When a search is made that includes a location, Google will display a map and a box with the top 3 local listings it decides are most relevant. It will show this before it shows any other search results. So how do we get to be featured in this box?
Google is looking for relevance to the search being made, distance from the person searching, and how well known your business is, when deciding who to show.
To ensure our local listing is going to be ranked, we must perform some local listing optimization. That is, set up our listing in the correct format, with all the required information.
First thing to do to be able to get into this select group of three is to be listed on Google Maps. For this, we go to Google My Business and set up our listing. This will include name, physical address, hours, phone numbers, services offered, and your website address. Google will then verify that you are a real business, and get some assurance that this is a place that they can show to searchers.
Like you, Google is a business too, and they want to put in front of their customers i.e the people searching for a product or business, the most relevant and trustworthy results. Given there are 1.8 billion websites online, they can’t rely on their staff to manually trawl through every site. They gather enough data on your business to make an informed decision that you actually exist and are not there just to rip people off.
As Google has the lion’s share of the market, they are able to set criteria that ensures all sites that want to be found through them are up to a certain standard. If we want to be found, we should follow their requests as to what we show in our listing.