Keywords Ranking Varies When Search changes Location/City (Not Google Places)
-
We have a client that are ranking well on most Australian cities for competitive keywords except Google Sydney. If you toggled the cities on the search field when you search for a keyword, their places are almost exactly the same except for Sydney on which they can't be found at all in the Top 100 results. The keywords are not city specific, they are general commonly searched keywords about health.
This is not a Google Places issue. The search result shows the right landing pages of the site for their respective keywords.
Any ideas or experience on this kind of situation.
Much appreciated
Louie
-
Hi Louie,
It seems unlikely to me (which doesn't mean it's impossible) that they have a city-specific penalty. Can't say I have ever heard of that before either, and I would say it would be hard for Google to decide on something like that, manually or algorithmically. The idea that it could be a large number of links from the Sydney region honestly seems like a stretch: that should really just result in a link-based penalty that affects the site nation-wide. Where this could have happened, however, is if someone abused directory links with way too many links using "sydney" in anchor text but I'm sure you'd have seen something like that already. Even then, I haven't heard of that hurting all rankings in that region alone, but rather just for queries including "sydney".
Have you tested this searching from IPs in each region, i.e. I just wanted to make sure it's 100% confirmed that the site does rank well and receives traffic from Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth etc. and that you are not seeing personalised results in those locations and not in Sydney. I know it seems like grasping at straws but it's a really weird case for a non-geo-specific query.
-
HI Jane
Thanks for your interest. There is a slight improvement but maybe just 10%, and the rankings are still fluctuating in Google Sydney. Others are fine. The keywords are Page 1 on Google Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne etc but not showing up at all in Google Sydney. The competition level of all affected keywords are almost the same in other cities I would say.
We have inherited the client fro another SEO provider and the previous SEO work that was done aint pretty. They used to rank well in all Google Cities, but for some reason they have lost their Page 1 rankings only in Google Sydney about 3 months ago when we have inherited it.
Yes they have all their Sydney addresses in the website along with their addresses in other cities. So I am thinking, could they have a penalty in Google Sydney? I haven't seen that before, I would think that if a site is penalized or flagged it's not geo-specific.
Cheers
Louie
-
Hi Louie,
Has there been any improvement to this? If not, could it be possible given the query and the sites that do rank in the Sydney region, that the query is particularly competitive in Sydney as compared to other cities, and that the ranking sites have put any extra effort into that location?
I understand that it isn't a city-specific query, but is the service / product something that might be considered a more profitable query to rank for in Sydney?
Google doesn't support city-specific geo-targeting so it won't be something they've set up incorrectly in Webmaster Tools.
Is there any address or contact information on the client's website that might specifically indicate that they serve areas that are not Sydney?
Cheers,
Jane
-
And second one you are saying when you change location (city) then search any keywords ranking coming different in Google.
-
thats half of the story, you didnt understand the other half that is why your answer is very far from the question
-
I understood your point. You are simply saying your keywords ranking in google except Google Sydney.
-
please make sure you understand the question before you even reply..
-
Thank you, you've got a valid point. I will take that into consideration as I continue to do my evaluation.
-
Hi Louie,
Yes you are correct if you search any keywords in Google then Google prefer location where are you searching from.
For ex. you are searching any keywords in Sydney location then Google mostly prefer to will show you Sydney results.
This is not applicable for all website Yes but applicable for around 70-80% results.
You can open Google.com.au then put your keyword which you are searching then you will look
Web Image Maps Videos News More Search tool
You click Search Tool then you can set your location to find results.
If your client located in Sydney and Google Showing Sydney results i think will be better for your client.
Thanks,
Akhilesh
-
My first guess would be that they have a lot of spammy backlinks with the term Sydney in them. It's really hard to give good advice based on generalized information, but that's something that I would look into. I would look at their backlinks and anchor text with majestic seo and ahrefs.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Kinds of organic search results (Google)
Not sure if this is a new "unit" for Google organic results. Please see the attached image. When searching for "invoice software", the top quarter of the page is a ribbon of products/brands with badly formatted logos. The fact that it's so ugly, and there's nothing marking it as a paid result, leads me to think it's organic. Anyone know what this SERP unit is called; and better still: How do you get included? We rank super high in the normal organic results, but don't appear at all in this product ribbon. y71A9
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobM4161 -
Homepage not ranking for main keyword, all other pages ranking slightly for their own keyword phrases.
