Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Davit,

Thank you for reading that other thread. It immediately came to mind in reading your question, and when I see more than one report of mysterious ranking behavior, that's when I begin to wonder if Google has created some kind of new filter or is even experiencing a bug. The behavior that both you and the other poster are describing that is similar is that you rank well when searching from other parts of the country, but not from the business' own location. That's definitely mysterious, but the details of your business will tell us whether the scenarios are related or totally dissimilar..

Likely, you need to have a full audit done, Davit, and a forum can't replace investing in that, but let me take a quick gander here and tell you what I see:

1. Searching from my location in NorCal for "car service to lax", I see you ranking 7th organically.

2. You are not in the local pack for this search, and clicking through on the pack to the local finder, I am not finding you in the 3 tiers of results at the automatic zoom level. So, this counts as a pretty strong organic ranking but a strangely absent local ranking.

3. I zoom in one level on the map. Google shows me two tiers of results and you are not there. I zoom in two levels, and you're still not there. I zoom in a third time and you are still not there, and Google is showing me irrelevant results like a UPS store and an auto parts store. On my 4th zoom, Google is showing me just two results, and they are irrelevant to my search - an automobile club and an auto parts store. So, what I've learned from this step is that your business does not appear to be suffering from the known earmarks of the Possum filter, which can result in filtered rankings at the automatic zoom level if two businesses are located near one another and share the same category. Rather, your business never appeared in the local finder no matter how many times I zoomed in.

4. Next, I'm looking at your address in comparison to the address ranking #1 in the local pack. Google tells me that you are 23.6 miles away from your top competitor which is listed as LAX Town Car Service at 1 World Way, Los Angeles, CA 90045. You are 26.9 miles away from the #2 business, LAX Car Service -MGCLS located at 7828 Kittyhawk Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90045. And, you are 23.9 miles away from business #3, LA Confidential, at 101 World Way, Los Angeles, CA 90045. We've just learned that your business, located at 5322 Russell Ave #27, Los Angeles, CA 90027 is well over 20 miles away from the competitors Google is ranking in the local pack for me, as a distant searcher. You are not even in the same zip code as these three brands.

5. Now, let's look up "los angeles" in Google and look at the map. You are 6.8 miles from Google’s centroid of the city which is located near City Hall at 200 N Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Your top competitor is even further away from City Hall, at a distance of 18.6 miles. So we are definitely seeing more an industry cluster than a city centroid cluster for your core search term. These are kind of old concepts, but sometimes I still find them to be applicable. You are within Google’s mapped boundaries of “los angeles” and are not in that cutout area they are making around Hollywood. So, city centroids and mapped borders are not excluding your from rankings, but significant distance from Google's industry cluster of businesses for your search term could be a factor.

6. Exploring that last concept further, at the automatic zoom level for your search the furthest away Google is going for a listing for your search term is Flat Rate Car Service in West Hollywood at 8000 Sunset Blvd #45, Los Angeles, CA 90046. It is 12.1 miles from your top competitor on World Way. So, we see that, at least for my search from my location, Google is not setting a search radius that would include you in it, at 23.6 miles away from the top ranking business. From this, it’s reasonable to state that you may simply be too far away from Google’s 12 mile cluster of businesses for my search term. Good information.

7) However, all of the above being stated, the fact that you don’t come up at all no matter how many times I zoom in on the map is still sticking with me. If I am not able to see you in the local finder for my search at a great distance from your business and you are not able to see yourself in the local finder from your searches within LA, but you are ranking #7 organically, it’s at this point that I begin to become concerned that a local penalty of some kind could be at work. So, now, I want you to do something for me. I want you to search for this same term, “car service to lax” while standing inside of your place of business on Russel Ave. and verify for me that you are unable to find yourself AT ALL in the local pack. Then click through to the local finder and observe the results carefully, zooming in one level at a time, as I did in the above exercise. Tell me if you are not seeing yourself at all, even if you zoom in as many levels as Google allows you. Come back to me, please, and tell me what you see.

Hey Scott,

I'm voting with the other community members on this - it's just not typically a good idea to do this.

Rather than trying a multi-site approach for a single business, invest the resources in building the authority of the existing company assets. The payoff will likely be greater and the management certainly less cumbersome.

Hi Davit,

Hmm...what you are describing sounds so much like this other recent thread. Please, read through this and let me know whether what it's describing is the same as what you're experiencing, or, if it's different, how so: https://moz.com/community/q/local-seo-penalty

Hello there!

I might need some clarification here. The screenshots look to me like they are extracted from a Google Business Profile, in which case, they are stemming directly from the reviews customers leave you on Google. If I'm misunderstanding, would you mind taking a screenshot of the whole search engine results page so I can better understand the context of where you are hoping your reviews will appear? Thanks and I'll check back on this thread.

You're welcome, Tim, and good luck!

Hi Tim!

As Alex says, you can add multiple phone numbers to your GMB dashboard, but getting Google to associate the numbers as in your screenshot might not be possible. I'm wondering if Schema could influence this, but I don't know for sure on that.

