In a previous post I wrote about a great article from the NY Times about Google's ranking algorithm and the confirmation it provided of the Google Sandbox phenomenon. The article, at 4 pages, is chock-full of other goodies though, one of which confirms a tip about optimizing for local search.
"At other times, complaints highlight more complex problems. In 2005, Bill Brougher, a Google product manager, complained that typing the phrase teak patio Palo Alto didn't return a local store called the Teak Patio."
"So Mr. Singhal fired up one of Google's prized and closely guarded internal programs, called Debug, which shows how its computers evaluate each query and each Web page. He discovered that Theteakpatio.com did not show up because Google's formulas were not giving enough importance to links from other sites about Palo Alto."
The important piece, and one that many have been advocating, is the use of links from sites that talk about specific geographic locations. These external links can re-enforce the geographic location of the recipient site so that it ranks highly when users are looking for a local establishment.
As I'm mentioned, many people have been using this technique for quite some time. And I'm certainly not saying it is anything new. The importance here is that Google has confirmed the tactic to be an effective one. This confirmation could come in handy should you need to convince clients or employers of the need for location-related external links.
I just hope all of the SEO blog postings similar to this one don't hurt the rankings for the Teak Patio store in Palo Alto!
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Interesting point. It makes sense that this would be considered by the search engines, but it is easily overlooked compared to a lot of other ranking factors.