While much of the physical economy has recovered since the pandemic, there is evidence that it caused a sharp disruption in brand loyalty. Purchase decisions fueled by convenience, value, and proximity have led to new shopping behaviors.

Of course, businesses in every sector will face unique challenges. But only multi-location marketers will know the ongoing chess game of managing a brand at local, regional, and national levels.

We wanted to understand the challenges multi-location businesses face in 2024, how they might differ based on their size, and what drives marketing performance.

To achieve this, we asked 200 marketing decision-makers working in multi-location brands in the USA, Canada, and the UK about their marketing performance, investments, and strategies to build a picture of the current multi-location landscape and understand the key to high performance in 2024.  

Throughout the report, we’ll discuss critical themes of marketing technology, the importance of customer satisfaction and retention, and areas of opportunity in marketing tactics.

Understanding Definitions Within the Report

In the second part of this report, we’ll talk about the ‘High Performers’ of multi-location marketing, creating a benchmark that we’ll refer to throughout. Readers will find this helpful in measuring their performance and that of competitors.

The third section of this research will highlight three key groups: Local Players (11-50 locations), Regional Challengers (51-100 locations), and Big Brands (101+ locations) and compare what they’re doing to the High Performers, so businesses of all sizes have a benchmark to look to.

The Multi-location Marketing Landscape: Key Trends

Let’s kick off with an overview of the market in general. We’ll look at how brand marketers feel they’ve been performing, what channels they’re investing in, and what local marketing looks like for them.

Looking Back: Marketing Performance in 2023

The great news is just 4% of multi-location marketers feel their marketing performance fell below expectations in 2023. With almost two-thirds reporting that performance exceeded expectations, it’s a highly positive perception of their teams’ capabilities. 

The Marketing Mix

The Top Five Channels That Multi-location Brands Are Investing In

A whopping 99% of multi-location brands are investing in social media, with 88% investing a medium-high amount in this channel. This result is significantly higher than the other marketing channels listed, so it’s clear that social media forms a vital part of multi-location marketing strategies.

Paid social, SEO, TV advertising, and local SEO follow as the next most invested in marketing channels. So, brands are investing in brand awareness channels (Paid social and TV) while also focusing on the importance of visibility (SEO and local SEO).

It’s interesting, then, that PPC is at the bottom of the list for channel investment. Sitting lower than traditional forms of marketing (direct marketing, radio, out-of-home advertising), this could suggest that brands do not see the best returns from PPC for brand awareness. Alternatively, it could just be that multi-location brands use PPC for smaller or more targeted strategies and are getting more from their campaigns for lower spend.

Marketing Team Capabilities

As mentioned earlier, multi-location brands will face different challenges than other business types. Consistency is a big theme here, as brands must replicate the same standards, service, and experience they are known for from location to location.

Another challenge is maintaining brand standards when adapting to new areas where local requirements and customs may differ.

We wanted to gauge how marketers felt their businesses were doing in keeping on top of these common obstacles.

The Top Five Business Challenges That Multi-location Marketing Teams are ‘Very Good’ or ‘Good’ at Tackling

As with performance, marketing leaders generally reflect a positive sentiment towards their teams’ capabilities, and there don’t appear to be any glaring problem areas. 

However, while 80% of brands said their businesses were either ‘Very Good’ or ‘Good’ at understanding ownership of marketing within organizations, we can see that 23% felt that the ability to manage the adoption of marketing initiatives and streamline external communications was just ‘Fair’ to ‘Poor’. This suggests a potential breakdown between the communication and execution of some marketing as responsibilities fall to location levels. 

It could also show that, although 82% of our marketing decision-makers feel their organizations are ‘Very Good’ or ‘Good’ at managing internal communications, the messages might not be being received or understood as well as they think further down the chain.

Let’s take a look at where local marketing strategy comes into play.

Local Marketing as a Strategy (Not Just a Tactic)

It’s positive to see that the vast majority (86%) of multi-location brands have dedicated local marketing strategies in place. That leaves 14% where either no dedicated strategy exists or the strategy is unclear

A lack of dedicated local strategy means that crucial business challenges, such as the ones mentioned above, can be much harder to overcome. With no local marketing strategy, how can you expect teams in different regions or locations to fully understand, be on board with, and adopt marketing initiatives?