However, I do want to raise the point that large companies with multiple departments are often eligible for multiple listings, and if the business is big enough, Google will display links to the department listings within the main listing. Adding an attachment to show what this looks like. https://imgur.com/a/7FGNPpw

I am not sure if your company is big enough for this treatment, but the fact that you have different phone numbers for different departments is a start. Read Google's Guidelines pertaining to "Departments within other Businesses" to see if you're eligible: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en

Hi Ryan,

Yes, if you are using a paid product or paying an SEO to manually manage your citations, you will likely incur costs in getting them updated if you move to a new location. It's a business expense. But, at least it's better than the old days when you could have a wrong address listed in the phone book for a whole year until the new publication was put out

Thanks for the screencast. This is a super frustrating case for your client, honestly. When I first looked at the map, it looked to me like they were clearly on the Racine side of the line, but after looking at your screencast, I agree - it's borderline.

Sadly, because of this, I don't think you have much of a case to make to Google if they are insistent that the business is technically in Mount Pleasant. It's especially unfortunate, because clearly, the business has a Racine postal address. Obviously, the postal authorities believe the business address in technically in Racine, but Google follows their own lead on this.

I will ask around among some GMB forum Gold Product experts to see if there is any hope of appeal on this. I think I've seen folks make slight moves to the map marker to change this sort of thing, but I don't want to tell you to do something that could end up being problematic. If I hear anything positive, I'll return to this thread.

Hello Again,

Looking at this again after reading the reply you received from Google. The trouble is, when I zoom in enough on the map, Google's borders disappear, so I was having to approximate location. To confirm, can you let me know if this image is correct:

https://imgur.com/NhaXUj3

Thanks!

Hi There!

This must be very frustrating, indeed. It's a really interesting case, actually. Looking up "racine" in Google and observing Google's red border on the map, I see your client as actually being just inside the city border of Racine. So, I think you actually have a case here for speaking to a Google rep about the incorrect designation showing up on your Google Business Profile. I would take a screenshot of the client's pin marker, and then a screenshot of the map search for Racine. It proves that the client is physically in Racine rather than in Mount Pleasant, so Google's designation is wrong.

Once you have your screenshots, this is what I would do:

Send a tweet to Google's Twitter support at https://twitter.com/GoogleMyBiz telling them you have an incorrect city designation showing up in their category summary and want to show them an image.

Be sure you are following them on Twitter as they will likely want to DM with you.

Once they get back to you (I find it takes 1-3 days typically) upload the screenshots you've taken and explain the problem and ask if they can help, as the map shows their text is wrong.

See what they can do.

Come back to me and tell me what happened.

Hope this helps!

Marie - how awesome of you to stop by! I am a fan

Did you notice that GrueBleen mentioned in their original post that there are no penalties showing in GSC? Clearly, the links are bad, but like you, I can't explain the SERP behavior for Austin-only users.

GrueBleen, you're getting weigh-ins here from some amazing experts, and as no one has been able to pinpoint the exact cause of the weird SERP behavior, I think you're at the point where hiring a consultant for a full audit is likely necessary. Many ranking problems are easy to solve, but what you've presented here is unusual. In the scope of a forum, we can't fully audit every aspect of a business (history, technical issues, usability, local, etc.). You need someone to do this to see if they can connect the dots between the Austin-only behavior and something the business is doing/failing to do.

You bet, Ken!

Hi Ken,

If you already have your own website, then, no, having a free Google website is unlikely to be of help to you. Recommended reading: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2018/06/02/google-websites-passes-2-million-websites-nearing-its-first-anniversary/

GrueBleen,

Just spoke with one of our top organic SEO folks here at Moz (Dr. Pete) and he agreed it would be strange that an organic penalty would only affect users in Austin. So, while I agree that the link anchor text of your links is something you need to be looking at because it's believed that Google devalues (more than penalizes) such links, the mystery continues!

Tom Waddington's idea is also definitely worth looking at. Good idea reaching out to him, Joy!

I had noticed this as well, Joy, but somehow, it doesn't satisfy me that this would somehow exclude the client organically ONLY for Austin searchers. If that were the root of the problem, would it not be affecting organic rankings across the board? To me, the link anchor text seemed like a possible explanation until I asked myself that question.

I'll see if I can get one of our organic SEOs to weigh in on whether Google could exclude something only in a specific area.

Joy, I searched from the zip using Bright Local and was not seeing the client come up at all. So glad you stopped by

Hello There!

Using a rank checking tool set to the zip code of your business, I see you ranking #1 in the local pack and #9 organically for "real estate photographer Denver". Doing the same search from my location in California, I see you ranking #2 in the local pack and #7 organically. In other words, you've already achieved really excellent visibility.

I would question the path of making your homepage more optimized towards Denver, because I'm assuming Denver is only 1/50th of your customer base, if you offer a 50-state service. Right now, with your optimization exactly as it is, Google is still highly favoring your Denver location in the Denver-based-and-modified results. I would feel some concern that overdoing the homepage with Denver would be subtracting from your visibility in other parts of the country. At the same time, if you created a Denver-only page for the website and pointed your GMB listing to it, your local rankings would almost certainly drop as the new landing page wouldn't have the same DA as your homepage.

