Last month, Joy Hawkins of SterlingSky, took to Twitter to reveal the surprising impact Services can have on the ranking of Google Business Profiles. This finding is sure to cause a stir among businesses that are trying to improve their ranking on the search engine.
Link: https://www.sterlingsky.ca/services-in-google-business-profile-impact-ranking/
The Study Led To Some Surprising Outcomes
This study showed that local businesses that have verified their information with Google Business Profiles are now seeing the benefits in terms of local rankings. This is because Google has now started to surface business information in search results, giving these local businesses a boost in the rankings.
Pre-defined services have been available on Google Business Profile dashboards for a while now, but until recently, it wasn’t clear if they actually had an impact on rankings. However, when retested, Hawkins was able to discover that Services can have a major impact on the rankings of a website. Services in GBP may indirectly impact rankings if they are related to SEO or other ranking factors.
Unlike what was noticed in previous tests, simply adding the service “DUI injury litigation” for a lawyer in New Jersey had a noticeable impact on their rankings. You can see the results of the test in the image below. The charts show the rankings before and after Joy’s experiment.
Final Takeaway
Hawkins noted that businesses that are able to offer more pre-defined services generally tend to rank at a higher level on Google. Furthermore, adding pre-defined services to a company’s Google Business Profile can positively impact both explicit and implicit keywords – with the explicit keyword ranking generally seeing more dramatic results.
The report also points out that the ranking impact varies depending on the specific industry and market. For example, it can take 24-72 hours for a change to take effect in the stock market, but it may take longer for the impact to be seen in other industries.
Therefore, it is important for businesses to take advantage of this and add these pre-defined services to their Google Business Profiles for maximum visibility.
TL;DR:
- Services impact ranking.
- Both explicit and implicit keywords appear to be impacted by services.
- The impact on explicit keyword ranking is more significant.
- The impact on ranking appears to vary depending on the industry and market.
- It may take 24-72 hours for the ranking impact to take effect.