en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en es en en en id en en en en en en ar en en en id en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en fr en en id en en id en en id en en id en en id en en id en en en en en en en ar en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en fa en en en en en en en en en
Vietnam PropTech Markets Report 2022-2027: Emphasis on Small business Intelligence, Facility Management, Portfolio Administration, True Estate Look for, Asset Administration – ResearchAndMarkets.com
New companies in SF’s Mission District
Supreme Court docket final decision makes uncertainty for organizations operating in Indian Nation
Moncks Corner entrepreneur will get grant from Black company coalition | Business enterprise
Solid Business enterprise Model Boosts KB Property (KBH), Inflation Ails
Albany’s enterprise as standard with Hochul continuing the corruption
Pompeo Summoned by Courtroom About Alleged Assange Assassination Plot
Remembering a Spokane small business incubator that developed a town in a town
Digital Marketing Unites The World
‘Near me’ brand names don’t rank higher for ‘near me’ searches
‘Open now near me’ searches up 400%
The rise of ‘near me’ search optimization
The rise of ‘near me’ businesses
Google has finally figured it out
Local ranking showdown: business name vs. proximity
Is ‘near me’ optimization a detriment to businesses?
A gimmick whose time has passed
A recent Think With Google article suggests that optimizing for “near me” searches will pay out a bonanza in extra good rankings and qualified referral traffic.
“Near me” has been one of the term optimizations that many of us have recommended for local SEO benefit for years now.
But, there are reasons to think this tactic has completely jumped the shark, making it a waste of time.
And for those who optimized by creating a business name around the phrase, Google’s changes have essentially destroyed their brand name search in Maps.
‘Open now near me’ searches up 400%
In March, Bill Ready, president of commerce, payments and next billion users at Google, penned 2022 Retail Marketing Guide: Drive foot traffic and in-store sales. This part grabbed my attention:
“Searches for “open now near me” have grown globally by over 400% YOY.”
“Near me” searches are queries for local products or services that include qualifier terms like “near me” when consumers want to narrow down to see the businesses closest to them only or primarily.
Also, during its Q1 earnings call, Google revealed that Maps searches for [shopping near me] were up 100% globally year-over-year.
“Open now” is a similar type of qualifier that is often used outside of the typical 9-to-5 timeframe or used later at night, such as to find restaurants that are still open, or clinics and other types of stores that stay open late at night.
While searches for businesses “near me” or “open now” separately are used more frequently, it is not surprising that both qualifying phrases might be used simultaneously in queries.
The rise of ‘near me’ search optimization
If you’ve worked in local SEO for a good length of time, this isn’t particularly surprising. We’ve known for about a decade that “near me” search optimization held huge potential for many types of businesses in many markets.
The 400% YOY growth rate is eye-opening, indicating that consumers have increasingly grown to expect that these qualifiers will help them locate more precisely what they need.
The rising use of mobile devices when conducting searches has influenced the “near me” trend a lot and has helped to drive overall increases in the volume of local searches.
Google Trends demonstrates the increasing popularity of “near me” searches, which is what Ready based his statement upon:
The related searches including “open now” also show considerable growth over time:
Along with others in the industry, I strongly recommended that local businesses optimize for their ideal keywords in combination with “near me” phrases. There are a number of these types of phrases that are used by consumers, including:
I also performed optimizations using these phrases on behalf of clients. In one case (a specialized attorney), keyword research showed that no other competing attorneys in the niche were using “near me” phrases. I created an optimized page for his “near me” specialization phrase. His referrals increased by about 20%.
Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on.
Optimizing for “near me” phrases was a solid gold recommendation for a long time in local search. It was nearly a slam-dunk.
Because when you had a website and webpages that included a page or pages for “near me,” along with the industry business category name, for many businesses where people wanted local providers this would connect local consumers with webpages and Google Maps boxes for those businesses that had optimized for it. As a great many businesses were clueless about the optimization, this provided a stealth marketing weapon that virtually guaranteed valuable referral increases.
The rise of ‘near me’ businesses
In the last few years, several businesses have taken this optimization to the next level.
By engineering their business name itself to include “near me”.
If you check the business registration databases across the U.S., you quickly find there are a number of businesses across the U.S. that have included “near me” into their official business names.
This includes many business categories beyond just a few of the more predictable kinds (e.g., locksmiths).
Clearly, many companies took the idea of optimizing for “near me” queries and made it into a core piece of their strategy that could be expected to return a lot of referrals.
With all of their online collateral materials associating “near me” with their business, how could they not rank for these searches?
Business registrations for “Near Me” in Nevada
Business registrations for “Near Me” in New York (partial list).
