Does anyone have stats or know where I can find stats on searchers who use geolocated queries versus geomodified?

[Treefrog_SEO]

My client is a franchise business and they want their location landing pages to rank for every one of their 60 plus locations nationwide. They are performing extremely well for geomodified terms. The argument is that people rarely ever search using the city name. Are there stats to back up whether this claim is true, and if so, do you know where I can get a hold of such data (outside of searching in Keyword Planner... unless that's the answer!)

[KevinBudzynski]

I talked to GetStat at MozCon this year and believe that they can help you out on this. No guarantees though. Good luck!

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Kevin,

I don't find that Keyword Planner is terribly helpful with local terms. Now, obviously, if your clients are hotels or other distance-type businesses like that, people are going to be using a ton of geomodifiers because they are located in one city but then looking for lodgings in another, but if the industry is  plumbing, or something like that, likely you'd see less use of city names, in queries, particularly on mobile devices.

Your question has made me go searching around for any recent statistics on use of geomodifiers and what I'm coming up with is pretty old:

http://searchengineland.com/how-users-search-for-local-businesses-5-tips-to-optimize-local-listings-97612

marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-seo-geo-modifiers.html

http://www.ngsmarketing.com/the-two-types-of-local-search-and-how-local-seo-should-reflect-them/

If anyone in the community has done or knows of a more recent study, please do link to it.

A very good indication that users use geomodifiers in looking up all kinds of local businesses can be seen in the 'related search' results at the bottom of Google's SERPs. For example, If I just look up 'plumbers', the related search results are returning me 8 suggested terms 3 of which contain city names. So, that would be something to look into for your client

Sorry not to be able to turn up any really recent data on this. It would certainly be good if someone would do a new study!

[Treefrog_SEO]

Kevin, Thanks for this, I did call Stat and spoke to them. They are more of an enterprise SEO solution and were not able to speak to the search data that I'm looking for here particularly. But I appreciate the comment and the lead!

Miriam, thanks once again for your thorough response, and for the links you shared. I think this is ultimately a very important study for local marketers, seeing as geolocated terms are a completely different play. Our solution was to build article/informative content for the query in question, and then use the Google Geolocation API on the website to guide the user to their nearest location. That way, we rank for  people who are searching for the general geolocated query (we'll say "plumbing repair" to run with your example) and in most cases, the second organic result is the franchise location page for that city.

We're trying to convince the client of the value in ranking #1 with the article content page—but they're not convinced. They want the location page as the first result for geolocated queries in every city. Then of course, they want multiple results for cities where they have multiple locations, which is another story.

I'm going to reach out to Phil Rozek and Mike Blumenthal about a recent study regarding geolocated versus geomodified search data for local businesses, because I think it raises an important distinction. I personally always geomodify my queries—I don't leave the work to Google. I find I get better results. But I don't know if I'm in the minority, or not. As I say, my client is #1 for every city when the geomodifier is added to the keyword. It would be great to have data to back up the importance of having that real estate.Thanks again for your great feedback!

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Kevin,

Mike & Phil would be good guys to reach out to, for sure. I'm glad if my reply was somewhat helpful and I'd love to see more recent data on this. Good luck with your client!