Archive for December 21, 2010

Local SEO Experiment – Google’s Change Location

Posted by Dr. Pete

Special thanks to Joanna Lord, Michael Cottam, and Lindsay Wassell for helping me collect data. Also, thanks to Danny Dover for explaining to me how all my initial ideas were wrong ;)

Back in October, Google added the ability to easily change the location from where you search. It’s located just under the search verticals – click on "Change Location," and you’ll see something like the screen below (lower-left):

Screenshot of Change Location

Obviously, this is of tremendous value to anyone doing local SEO, but given Google’s uneven support for opting out of personalization, I had to wonder whether the location feature was really accurate. If I set my location to another city, would I really see what my clients and prospects were seeing?

Obligatory Disclaimers

What I’m about to describe isn’t the most scientific experiment; it’s just an initial exploration of whether Google’s "Change Location" feature matched up across different cities for different users. Your results may vary. If your experiences differ, we’d love to hear your comments.

The Basic Experiment

I grabbed 3 of the finest minds in SEO (or, at least, that’s what I told them so they’d volunteer) from 3 US cities other than … Read the rest

December 21, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments



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