Special thanks to Joanna Lord, Michael Cottam, and Lindsay Wassell for helping me collect data. Also, thanks to Danny Dover for explaining to me how all my initial ideas were wrong ;)
Back in October, Google added the ability to easily change the location from where you search. It's located just under the search verticals – click on "Change Location," and you'll see something like the screen below (lower-left):
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Obviously, this is of tremendous value to anyone doing local SEO, but given Google’s uneven support for opting out of personalization, I had to wonder whether the location feature was really accurate. If I set my location to another city, would I really see what my clients and prospects were seeing?
Obligatory Disclaimers
What I'm about to describe isn't the most scientific experiment; it's just an initial exploration of whether Google's "Change Location" feature matched up across different cities for different users. Your results may vary. If your experiences differ, we'd love to hear your comments.
The Basic Experiment
I grabbed 3 of the finest minds in SEO (or, at least, that's what I told them so they'd volunteer) from 3 US cities other than mine (we kept this domestic to avoid any complications from ccTLDs). I’m in Chicago, Joanna is at Moz HQ in Seattle, Michael is in Portland, and Lindsay is in Tampa.
For each city, we picked a one-word query that had a distinct local flavor (suggested by the respective localite). We kept it to the realm of food and drink, because who doesn’t like to eat and drink? The final queries were:
- Chicago - "pizza"
- Seattle - "coffee"
- Portland - "pubs"
- Tampa - "seafood"
Each of us started with our own city, ran the query, and recorded two things: (1) where the local search results began, and (2) the URLs for the local search results. If there were 3 organic results prior to the first local result, they started at position 4, for example. The new, integrated results are a bit tricky, but we counted any results with a letter (A)-(G) as a local result, whether it was specifically a "Places" result or not. We repeated the process for each of the 4 cities/queries.
Prior to running searches, we each logged out of our Google accounts. We tested adding the &pws=0 parameter to remove personalization, but there was no case where this had any impact on our results. City order was rotated across the 4 participants.
The Basic Results
I was all set to develop some really complicated math to determine how 2 sets of queries matched each other, but the real results ended up being so black-and-white, that I've just created a grid of how the 4 participants' results matched up. If I had Site X in position (D) and someone else did, too, that's a match, plain and simple:
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The table shows how each person’s results match up to the local user's results (represented by the city name). The diagonal (grayed-out) is always a 100% match, since that person is the local user. For these searches (being fairly popular), all local results were 7-packs. Chicago, Portland, and Tampa local results started after 3 organic listings (position #4). Seattle local listings started in the #1 position (more on that below).
The short takeaway - Florida is trouble. Our results matched completely, except for Tampa, where each of our results were completely different from Lindsay's (although our 3 sets of non-local Tampa results all matched). Digging deeper, it turns out that Lindsay is out in the burbs a bit, and her results tended to be more local to her area. The rest of us are located closer to the city centers.
Local SEO Implications
If you're a city dweller, the results were fairly promising. It seems that Google is taking the location setting at face value and not adding much personalization into the mix. Even though we had logged out, anecdotal evidence suggested that logged in results were similar. The good news is that the "Change Location" feature should be a useful tool for SEOs who do a lot of local work with clients in other cities. Of course, it never hurts to sanity-check your results in any given situation.
One Last Oddity
The latest Google SERPs seem to be integrating organic and local results in some cases, and I suspect that a domain's overall authority could be impacting the placement of their local result. In our mini-experiment, the Seattle/"coffee" results exhibited an odd behavior, as shown in the screenshot below:
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The Starbucks "local" listing appears in the #1 spot, even though the second local listing isn't until #4. This seems to be a factor of Starbucks’ overall authority. If I change my location back to Chicago, Starbucks is still #1, but I see a local Starbucks address.
It's clear that a lot is changing in local search, and I think we can expect to see more integration of the overall organic and local algorithms (while local retains some unique factors, like citations and reviews). Whatever happens, though, the new "Change Location" tool seems to be a real window into the local algorithm and should be a welcome addition for local SEOs.
Nice experiment and description. I've done similar experiments and had similar results. Very telling with regard to the Tampa experiment. I'd suggest you do the same experiment only switch the locations for the other people to the suburb of Tampa and then see if you get identical results all across the board. Food and beverage will probably show very location sensitive results, especially for seafood in that:
A) there are probably a lot of seafood restaurants and
B) Unlike the Seattle example where Starbucks has tremendous authority and "leapfrogs" the other local listings (so to speak) probably the local seafood restaurants don't have that kind of amazing relative site authority.
