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).

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:

Noteworthy factors that increased in importance

Noteworthy factors that decreased in importance

Local pack/finder ranking factors

Conversion factors

Negative factors

Suspension risk factors

LSA ranking factors

How local SEOs are using AI