So, if you’re reading this, you don’t have a robust local strategy, and you’re familiar with some of these marketing challenges, local strategy might be an excellent place to start.

Managing Local Marketing Activities

Now, the way multi-location businesses execute marketing activity at regional or local levels may vary for many reasons, based on industry, differences in area requirements, or franchising requirements. It’s interesting to look broadly at how multi-location brands manage this, though.

Again, if there are gaps in how well your business manages multi-location challenges, considering the different approaches may help you understand why.

Almost half (45%) of multi-location brands use a hybrid approach of centralized marketing teams (at the level of HQ) and branch or location-level local marketing.

What works for one business won’t necessarily work for another, and we’re not saying there is a correct answer. But it is worth considering that plenty of research around change management, business transformation, and product adoption shows that teams often react more positively to change, or are more willing to adopt new processes and initiatives if they feel they have some ownership of them.

Supporting Local Marketing with Technology

Next, we wanted to understand how widely technology was used in multi-location local marketing. 98% of brand respondents say they are using the technology to support local strategies.

Of course, when we refer to marketing technology that supports local marketing, this could include any number of tools, from monitoring local rankings and fluctuations to business location performance data, review management, and more. But what this does tell us is just how crucial marketing technology is in delivering on these tactics.

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The ‘High Performers’ of Multi-location Marketing

In this section, we will take the brands who reported that their marketing performance ‘exceeded’ expectations and use this group to create the benchmark for marketing performance.

Throughout the report, we’ll refer to this group as ‘High Performers.’ The remaining brands we compare against—those meeting expectations or falling short—we’ll refer to as ‘Average Performers.’

It’s important to note that both groups contain respondents representing multi-location businesses of all sizes.

High Performers: Key Findings

Marketing Channel Investments

• High Performers are 17% more likely to invest ‘highly’ in social media than Average Performers (57% vs 40%).
• High Performers are 15% more likely to invest ‘highly’ in paid social than Average Performers (42% vs 27%).
  High Performers are 10% more likely to invest ‘highly’ in local SEO than Average Performers (38% vs 28%).

Using Marketing Technology and AI

• 56% of High Performers are using marketing technology to ‘a great extent’, compared to 22% of Average Performers.
• 36% of High Performers are using generative AI to ‘a great extent’, compared to just 13% of Average Performers.
  

Local Marketing Strategy

• 94% of High Performers have a dedicated local marketing strategy, compared to 60% of Average Performers.
• 52% of Average Performers rate their marketing teams’ understanding of local SEO as ‘Fair’ to ‘Poor’, while 93% of High Performers rate their teams’ understanding as ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’.

High Performers: Top Trends

Marketing Channel Investment

• 95% of High Performers are investing a medium-high amount in social media.
• Just 1% of High Performers do not invest in social media at all.
• After social media (organic and paid), High Performers are investing the most in Local SEO.
• Of the responses offered, the channel High Performers invest in the least is PPC (pay-per-click).

This chart highlights the investments High Performers make across their marketing mix. You’ll notice a lot of green bars, which shows that High Performers are no slouches when it comes to putting their hands in their pockets and investing in a variety of channels. 

Organic social media stands out, with the most significant level of investment: 57% of High Performers rated their investments in the channel as ‘High.’ Just 1% said they do not invest in social media at all.

Behind organic social media, paid social sits as the second most invested in. Paid social is a popular choice for awareness and discovery campaigns to capture new audiences and entice customers away from competitors. These two channels being positioned at the top of the chart suggest that High Performers prioritize customer acquisition and retention equally.

Local SEO sees the third-highest level of investment from High Performers, with 76% making medium-high investments in this area.

As we’ll get into shortly, High Performers are much more likely than other businesses to have a dedicated local marketing or local SEO strategy in place, so it’s clear that a confident understanding and investment in this area is paying off for them, and that local marketing is fundamental to overall marketing success.

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC), meanwhile, is the least invested in. 10% of High Performers aren’t investing in the channel at all, while 32% have stated only a low level of investment.

Local Marketing Focus: Strategy, Knowledge, and Tools

While we asked multi-location marketers about their level of investment in local SEO, we also wanted to understand whether this is an area that marketers fully understand. Namely, whether businesses have dedicated local SEO strategies in place and whether their marketing teams clearly understand the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO.

