If I was to take a crack at Google's local search algorithm and reduce it to a Layman's equation, it would perhaps look something like this:





Ranking = Location + Information + Corroboration + Input + X





Understanding these variables is a critical part of successfully marketing your business online. SMB's have just two meaningful representations in the local search space: a website and a business listing or "LBL". I'm dismissing social media presence because it is primarily a representation of a single user rather than what we conceive as a traditional brick and mortar business -- functioning as more of compliment to website SEO anyway. The latter of the two local search presences is worth discussing in detail.

Local search is mainstream. And If you're not already convinced of this, all you have to do is measure the real estate Google allots to their Map-packs (listings that appear adjacent to the large map of business locations) in the universal results - on many screens almost pushing the index-based results below the fold -- the 7-pack being the most frequently seen. Last year, the major engines saw a whopping 2.6 billion local searches conducted per month 1 . Business listing optimization and improving your "findability" in the local search space is the hot market right now.

But surprisingly, only about 11% of SMB's have even claimed their business listings. And roughly 25% of the existing NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) representations floating around online are incorrect. These NAP's appear primarily in local results. To be more specific, local results are the product of online consumers looking to find qualified local businesses, by entering "top of mind" keywords, phrases and geographic modifiers on major search engines, IYP's (Internet Yellow Pages) and other online directories.

Let's take a look at the anatomy of a local search results page and see where local business listings fit in. For this example I did a Google search for "cleaners boston ma"...





With this kind of first-page exposure for local listings, there is a reason they call it the Lucky 7. For any local search, the major search engines (e.g., Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, Bing Local) all use their own "black box" algorithms to deliver results they determine are most-to-least relevant. From what I can tell, the 7-Pack algorithm is mostly based on the Maps algo, but also has a layer of Universal on top of it. From extensive research in local search optimization, I've found a handful of factors that influence rankings.