The authority thing is probably usually rare but its great to obtain if you can. We operate some unusual businesses (there aren't a lot of them). The web competition isn't great. Amazingly we see some Starbucks kind of phenomena as in the Seattle example. For instance when we set a location for the business industry term in Wilmington Del for example we see some local results from the North in NYC and from the South in Washington DC. Its a function of authority/distance/local entities. Similarly we do the same search for the industry term in Connecticut and we see NYC websites/businesses outranking more local ones. Its not that the authority website is as strong as Starbucks its more that the local competition is weak.
One other thing on the authority element in the searches: When I searched locally for "coffee" as in the experiment, I saw the same kind of "authority" differentiation. The Starbucks merged record with organic ranking and local site information was at the top of rankings with some basic organic rankings on coffee....and then several spots down additional "merged rankings of local businesses/websites appeared. Just as in the experiment. But when I searched for "coffee shop" Starbucks was still first with an organic/local ranking...but the immediate following websites were all local businesses w/ merged organic/local rankings. Seems like Starbuck's authority is pretty damn strong for the term "coffee"....and conversely...the term "coffee shop" is such a locally oriented type of search term...that there isn't a website that dominates search (unless of course its Starbucks) :D I'd suggest using AOL as a proxy for Google to see what site ranks first for "coffee shop" without local impact.
The big thing, to me, about the organic/local merging, is that it's clearly a lot more than just a design change. The algos are crossing more now, which makes sense long-term. I agree, though, that it's still pretty rare. Just something to watch.
Great test! I was asking myself several times the questions you answered in your post. Would be interesting if there are the same "rules" in different countries.
Another curious fact is, that only locations inside the country can be selected: e.g. if you search in google.at --> only cities of Austria are acceptable as setted location - same in google.de and so on. If I make a search in google.com I can set every city of the world.
That's interesting - I wasn't aware of that. Yeah, Google.com is a strange animal - it's somehow both "generic" and US-based. I'm not sure where that's headed as internationalization becomes more common in search.
May I tell you, Peter, that when I first read the title of the post and saw "experiment" in it, I got worried for your website again?
Luckily that fear disappeared as soon as I was reading the post and changed in a "Ohhh!!" (sound like the Toy Story green aliens).
Nice experiment and promising, even though - as you say - it cannot be taken as a scientific one. I hope it will lead to others and in other countries as well.
Personally, your conclusion are something I noticed doing Local Search Optimization for some clients in Italy. You know that I live in Spain, but when confronting the results with clients (and using the location changer field), I saw that Local results were very close to be the same.
That is so funny! Dr Pete is always willing to 'take one for the team'.
I dunno Lindsey. I think he learned his lesson after hosing his own site so thoroughly.
Ha ha - yeah, no websites were injured to make this post.
Pete, great post but I'll be curious to see how long they let you continue to change your location and not get some form of personalized results. For instance if I change my location to Seattle, search for Coffee and my personalized results has a biased for Seattle's Best Coffee, what good does it do me to see Starbucks at the top of the rankings when at home they give me what I want, Seattle's Best Coffee. I suspect we will see this change in the future to apply our personalized results for a better user experience.
I agree the might not continue to let users adjust the search results to suit their location but it is useful when searching for local information from another location as the inclusion of a geographic location in the search query no longer seems to deliver the best results.
Pete,
That was a terrific idea for a study. Thank you so much for sharing your results! Looks like this will be a really helpful tactic when dealing with city-based local clients. I really appreciate the work of everyone who participated in this study. Well done!
Very interesting stuff. Though I always thought Google should make local results appear when the user clicks something like "local results" near the search bar or on the left navigation instead of automatically integrating them with the regular results. Now I can't speak for everybody but I would prefer an option for local results.
I agree. Local results are terrific for letting people know where the nearest coffee shop may be, but when it comes to hotels, buying homes, or any number of other things I need locally, I'd rather be able to comparison shop. In those cases, a listing site is much more appropriate for my needs than a Google Places listing.