Dear Mozzers, We have an ecommerce website (www.pashmina-boutique.com), we want to rank the homepage for the keyword "pashmina". Problem is, we are nowhere to be found, not even in the top 100 search results of Google. It is indexed, we have no crawl errors, except that we had some problems with our hosting (503's), the crawler of Google bumped in a few of those. And we are fixing it. Our other pages, e.g. (http://www.pashmina-boutique.com/15-white-pashminas) ranks for "white pashminas" 24th and "white cashmere pashminas" 23rd. We have done no linkbuilding, in Majestic, you can check that. We have been offline for a long time (over 6 months) and about 3 weeks ago, we did a redesign (SEO). We relaunched, everything is looking fine except the homepage isn't ranking for the main keyword. Could you guys check it out? Is it over-optimization? It can't be Penguin, Panda would be a surprise too. Or do we still have to wait for the monthly Panda data-refresh? We are currently busy with this issue, once this is solved - that the homepage is ranking - we will start linkbuilding. Mr.1000
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mr.10000 -
How do I Improve Google Local search position
Hi, I think its called local search position, what I'm referring to is when you do a search on a keyword and google lists not only the best matches but also usually the second match is a group of 3 businesses with telephone numbers, google reviews and at the bottom of the group it will say something like: "See results for <your keyword="">on a map. This is what I'm referring to. in anycase my question is if I click on the link to see more results on a map I'm listed as number 3, however on the search page before where the link is displayed which I just clicked on I'm not being listed and instead one business name is being listed three times, each of the listings uses the same address but a different telephone number, In addtion the business that is being listed three times is also listed in the results being returned above in this case position #1 for the keyword I have searched. I assume this has something to do with them also being listed in the group of local businesses below three time.. The business I'm interested in getting listed in this group of results is currently being listed page 2 position 5 for the keyword..</your> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.. Thanks in advance..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robdob11 -
Rankings and search traffic fell off a cliff
Hi Moz community, One of my clients has a beast of a website built in ASP.NET (which causes me problems cos I don't have much experience in that) It is a job-site that aggregates job opportunities from other job-sites and provides a job matching service by email etc. They used to have great presence on Google naturally for thousands of job searches. Since Penguin and Penguin 2.0 (I think) their traffic has fallen off a cliff. I have been doing some "off-page" experimentation, seeing if we can fix a lot of issues by re-sculpting their backlink profile (seeing as it was after penguin). but what I have found is that some pages respond to this off page work but some just do not at all, despite how we approach it, such as disavowing previous links building fresh new top quality content links with natural anchor text etc.... Which has lead me to the conclusion that the wider issue is on-page and potentially site structure. Unfortunately as it is ASP.NET I am not so comfortable diagnosing the issues. I think also some issues will be related to dupe content etc.... but I would LOVE to get some input from my learned Moz colleagues. The website is http://www.allthetopbananas.com/ - any tips on how to recover from this dramatic loss of traffic would be massively appreciated. Kind regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | websearchseo0 -
SEO Moz Keyword Ranking Tool
The SEO Moz keyword ranking tool is useful and fairly accurate but it would be more useful to know why the ranking changed. Can the tool provide any insight in this regard?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
Google is ranking the wrong page for the targeted keyword
I have two examples below where we want it to rank for the targeted page but google picked another page to rank instead. This is happening a lot on this site I just recently started to work on. Example 1 Googles Choice for key word Motorcycle Tires: http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/cl/50/Tires-and-Wheels What we want Google to choice for Motorcycle Tires: http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/49/-/181/Motorcycle-Tires Other pages about Motorcycle tires: http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/d/12/Motorcycle-Tires We even used the rel="canonical" for this url to point to our target page. http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/50/-/181/Motorcycle-Tires Example 2 ATV Tires We want this page to rank http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/81/165/ATV-Tires however google has decided to rank http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/43/81/165/723/ATV-Tires-All that is acutally one folder under where we want it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoRM0 -
How can you rank for several cities ?
I have a website design client who wishes to rank for several cities they are willing to service locally. I have seen a competitor do this, Main-site.com/web-design content all about web design subcategories main-site.com/web-design/city-name-website-designer Content about web design plus content about the city itself and hiring a website designer in that city main-site.com/web-design/next-city-name-website-designer Content about web design plus content about the next city itself and hiring a website designer in that city Is this a great strategy, it seems to be working for them, or will Google eventually penalize this ? Or would you just put all 4 city names in the title and descriptions and content on one page ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90 -
Holiday hijack lowers Google ranking
A client of ours made a mistake that has dropped their Google rankings. They posted a holiday greeting on our homepage for several weeks, and now the search engines are not picking the page up at all. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to repair this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Event360300