The examples are hilarious:
Dentist Near Me in El Paso, Texas
Sushi Near Me in Los Angeles, California
Custom Signs Near Me, Denver, Colorado
Boxes Near Me, Phoenix, Arizona
Locksmith Near Me Miami, Florida – a service area business
24 HR Locksmith Near Me, Jacksonville, Florida – a service area business
Locksmith, Massage, and Moving Company “Near Me” businesses, Manhattan, New York
It is unclear if these are service area businesses or fake alternate name business listings.
Exterminator Near Me, Indianapolis, Indiana
I’ll take some of the blame for this.
In the distant past, I jokingly promoted some “extreme local SEO tactics” – such as the infamous advice to “change your business name to include a few of the top keywords that users type into search engines when seeking your type of business in your area.” (This was not against the rules at that time, by the way.)
I also had blogged some “ultimate local SEO tactics” which included the idea of having streets named after one’s company, or even having a city or country named after one’s company or brand name!
Part of the point of these joking articles was to educate people as to how Google, and Google Maps search, relied so heavily on literal keyword matching that finagling of keyword optimizations could hotwire a company into appearing more prominently for local business searches.
Google has finally figured it out
Around 10 years ago – when it became clear that consumers were increasingly searching for local businesses while combining the phrase “near me” in their queries – I wondered why Google did not engineer special handling for the phrase.
I asked a Google Maps representative about this issue and was told they had many things on their development priority list – but this was something they would likely get around to.
Well, it seems that Google finally got around to it.
Google has made it now so that a “near me” query will return the closest matching local businesses for one’s search terms within the Maps/Local listings. To do this, Google clearly extracts the “near me” portion of the user’s query and matches the remainder of the query with businesses and websites it believes are closest in location proximity to the user. This handling negates the efficacy of performing keyword optimizations with “near me” phrases for Google Maps/Local search.
Local ranking showdown: business name vs. proximity
I saw this was happening anecdotally, but after locating a number of the businesses pictured above to investigate how they were ranking in their localities for “near me” search phrases that exact-match their business names, the results are striking.
When searching with a Dallas IP address for “ER near me,” 11 businesses come up in the Maps results before a listing for the “ER near me” business is listed. By contrast, searching for other businesses in the list by name results in them being displayed first in the list, and sometimes by themselves in the results.
Searching for another generic-sounding brand by name, “ER of Texas,” produces results listing two of their locations first in Google Maps, followed by other businesses interspersed with more locations for “ER of Texas”.
This is what makes the results for the “ER near me” searches interesting – if Google determined that query was likely a business name search, their listing would come up first in the list.
This dynamic is truly striking. Google has done a lot of work to try to feature a business’s listing first in the search results for its exact brand name search. This is being negated for those listings with “near me” in the business names.
There is a caveat for ranking for the name search if the name appears to be spammy (such as those with keywords crammed in). One could conjecture that the businesses with “near me” names could be treated as keyword-stuffed, which would then negate their keyword benefit. However, I found that they can still rank for the “near me” queries – it’s just dependent upon proximity to the searcher.
Testing for “dentist near me” searches in El Paso in Google Maps, I found a hundred lists in Maps and gave up – the business named Dentist Near Me did not show up when using an IP address location associated with the downtown area of El Paso.
However, the business is located on the eastern edge of town, and by changing the browser’s IP address to a location much closer to that address, I was able to get the Dentist Near Me listing in the fourth organic position in Maps. “Locksmith near me” in Miami was in the 16th position.
Searching for “Sushi near me” in Los Angeles likewise did not return the business with that name in the first three search results. Searching for “Boxes Near Me” in Phoenix produced the business’s listing in the fifth position. The “24hr Locksmith Near Me” was in the 24th position in Maps for a “locksmith near me” search in Jacksonville. Search for “Exterminator Near Me” in Indianapolis placed the business’s listing in the 56th position.
“Custom Signs Near Me” in Denver seems to be an exception to how this is working. But, I believe that is largely because the business is located near the centroid of Denver, and there are few other custom sign businesses that close to the center point.
Switching to a search from Lakewood, which is smack next to Denver, moves the listing’s position down a number of slots. It also could be that “custom signs” might be less-recognized as a business category than “sign shops” by Google. Performing a “sign shops near me” search in Denver places the business’s listing down at the fifth position. It is likely the business only ranked prominently due to its location near the city’s centroid – not because of keyword optimization for “near me” in its business name.
While searching to find examples of businesses with “near me” in their official names, I ran across a great many more instances that are fake business names and locations. A number of companies have created additional listings in Google Maps for “_______ near me” names. These often use the same exact address as their regular business, perhaps expecting consumers to search “near me”, see the location, and arrive in a hypnotized state to walk into the business with the real brand name signage.
The three listings I show above from Manhattan (a locksmith, a moving company and a massage provider) potentially could be fake listings. In many cases, some “near me” listings appear to be completely fake, appearing for service area businesses, and once you view their pinpoint locations they are next to police stations, under overpasses, next to parks or next to shared workspace locations. Predictably, these listings are for moving companies, locksmiths, roofing contractors, plumbers and the categories of businesses that have long been rife with fake listing issues.
