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How To Improve The Ranking Of A Local Service
Exactly how Google ranks Local Services Ads has long been a subject of heavy debate. There’s plenty of detail in their published guidelines, but as is often (or always) the case, there’s also more than a little ambiguity in there.
Setting out to clarify one key point – and a potentially significant change to past policies – Google has now confirmed that the proximity of a business to an individual performing a search is no longer a main Local Services Ads ranking factor. Instead, it will be the service area of a business that has a greater impact, making it the responsibility of the business to define (and honour) the true boundaries of its services.
If it all sounds a little complex, it’s actually fairly straightforward. Not to mention, completely logical.
Business Location Vs Service Area: Clarified by Google
Clarification of the change came from Google Ads Liaison, Ginny Marvin, who wrote the following:
“LSA ranking has evolved over time as we have learned what works best for consumers and advertisers. We’ve seen that proximity of a business’ location is often not a key indicator of relevancy.”
“For example, the physical location of a home cleaning business matters less to potential customers than whether their home is located within the business’ service area.”
This makes sense, as the physical location of a business or office doesn’t always correlate with the area in which it offers its main services.
Mr Marvin also said that the update hadn’t been rolled out as a sudden chance but as more of a gradual shift to provide more useful, accurate business recommendations. In Google’s official guidelines, it now says that the “context of a customer’s search… the service or job a customer is searching for, time of the search, location, and other characteristics” is what matters most.
Service Area Proximity
While the location of a business is no longer a big deal, Google continues to look at service area proximity as a key ranking factor. This in turn means that businesses are required to ensure that they limit their ad targeted to the locations in which they can offer their services – fairly and accurately.
“Local Services strives to connect consumers with local service providers. Targeting your ads to areas that are far from your business location and/or that you can’t reasonably serve creates a negative and potentially confusing experience for consumers.”
By taking the emphasis away from business location proximity, Google aims to provide more useful, practical results for those looking for service providers in their area. A once commonplace practice, it's now expressly forbidden by Google to use Local Services Ads to target areas beyond your realistic reach.
While most businesses will find that no major shifts are required to comply with the new rules, those who may have previously received credit simply for the location of their physical premises may need to shift focus to other aspects of their local SEO strategy.