At Outrank.com, we believe that local search results are an invaluable piece of a successful search engine presence. It didn’t take long before we noticed the changes last week to the Local Business Center (LBC), offering service and home-based businesses new options when it comes to listing their physical address. In addition to allowing customers to hide their business address, Google also added the option to specify a service area radius of up to 999 km and to add a list of areas served.
These changes make a lot of sense and should have been implemented a long time ago. Until now, home-based business owners were forced to list their home address or rent a P.O. Box in their city to satisfy Google. Now, Google can verify your location without also showing it to the whole world. The added functionality also gives business owners more power to clearly specify service areas (i.e. only serving a 10 mile radius of zip code 78727, only serving Austin and Round Rock, etc.) so that customers can easily match their needs with available providers’ offerings.
Google has not formally announced the changes, and it’s unclear when they will. As with most Google releases, many search engine marketers are wary of adopting the new functionality until more is known about the impact of the features on local rankings. Obviously, selecting a service area radius of 999 km or adding a list of 100 cities is not going to work magic to shoot your listing to the top of the search results.
Matt McGee and Mike Ramsey both advise not to use the tool yet to try to improve rankings, and Mike believes that hiding your address is actually a sure-fire way to ruin your coveted ranking. Yet, I think the new address options will prove to be a useful addition for business owners that really don’t want anyone knocking on the door.
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