Business Address is more important on Google than Yahoo or MSN

[earlpearl]

Here is an interesting little find.

This summer we provided a link to a friend/site with a business that is complementary to our own.

Anchor text for the link was *2wrd service 2 local states and city*

Sort of like *dog walking Pennsylvania Philadelphia New Jersey*

The service is not competitive and the other site has high rankings for the phrase as follows

#1 or #2 in Y and MSN for all three different jurisdictions ie dog walking Philadelphia

#1 in Google w/#1 allinanchor for the phrase for the state in which the business is located and identified on the web.

Google: #190 for the other state and #210 for the city even as allinanchor for the phrase and city and phrase and other state is #1 in both cases.

Seemingly the site is sandboxed or filtered from showing in the other 2 jurisdictions.

Last Feb/march it appeared that Google made a big change in identifying addresses within sites. I'd guess that still stands.

Dave

[Robert_Charlton]

Dave - You may be on to something, or you may be oversimplifying. I can't tell. There are potentially a bunch of other factors, on page and off page.

Proximity of search terms might have a lot to do with it, as would competivity, and possibly other linking factors.

Looking at this example for proximity alone...

dog walking Pennsylvania Philadelphia New Jersey

...assuming all things were equal, and this targeting were the only local identifier on the whole site, I'd expect the site to rank much higher on Google for dog walking Pennsylvania than on either a search for dog walking Philadelphia or for dog walking New Jersey.

On the other hand, if dog walking Pennsylvania were extremely competitive, but dog walking New Jersey was not, the situation might be reversed.

But other inbound links and content and links on other pages of your friend's site would also affect the situation.

[earlpearl]

Using the example and to clarify I gave them anchor text for dog walking (state they are located in), city, other state

So yes that could have impact. BUT

The phrase ranks first in Y and MSN for *dog walking* specific jurisdiction and ranks first only in G for dog walking *state in which they are located/and first in the anchor text description*

Nevertheless, for allinanchor rankings the site ranks first for dog walking (each jurisdiction) and respectively ranks in serps 1, 190, and 210 for the 3 jurisdictions.

Because of the allinanchor listings I think that the state where its address is noted and has the #1 ranking in google receives dramatically higher rankings in google.

Again, last Feb/March I saw google make big differences in acknowledging local address with regard to a business/site.

Dave