Your About and Contact pages can act as landing pages, of sorts, for your Denver location, but I still wouldn't advise pointing your local business listings at them. Nor does that seem at all necessary given that you're ranking #1 and #2 locally for this core term.

Rather, if what you're really hoping to do is get more business from Denver clients, I'd leave your website as-is and consider some of the following efforts:

1. Continue to hammer down on reviews. You're already blowing away your local pack competition in this regard, but I'd keep working on this. And keep up the work on Google posts. This is for your local ranking maintenance, of course.

2. For your organic goals, I'd work on links. Explore whatever Denver-based links and linktations you can get. This tutorial might be helpful: https://moz.com/blog/linked-unstructured-citations.

3. I would also work on social outreach within the Denver community, which actually corresponds with point #2.

Hope you'll get some more feedback from the community!

Thank you for the replies to my questions. I'm just going to start jotting things down here:

1. Your client is outside of the Austin city limits. The location is the quite a bit west of the city boundary, as perceived by Google: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Austin,+TX/@30.3172704,-97.91144,11z/data=!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x8644b599a0cc032f:0x5d9b464bd469d57a!2sAustin,+TX!3b1!8m2!3d30.267153!4d-97.7430608!3m4!1s0x8644b599a0cc032f:0x5d9b464bd469d57a!8m2!3d30.267153!4d-97.7430608

2. I mention this, because Google is fairly biased towards physical location, and a business outside of city borders is not one I'd typically expect to see ranking well locally, unless there was little competition. Organically, I might see them ranking however. So, I'm walking into this not really expecting your client to rank well locally, and I just want to mention that.

3. Using BrightLocal's rank checker tool and setting my zip to the zip code at Google's perceived center of Austin (78701) I am unable to find your client in the first 10 pages of the organic results for "austin plumbers". You mentioned you are seeing them on page 9 from another tool. I just can't find them at all.

4. Yet, when I search from my own location in California for this same term, your client is #1 in the local pack and #2 organically (just below Yelp). So, for non-Austin-based searchers,your client is doing extremely well. And, this comes as a bit of a surprise to me, given what I said above about them being beyond city limits. To have overcome this, the site must be doing something right to be so dominant!

5. So, now, the frustrating part of this. It has long been observed that Google handles proximity of the searcher quite differently when the searcher is near a business vs. in some other city or state. In other words, if, from my location in California, I look for a plumber in Austin, I'm not likely to see the exact same results as someone actually in Austin would see. Rank checking tools aren't great at approximating this. So, I want to ask you to ask your client to do something. Have them search from their office computer on Ranch Road for "austin plumbers" and tell you exactly where they see themselves both locally and organically. Please, if you can do this, come back and let me know what they say.

Clearly, the launch of the new site design is making you question whether something you did caused the ranking drop. But, I want to be sure that we aren't overlooking that Google somehow made a change that is coincidental to your redesign and has nothing to do with it. If your client's site was penalized, I wouldn't expect to see it ranking so excellently for my searches from California. And the GMB listing is not suspended or anything like that. So, let see if you can get your client to tell you what they see searching from their own office. I'll stay tuned.

Good morning!

So sorry to hear you've encountered some trouble. Can you answer some questions for me about your scenario, please?

1. Did your re-design of the website keep the exact same domain and URLs, or did you have to do any re-directs?

2. Am I right that your concern is that, when you search for things like "austin plumbers" while you are physically located in Dallas, you are seeing your client on the first page of the organic results, but when you search from a physical location in Austin, your client is coming up on the 9th page of the organic results? Is that right?

3. You mention local results, as well. What were your client's local pack rankings prior to the re-design and how, exactly, have they changed?

4. How long ago did you launch the re-design?

Dear Jaime,

What you're seeing may well be the result of a filter like Possum that is causing Google to filter out the weaker of the two locations that are only a block away from one another. Particularly if zooming in causes you to be able to see that 2nd West Side business appear, I suspect a filter. I can't say without seeing the query for myself, of course, but that would be my guess based on your description.

As you've mentioned, the filtered location has a weaker review signal, and it could be that it has other weaker signals, too (maybe fewer links to its landing page, less accurate citations, etc.). So, that may be all the explanation needed as to why Google is showing one West Side location over the other. You can invest the time/money in building up all signals for the filtered location, but what you can't do is guarantee to the client that Google will then unfilter the location. That's up to Google, not you and not your client, so be sure you set correct expectations surrounding this.

Given that your client is multi-location, if they are worried about this scenario, I would ask them to perform an exercise. Ask them to manually search for whatever the keyword is in question from a device located at that filtered location. Given Google's bias towards searcher proximity, it may well be that customers near the filtered location are actually seeing it appear, whereas you - using a tool or a proxy - are getting a view centered in a zip code or at some other point on the map. If nearby customers are seeing the location nearest to them, then there's really no cause for concern.

Hope this helps!