How is a competitor franchise ranking all for all 3 Local results with unclaimed G+ pages in a search for the national corporation?

[WGW]

My company is an individual franchise of a national corporation - every franchise is operates as [National Corporate Brand Name] + a chosen descriptor such as "Premiere" or the names of the owners such as "Smith Jones".

A logged-out Google search for just the national brand name returns the corporate website first, followed by the website of a competing local franchise and 3 Local listings for their offices. These listings are all unclaimed and unverified on Google+ and have no reviews or posts.

The corporate Twitter is next, followed by my franchise's website. The corporate Facebook is the last result on the page.

How can this competing franchise rank for all 3 Local listings with unclaimed pages? My company operates several more offices than the competitor in the same area and I regularly post to their G+ pages which I verified several months ago. Is it because the competitor's website just holds significantly more weight in Google than our own? A search for the brand name + the town where our offices are in does usually return our Local listing pages, but that limits our reach to those specific towns. Anyone have any insight on this?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi John,

Unfortunately, without being able to investigate the actual situation, it's not possible to even begin drawing a conclusion on this. It's perfectly okay if you are not able to share the specific details of your business, but it will limit the specificity of the feedback you'll receive on questions like this one.

If you are stating that both you and your competitor have real, staffed physical offices, then you are both in the running for the same local rankings and if the search is local in nature, you can do a point-for-point comparison between your web presence and theirs to see how they may be surpassing you in certain important areas.

That being said, what you are describing is a branded search, for your company's brand name with no geo modifiers. I have run into a few situations in the past where the name of the business is generic enough that Google is confused by the intent of users searching for it. Let me give you an example of this.

Let's say you had a non-profit organization called 'Opening Doors'. Google then gets a user query using the search phrase 'opening doors'. Instead of Google recognizing this as your company's name, they think this is someone searching for a locksmith to open their door.  So, the non-profit's concept of their brand name search is being confused with Google's concept of a local search for a locksmith.

Could this be playing a part in what you are experiencing? It's a weird phenomenon, but it does happen. The fact that Google is displaying a 3 pack for your query indicates that they do already sense that there is something local about the query, but whether what I've described is the answer to your situation, I have no idea.

If you are able to provide further details, it would likely help the community provide more insight.

[JCurrier]

I agree with Miriam, without further details, it is really hard to say what is going on. However, depending on where you are actually searching from does factor into the results as well as the website associated with the listing. Additionally, the number of citations a location has and how well those citations match up, meaning name, address, and phone are all exactly the same, can influence local listing rankings as well.

Whether or not the competitor has claimed their listing isn't really a huge factor in determining rankings. The fact that your competitors website outranks yours is an indication as to why those local listings may appear to be more relevant to the search, and therefore rank higher, than yours.