Introduction & analysis
The Local Search Ranking Factors annual report was developed by David Mihm in 2008 and taken over by Darren Shaw in 2017. This report is the industry’s go-to resource for understanding how to rank in Google’s local search results.
Welcome to the 2023 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey results! Each year, the top experts in local search across many topics are surveyed to determine what’s working to drive rankings and conversions in local SEO, and what’s not.
What are Google’s Ranking factors?
The 2023 survey had 149 potential factors that local search experts think Google might use to rank businesses in the local pack/finder/maps and local organic results. We don’t have any special access to the internal workings of Google’s local search algorithm. These factors are based on over a decade of analysis, experience, research, and local experts testing their various hypotheses when it comes to the specific signals Google is using to evaluate and rank businesses. That said, the factors at the top of the lists certainly appear to have the most significant impact on rankings, based on the observations of the local search experts that are optimising businesses to rank in local results.
Local Search Ranking Factor groups
Individual factors are organised into the following groups:
Local Search Ranking Factor group weighting for 2023
Survey participants are asked to estimate how much weight Google attributes to each ranking factor group within the local search algorithm for both local pack/finder and local organic results. The data is aggregated in the chart below to give you direction on the general importance of each group of signals.
What’s the difference between local pack, local finder, and local organic?
Changes over time
The chart below shows how the local search experts’ opinions on the weighting of the groupings have shifted over the past 5 editions of the Local Search Ranking Factors (in the local pack/finder).
What gets measured, gets improved. Know how your business truly ranks in local and organic search results. Understand the impact of your SEO work and make data-driven decisions. All with Top4 Marketing SEO Service. Learn more →
This year, we see a drop in Google Business Profile signals and link signals. Those percentage points have shifted to on-page and behavioral signals, which I think is an accurate redistribution that reflects the current state of local search. GBP signals felt over-weighted to me on the last edition of the survey.
Local search experts in 2023 are investing more time and resources on website content, and seeing this work drive improved local pack/finder and local organic results.
They’re also enhancing their Google Business Profiles to increase behavioral signals, which has the added benefit of improved conversions.
Inexplicably, personalisation signals increased from 4% to 6%, but I wouldn’t give this much thought. Personalisation is always going to play a small role in search results, and there isn’t anything you can do to control it, so this is a factor group you can continue to ignore.
New in 2023
Overhauled survey structure
In previous years, contributors would pick their top 20 factors, and then sort them in order of importance. This wasn’t ideal because they could only select 20 factors, and they had to make decisions on which factors were more important than others, which ended up being somewhat arbitrary, especially after the top 10.
This year, contributors were asked to assign a score between 0 and 5 to all 149 factors.
This will give us information on the perceived ranking and conversion impact of all the potential factors, not just the top 20 most common factors.
With such a comprehensive data set this year, we have made the complete list of factors and their scores are available for you to browse (and even search) in the tables below.
Local SEO Myths
With contributors now scoring every factor, there was no need to ask them to specifically select the factors they think are local SEO myths. The factors that received the least amount of ranking impact would naturally float to the bottom and would make up our new list of “myths”, or at least the factors that the majority of local search experts don’t think have much of an impact on rankings.
This is ideal, because the local search ranking factors is a survey of opinions, not facts, and sometimes some practitioners know something the rest of us don’t. This new format allows us to see that some of the local search experts think a factor might have at least some ranking impact, however small.
But please, I beg you, don’t start thinking that geo-tagging photos might help your rankings because it received a score of 2 in this years survey. I will have stern words with those contributors that gave it a score that was not zero, haha.
New questions, new sections
Suspension risk factors
The survey has always had a negative ranking factors section, but Yan Gilbert smartly pointed out that some of the factors in this list would be more appropriately classified as suspension risks rather than factors that can harm your rankings. I thought this was a great idea, so in the Negative Factors section, I asked the participants to score each harmful factor in terms of negative ranking impact and suspension risk.
You can now see a list of factors that would be the most likely to get your GBP suspended.
Local Services Ads factors
As Local Services Ads (LSAs) continue to gain prominence and expand to new categories, people want to know how to improve their rankings in this valuable carousel of local business ads. I asked the contributors if they work on LSAs for their client, and if they do, what do they see as the most important ranking factors.
I then combed through their answers and counted the number of mentions each factor received. This new table of LSA factors can act as your prioritised checklist to optimise your visibility in the LSA packs.
How local SEOs are using AI
Since the release of ChatGPT in December 2022, the marketing world has been obsessed with how to leverage this tool to assist with SEO tasks. I asked the local SEO experts how they were using AI tools in their practice, and I have aggregated their responses into an easy to parse table for you.