Interesting findings Pete! I never took notice of the 'Change Location' option on the left hand side. I think if Google made it more visible people may make use of changing their city if for some reason it was wrong. I live in Ottawa, so Ottawa and Gatineau are nearly next to one another and it appears that either one will fill the slot, but most of the time I would be searching for something Ottawa. In addition, if people took notice of this, they may already think their search is locally targeted and not attach a location keyword to the end of the keyword phrase. What are your thoughts on that?
When I search 'coffee shop ottawa' I get the new Places in the SERP, but when I type 'coffee shop' the 7-pack is displayed... odd.
Would you optimize for 'coffee shop' AND 'coffee shop ottawa' or pick one? Would like to hear your thoughts on this.
Wait you were wrong?
It was Danny's fault, somehow :) Yeah, call me cynical, but I strongly suspected the results would be all over the place. I didn't think the Change Location feature would operate quite so transparently.
Don't tell Dr. Pete but I impersonated Lindsay to ruin his experiment. It did require frequent trips to Florida but it was worth it in the end :-p
You do apparently have a habit of flying to the wrong city ;)
It is wasn't for Lindsay, people probably would've accused me of just faking the results. "Sure, Dr. Pete, EVERYTHING just perfectly matched up."
Dr Pete at it again! This is great I was always super curious about this myself but never had the chance to test it out!
I live in the bay area and just the 20 minute drive to work completely changes the results.
As far as the local/organic listings I have been experiencing that quite frequently for a few months now.
Googling " san francisco motorcycle attorney" gives a 7 pack of hybrids followed by non local listings, while "denver plastic surgeon" is 2 organic then a 7 pack then organic. I have seen it broken up like you showed above, but i don't remember teh search terms
Interesting note here. This confirms Dr. Petes assumption that being in the burbs is what changed the results. Makes me curious about one of our local restaurants. He is located at the junction of 2 major highways just outside the city. His customers come from 3 different towns+the city from 2 different counties. I never thought about checking the local results from each of the towns plus the city.
This is really important to us because his place page gets about 4000 impressions while his website only gets 1500 hits.
Good call!
Curious if changing location shows you what users in that location see in search suggest / instant. or does that not change?
Instant seems to, and generally reflects the local integration now, but I'm not sure how Suggest results are impacted by location. That would be interesting to test.
2011 will be the year local search standards are normalized.
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Thanks for sharing this article. You have put a good content and explained it pretty well. Two thumbs up for you.
Thanks Pete for the lovely post. I have seen a lot posts in the last few days about local seo and it seems that is one of the hottest things in seo at the moment
I'm in Australia and for the Australian Google I can see and use the Change Location setting (you need cookies by the way). I also checked the UK and it's the same.
However, if I switch to the US Google I get a different option to set a Custom Location. Is this new or old?
The Custom Location also lets me set the scope of my search: city|region|state.
What I've noticed is this Custom Location looks like it's very different from Change Location as it seems to filters out results from outside the specified area. result sets can be small!
While Change Location is about re-ordering results based on your specified location Custom Location is about filtering results to the area.
Great article but I have to remember to log out of my Google account when checking my SEO for my We Buy Gold store in Alpharetta Georgia. When I am logged in and searching for my keyworkds, Alpharetta Gold Buyers, Gold Buyers Alpharetta or We buy Gold Alpharetta, I am listed at the top. When i am logged out of my gmail account, I am listed on the bottom or the second page.
In addition, when I am at my home computer and logged out but in the same city of Alpharetta, my website, www.404gold.com shows at the bottom again. If I search from my gold store, I am at the top. I am thinking that google uses the IP Address to pinpoint where I am when searching and maybe GPS when I am on my iphone.
I would love to know more but either way, I am lost with my SEO because I can't really tell where I am ranked for my customers!
Great experiment! There is also a tool available that let's you easily change your Google location as well as language, device and personalization: https://www.isearchfrom.com. This will allow you to test this stuff out for yourself as well :)
"Our results matched completely, except for Tampa, where each of our results were completely different from Lindsay's"
Did you get 4 completely different results for Tampa, or were 3 sets of results the same and only Lindsay's burb-based results different? If the latter, it looks like the test results can be considered to be effectively consistent. If the former, then it would appear Florida is is being treated differently.
The latter - the 3 of us outside of Tampa matched up completely, but Lindsay's local results were all different. That, tied with the fact that her results were relevant to her immediate area, left us pretty sure this was just a targeting issue. Definitely something I'd adjust for in a second attempt.
