dotlineseo]

And second one you are saying when you change location (city) then search any keywords ranking coming different in Google.

[JaneCopland]

Hi Louie,

Has there been any improvement to this? If not, could it be possible given the query and the sites that do rank in the Sydney region, that the query is particularly competitive in Sydney as compared to other cities, and that the ranking sites have put any extra effort into that location?

I understand that it isn't a city-specific query, but is the service / product something that might be considered a more profitable query to rank for in Sydney?

Google doesn't support city-specific geo-targeting so it won't be something they've set up incorrectly in Webmaster Tools.

Is there any address or contact information on the client's website that might specifically indicate that they serve areas that are not Sydney?

Cheers,

Jane

[louieramos]

HI Jane

Thanks for your interest. There is a slight improvement but maybe just 10%, and the rankings are still fluctuating in Google Sydney. Others are fine. The keywords are Page 1 on Google Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne etc but not showing up at all in Google Sydney. The competition level of all affected keywords are almost the same in other cities I would say.

We have inherited the client fro another SEO provider and the previous SEO work that was done aint pretty. They used to rank well in all Google Cities, but for some reason they have lost their Page 1 rankings only in Google Sydney about 3 months ago when we have inherited it.

Yes they have all their Sydney addresses in the website along with their addresses in other cities. So I am thinking, could they have a penalty in Google Sydney? I haven't seen that before, I would think that if a site is penalized or flagged it's not geo-specific.

Cheers

Louie

[JaneCopland]

Hi Louie,

It seems unlikely to me (which doesn't mean it's impossible) that they have a city-specific penalty. Can't say I have ever heard of that before either, and I would say it would be hard for Google to decide on something like that, manually or algorithmically. The idea that it could be a large number of links from the Sydney region honestly seems like a stretch: that should really just result in a link-based penalty that affects the site nation-wide. Where this could have happened, however, is if someone abused directory links with way too many links using "sydney" in anchor text but I'm sure you'd have seen something like that already. Even then, I haven't heard of that hurting all rankings in that region alone, but rather just for queries including "sydney".

Have you tested this searching from IPs in each region, i.e. I just wanted to make sure it's 100% confirmed that the site does rank well and receives traffic from Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth etc. and that you are not seeing personalised results in those locations and not in Sydney. I know it seems like grasping at straws but it's a really weird case for a non-geo-specific query.