Observations
What’s new and noteworthy in 2023? Which factors increased in importance and which decreased?
Noteworthy new factors
Every year I remove old factors, rename some factors, and add new factors. Most of the new factors I added this year didn’t get scored too highly, but a couple of new factors hit the top 30:
1. #13 – Sustained Influx of Reviews Over Time (rather than bursts)
I can’t believe I didn’t have this as a factor in previous editions of the survey. It makes a lot of sense. The thinking here is that you don’t want to get a burst of 100+ reviews (eg: from an email blast) and then call it a day. A business that is continually getting reviews on a regular basis sends the right signals to Google that it is an alive and active business that the public still cares about.
Your takeaway is that you should never stop asking for reviews. Review acquisition needs to be an integrated and ongoing part of your marketing strategy.
2. #24 – Internal Links TO GBP Landing Page from Other Pages of Website
The GBP Landing Page is whatever page your GBP links to in the ‘website’ field. For most businesses, this is the homepage, but for multi-location businesses, this is often a location page.
Your takeaway here is to make sure you’re building up the page authority of your location pages with good internal linking. We’re talking about links within the content of your other pages, not primary navigation, sidebar, or footer links.
Note: the “TO” in this factor name is bolded because there is another factor on the list for “Internal Links FROM GBP Landing Page to Other Pages of Website”. That factor came in at #45.
Noteworthy factors that increased in importance
1. Proximity of Address to Centroid
260% increase from 36 to 10
The rise of importance of this factor is likely a response to the Vicinity update that happened near the end of 2021, after the last survey came out. In this update, Google tightened up the radius that businesses could rank in, and with explicit search terms that include the city name, we’re seeing the centroid play a more important role, especially if the search is coming.
2. Quantity of Inbound Links to GBP Landing Page URL from Locally-Relevant Domains
257% increase from #75 to #21
While links in general are seeing a decline, this factor is on the rise. Local search experts know that it’s not the domain authority of the link source that matters, it’s the local relevance (and industry relevance) of the links that really gives the ranking boost.
3. Dedicated Page for Each Service
186% increase from #40 to #14
Attention: it’s 2023. If you haven’t already created a page on your website for every service you offer, then go do it now, or hire someone to do it for you.
4. Removal of spam listings through spam fighting
100% increase from #10 to #5
I want to call this one out because I don’t think this tactic has actually increased in importance or value. I think we’re seeing this increase simply because of the new structure of the survey. In previous years, this tactic didn’t make the top 20 of all experts’ selections, but this year all factors were scored. When asked “what is the ranking impact of spam fighting?” the contributors understandably scored this one high because the ranking impact is significant, but only when it works.
We have found that spam fighting is no more effective now than it ever was. See Allie Margeson’s comments in the Expert Q&A section for details.
Noteworthy factors that decreased in importance
1. Link factors
Some of the biggest decreases occurred with link factors. This echoes the trend we’re seeing this year with a decrease in the link factor groups at the top of this page. Onpage & content signals are up, link signals are down.
Quality/Authority of Inbound Links to Domain
213% decrease from #8 to #25
Domain Authority of Website
243% decrease from #21 to #72
Page Authority of GBP Landing Page URL
344% decrease from #18 to #80
2. Keywords in Native Google Reviews
278% decrease from #9 to #34
This decrease is likely driven by recent research from Top4 Marketing showing that keywords in reviews don’t seem to have the ranking impact we thought they did. While this is helpful data, my personal take is that you may still want to encourage keywords in reviews because:
- They can drive review justifications which are helpful for conversions.
- They can trigger Place Topics which also help with conversions.
- They can help with conversions when prospective customers browse or search through reviews looking to see if you offer a service and what people are saying about it.
- We only have this one test so far that indicates they don’t have much of a ranking impact. I think one test is enough to provide fairly strong evidence, but I always like to see more data. I think more testing is required on this one.
3. Owner responses
Two factors plummeted in the rankings this year by over 100%.
Keywords in Owner Responses to Reviews
107% decrease from #71 to #147
Presence of Owner Responses to Most Reviews
102% decrease from #55 to #111
This is good to see. Responding to reviews has never had an impact on rankings and stuffing keywords into your owner responses doesn’t help either, but you should still respond to every review because it definitely has a positive impact on your conversions.
Local pack/finder ranking factors
What gets measured, gets improved. Know how your business truly ranks in local and organic search results. Understand the impact of your SEO work and make data-driven decisions. All with Top4 Marketing SEO Services. Learn more →
Local organic ranking factors
Conversion factors
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Local SEO myths
Negative factors
Suspension risk factors
LSA ranking factors
How local SEOs are using AI
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