To test for Lindsay's results, her computer will give a "location" in the location box on the right. She should email that location to the rest of you.
Reset your locations to be in agreement with Lindsay's. Then run the test again. See if that works and if all rankings are in agreement.
I know you can change your location (in the left column), but does IP address (or ISP) come into play with local results? If I am a TWC RR customer out of Charlotte, will my SERPs be different from someone who is located in Portland OR- (even if we both change our location manually)?
If you don't set a location, Google will attempt to use your IP address and other data to determine a location, so in that sense, yes. On the other hand, I didn't see much evidence that Google was using IP after we manually set our locations, but it can be really tough to tease that apart. My general impression is that Google is taking the manually-set location at face value.
Good stuff - thanks Dr. Pete!
Interesting experiment.In Russia, Google competes with by Yandex and now they are fighting for the search in the regions. While Google is losing, so as Yandex knows Russia.Interested in that issue the same in your account and incognito.You are right it is a great tool if your conclusions are correct.
I didn't realize they even that a change location option there.... I will have to give this a try.
Wow Pete. What a great post! Thanks for doing the research and sharing it. I too believed as you did, that the results would have been erratic at best. Personalization has taken such a strangle hold on my SERP results that I didn't even try playing with the "change location" button. I just assumed (incorrectly I now see thanks to your intrepid testing team) that it was fluff.
I wonder if Google will start to roll out more "city centers" to allow for those not in the Gotham Cities of the US to play.
One thing that's unclear is what options Google will take in that box. I've been able to put:
It doesn't look like the address does much (my results were still city-based, not local to me, as far as I could tell). Zip code seems to at least find your city. City works for just about anywhere - I entered my home-town (Fenton, IL, population: 137 when I left), and it worked. Sadly, the nearest coffee shop really IS 15 miles away.
That's amazing. But like Casey said above, I just can't see Google leaving it alone and letting us dicate the search parameters. I can't help but feel they'll get their personalization claws into it somehow.
very interesting research. Ive met a few people lately that are really looking into local search.
And like a few people on here are saying it would be interest to test this in other countries. There are easily enough SEOs scattered across the UK to sort out a similiar test pretty sharpish.
Great post! Thanks! I always suspected it, but now there is really proof! How would this work outsite of the US? Still the same?
I'm trying an extention to this experiment to find out. Anyone who's interested please PM me before Christmas - the more SEOs we can get to collaborate from around the world the better our results will be.
I have had a couple of responses already and it would be great to get everything organised and results in before the New Year. A somewhat short timeframe I know, but each person shouldn't have to donate too much of their time - just a few minutes playing with Google and you could be part of a much bigger experiment.
Good stuff, thanks! I think you purely compared IP-based geolocation vs. user setting, right? It would have been interesting to also see how much overlap personalized results had for your 4 searchers.
Right, we kept our "default" location as determined by Google instead of setting it manually. That's why the Tampa vs. burbs issue popped up.
It only works within the same country as the address you would like to change to. For example since I am in asia at the moment. I can't change my location to Kansas City, MO. That is not nice for doing research for a client out of the country.
As pointed out by @algogmbh above, it looks like Google.com visitors can change to any international location, but non-com TLDs can't. So, I can change my location to London, but someone on Google.co.uk can't change to Chicago. Not sure of the logic there.
As a side note, searching from the UK in google.com, I don't have to provide a location at all (although google probably works it out from my IP - the fact I'm not in the US the reason why I'm not forced to specify my location?). But searching in google.co.uk I'm unable to search without specifying my location first. Evidence of how much emphasis google is placing on delivering geo targeted SERPs?
google likes to redirect you back to your local google domain. Try adding /ncr after the domain name and it will let you stay on a particular google. e.g. google.com/ncr
This is excellent research. It's good to know that google have been consistent with their implementation local targetting.
Terry
It would be interesting to test this outside US, maybe soon I will find some time :)
I didn't want to cross the TLDs (do a London search in Google.com while someone else did it in Google.co.uk) for the first attempt, but it would certainly be interesting.
I've compared search results for a clients website from their own computers against what we get on the other side of the UK. The results are much the same when you set your location but often, from what I can tell, if your IP address is found to be in the city you set your location to the places results appear above the natural listings. Whereas from our system, a few hundred miles away, we see two or three high authority sites appear above the google places.
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