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Google Places is Confusing The CRAP Out of Me, Can You Help?

by iamchrisgreen
7 replies
I have been chatting to a guy, he's a Financial Advisor in Wolverhampton (in the uk).

If I Google "Financial Advisor Wolverhampton", he is in position C on the Google Places listings.

However, he has done more to his place, got more reviews and his site has more links to it than the ones in position A and C.

I have two questions.

1. How does Google work out the order?

2. Can he ran his site above the google places listings?

Thanks in advance for the help guys.
#confusing #crap #google #places
  • Profile picture of the author Blase
    How many citations does he have?

    Where is his business located compared to the center
    of the area that he is competing in?
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  • Profile picture of the author Rick Britton
    If you target very low competition words is it easy to rank at the top of Google Places for a local search with little work?
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    Looks like possible unnatural review cycle. This happens when someone is overzealous in the beginning of their agreement or when they first publish the places listing and bombard it with reviews. No reviews in the last 5 months is a bad sign.

    The more possible answer is that because you don't have the street or road name in the listing like the other listings. That is going to hurt you. Add that and you should catapult to the A spot.

    It also depends on your citations. How many did you build?
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  • Profile picture of the author Stranger Danger
    It could be a number of things...

    Some of which have already been stated; citations and other optimization (reviews/images/video etc.), business location (relative to city center), quantity and quality of backlinks to main site (including relative anchor text etc.), GP category selection, listing title relevancy etc. etc.

    1. See above.
    2. Yes. He could have multiple websites (AND) videos ranking above google places.
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  • Profile picture of the author affordableweb
    You have to have a 100% complete profile on Placesin order to get the best ranking and sometimes your locaiton has more to do with it. If Google thinks the competition is closer they may rank it that way. Places Search is heavily influence by location.
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  • Profile picture of the author Stranger Danger
    BH techniques have been used to circumvent this unfair placing with regard to location. However, I have not tried them myself nor can I say whether or not such methods still work.
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  • Profile picture of the author iamchrisgreen
    Thanks for all the tips guys.
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