Now, for the real “near me” businesses I documented, a number of their websites did appear prominently in the regular, keyword search results outside of Google Maps – often in the first organic position, but not always.
The “near me” keyword optimization does appear to still work there, and there may be some level of value to that in terms of referral traffic. But, experience indicates that the greater value was to be had in Maps search.
Many consumers seeking a local provider are conducting searches directly in the Google Maps app, and those will see other businesses the majority of the time for “near me” searches, and not these over-optimized companies.
Google itself indicates that consumers are showing local intent with these queries, because every one of the test queries reflected blended search results with the Maps 3-Pack at the top, before regular keyword search results.
Is ‘near me’ optimization a detriment to businesses?
When those of us in local SEO first began recommending keyword optimizations for “near me,” there was some light criticism that the keyword optimization was difficult to incorporate on websites and directory listings in a natural-looking manner. But doing so, by adding it into business names, is far more of a smack-you-in-the-face option than merely including it in some isolated paragraphs, page titles and headings.
Incorporating it into business names seems likely to detract from building a non-generic-sounding brand.
While including valuable keywords in a business name can often have a synergetic value if done well, these near me brand names seem to be brute-force functional search marketing above all other marketing and brand-building considerations.
Some would undoubtedly call these brand names spammy-sounding. I think these would not work as well for word-of-mouth marketing or repeat business.
Because Google is now using the “near me” parts of users’ queries as a type of proximity indicator, rather than a literal keyword matching phrase, the use of this in brand name optimizations is arguably a serious disadvantage at this point.
Customers inclined to use a business again will often search online by business name, and if they do so in Maps they will have a lot of trouble finding these businesses because Google’s functionality is now damaging their ability to rank well for their brand name searches.
I do not believe this is necessarily any sort of a penalty. Google simply determined that the “near me” queries are far more frequently consumers’ expressions that they desired to get the specific types of businesses nearest to their physical locations rather than businesses with names that match “near me” queries.
For established businesses, one of the top types of search queries that will refer traffic over time is brand name queries. Whereas using “near me” in brand names may have paid dividends in the past, the tactic is now a major detriment to a local business’s online strategy.
A gimmick whose time has passed
The Think With Google article that references the 400% YOY growth of “open now near me” searches advised businesses to optimize for local to capitalize on those queries. Google didn’t provide instructions on how to do that.
However, I believe this optimization should no longer mean the inclusion of “near me” keywords, in the web marketing materials, much less should it involve hotwiring the business name to include the “open now” and “near me” phrases.
Optimizing for this will mean updating your hours of operation, truthfully, in your Google Business Profile, and including all the address and location signals in your online collateral materials to make your location signals very strong.
Proximity to the user isn’t the sole criteria. Optimizing for prominence signals is vital (e.g., volume and velocity of reviews, having other websites mention and link to your business website).
Bottom line: Any benefits of Incorporating “near me” in your business name are largely canceled out by the disadvantages.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
New on Search Engine Land
Asia/Pacific* Web of Issues Expending to Get to $436 Billion in 2026, Says IDC
Mon Jun 20 , 2022
SINGAPORE, June 14, 2022 – In accordance to IDC’s latest Around the world Semiannual World-wide-web of Matters Shelling out Information , the IoT current market in Asia/Pacific* will continue to improve in 2022 by 9.1%, accelerating from 6.9% in 2021. Headwinds these kinds of as semiconductor shortages and offer chain […]
Must You Invest in Website positioning? A few Thoughts to Ask By yourself
Summer 9 months ago
3 Search engine marketing equipment to build for your customers in Facts Studio
Summer 5 months ago
Lessons from 20 years in the trenches
Summer 5 months ago
15 Project Management Tools For SEO Professionals
Summer 2 months ago
Best Neighborhood Search engine marketing/ World wide web Promoting Company For Smaller Company Promotion Boston MA
Summer 7 months ago
5 On-Site Search engine optimisation Things To Check In Underperforming Content material
Summer 8 months ago
Newest Trends in Solventless Vapes
Websnoogie is Helping Businesses to Grow in Nebraska
Top 10 Web Development Companies in Bangalore
Over and above Commerce Executes Defin – GuruFocus.com
The 10 Most Crucial Net Design Information for Your Web-site in 2022
Archives Select Month August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 September 2021 July 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018
Categories Select Category affiliate marketing Business digital marketing e-marketing internet advertising Internet Marketing internet marketing company internet marketing firm internet marketing service Marketing marketing companies marketing firm marketing tools Online online advertising online marketing pay per click marketing search engine marketing SEO Service small business marketing Technology Development Uncategorized viral marketing Web Design
You may want to visit:
secuestradoslapelicula.com All Rights Reserved WordPress Theme: Seek by ThemeInWP
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.