Just like in real estate where location does matter, Google keyword rankings too change depending on the location from where the related searches are made. Thus, a keyword that might figure on top when searched from one location might slip further down when accessed from another location.
This vital finding has been discovered by Linkdex that put 2,000 keywords to test and accessed them from over 10 cities and towns across the USA. They discovered a huge variance in keyword ranking when searching for those specific keywords from different locations.
Unfortunately the variations were not uniform, since some keywords exhibited a higher difference in rankings as compared to others that were affected marginally. Linkdex decided to research further and found that a few sites recorded a very high variation in rankings by appearing in top positions when accessed from a few cities while not even appearing in the top 10 rankings when accessed from other cities.
They also found that there were a few niches that were not affected across several locations, but marketers would have a tough time in collecting such data as well as managing them. However, the fact remains that Linkdex has determined and displayed that keyword rankings are affected by change in query location and marketers would now need to study this phenomenon to devise a suitable strategy that could boost weak rankings from specific locations.
Linkdex further reported that in case a business website is ranked on Google within the top 30 from a specific location, there is a 69 percent chance that it will not get the same ranking when accessed from other locations. The rankings were on average deviating 11 positions.
Marketers thus have their work cut out for them as they try to further understand such variations and take corrective action to minimize ranking variations from different locations.