Counting Places LIstings in Manual Rank Checking?

[Titan552]

Hello,

When doing manual keyword lookups, are people counting Google Places listings in their rankings?  E.g. If the website's places listing is the "5th" item on the results page, do you count that keyword as "5"?  -- even if the organic listing comes up first at, say, position $20?

On one hand I'd be in favor of including them in order because "who cares" if the user sees your website first, or the Places listing that points to your website first?

But then again, it's my understanding that places listings are highly variable, so that they should be skipped entirely in calculating rank positions.

So what are others out there doing?

And by places of course I mean Google + Local/Plus or whatever they are calling it this week.

Thanks!

[Devanur-Rafi]

Hi,

For people to care or not to care about the Google places listings in the SERPs may largely depend on the search term and the intention. If they are doing a search to find a Dentist in so and so location, then the Google places listings can serve the purpose of search and if the search is intended to find out information or to check out a product or prices, then these Google places listings will be skipped by the searcher. Despite of all these, wherever or whenever possible, we have to get our website optimized for Google places also.

Best regards,

Devanur Rafi.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Titan552,

When I am explaining to my Local SEO clients how to view search engine rankings, I say something like this:

"You are ranking in the B position (2nd) in the blended/local results for X term. You are ranking 3rd in the organic results for X term".

I differentiate between the two types of results, because they stem from different factors, though some factors are shared. Let me show you this as a live example, to be totally clear. Look at the results on this page for the query 'dentist san francisco':

https://www.google.com/search?q=dentist+san+francisco+ca&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

SFGreenDentist is in the B position (2nd) in the blended local results (the ones with the lettered pins). DrMarkle.com is ranking #4 organically. In other words, SFGreenDentist.com has managed to achieve high local rankings and DrMarkle is doing pretty well organically, but hasn't broken into the true local results with his/her efforts. If you, instead, looked at the first page of the SERPs as a whole, I suppose you could say that SFGreenDentist is 5th overall and that DrMarkle is 11th, but I would not recommend doing this, particularly if you are working with Local SEO clients because it is important for them to understand that these results stem from 2 different sources.

This often comes into play, especially, when dealing with service radius businesses (like plumbers, landscapers, chimney sweeps, etc.) who serve in a number of neighboring cities. The way Google is handling local rankings at this point, the typical strategy for, say, a plumber physically located in San Francisco would be for him to go after a primary blended/local ranking for 'san francisco plumber' and to go after secondary organic rankings for other cities where he serves where he is not physically located. In other words, for terms like 'plumber san jose', 'plumber oakland' and 'plumber santa clara', he would be targeting organic rankings for the most part, because Google is unlikely to show him in the true local results for these searches due to his lack of a physical location in the neighboring towns.

So, viewing these 2 types of results as separate makes good sense, in my view, because the work and potentials of gaining high rankings in them requires different factors and tactics. Hope this helps!