• 94% of High Performers have a dedicated local strategy in place—34% more than Average Performers

There is a clear contrast here, with just 2% of High Performers stating they don’t have a dedicated local strategy, compared to a third of Average Performers.

• 93% of marketing teams in the High Performers group have a ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’ understanding of the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO.
• No one in the High Performers group rated their team’s understanding of local SEO as ‘Poor.’
• Less than half of Average Performers have a ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’ understanding of the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO.

Examining Local Marketing Teams

With over half of Average Performers stating their marketing teams’ understanding of local SEO as ‘Fair’ or ‘Poor,’ we broke out their marketing team sizes to see how many people are working on local marketing.

• 59% of High Performers have dedicated more than 40% of their marketing team to local marketing.
• 40% of Average Performers have dedicated more than 40% of their marketing team to local marketing.
• Over a quarter of Average Performers dedicate up to 20% of their marketing function to local marketing.

From this, we can determine that the highest-performing multi-location businesses take local SEO seriously, as they dedicate more resources to teams and strategy in this area. 

Marketing Technology and Multi-location Businesses

From the above data, we’ve seen that High Performers and Average Performers treat local SEO differently. Would things change when we asked about the use of technology in local SEO? Would this uncover some opportunities for Average Performers to take note of?

• 98% of High Performers use marketing technology “to some extent” or “to a great extent” to support local marketing, compared to 77% of Average Performers.
• 29% of Average Performers use marketing technology to little or no extent.

The chart above highlights that 100% of High Performers use marketing technology to support their local strategies, with only 2% saying they use it ‘a little’ extent. This is compared to 29% of Average Performers using marketing technology to ‘little’ or no extent.

Only 22% of Average Performers use marketing technology to ‘a great’ extent, compared to 56% of High Performers, suggesting that High Performers see a more significant benefit from their tools. This could be down to team capabilities and whether they have the knowledge or training to use certain tools or have more team resources dedicated to local marketing. 

There is clearly an opportunity for underperforming businesses to identify how and where marketing tools can better support their local marketing functions—or where additional training is needed within teams.

High Performers: Further Analysis

Comparing High Performers’ and Average Performers’ business priorities highlights striking differences that could help us understand where that better performance is coming from.

Business Objectives and Future Priorities 

We asked marketers what business outcomes their marketing activities are designed around. These core performance areas influence goal-setting (KPIs, OKRs, and similar frameworks) and determine what marketing teams focus on throughout the year.

• 67% of High Performers focus on customer satisfaction—15% more than Average Performers.
• 68% of Average Performers focus marketing activities on customer acquisition —12% more than High Performers.
• High Performers are 15% more likely to focus on customer retention than Average Performers.

The results in the chart above reflect a more measured approach for the High Performers, with reasonably equal weighting across the business outcomes. This level only drops off as we come to location footfall, where fewer than one-third of High Performers have said they’re focusing marketing efforts here.

For the Average Performers, however, there are two stand-outs: revenue growth (80%) and customer acquisition (68%). 

It would be surprising for businesses not to rely on marketing to support revenue growth. Still, it’s interesting to see customer satisfaction (52%) and customer retention (49%) take more of a back seat for Average Performers.

A lot of research shows that your existing customers are better for your bottom line. Focusing on nurturing a loyal customer base can yield more impressive profits. According to Bain and Co., increasing customer retention by 5% can lead to a 25% profit increase. Meanwhile, evidence also suggests that acquiring a new customer can be up to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing customer.

So, while focusing on attracting new customers is good for revenue growth, it’s important to consider how marketing teams can contribute to the shared responsibility of customer satisfaction.

• 39% of High Performers are prioritizing customer satisfaction in 2024, compared to 27% of Average Performers.
• 38% of High Performers highlighted increasing locations as a top 2024 priority, compared to 25% of Average Performers.
• 35% of High Performers highlighted increasing AI and automation as a top 2024 priority, compared to just 17% of Average Performers.

Comparing the two charts above, we can see that High Performers are prioritizing things with a measured approach that aligns with their core marketing outcomes.

We see a continued commitment to strengthening existing customer relationships and building brand loyalty—and plans to increase locations (38%) and acquire new customers (35%).

The data from Average Performers, on the other hand, tells a markedly different story. Customer acquisition sits at the top of their 2024 priorities (63%), followed by increasing brand awareness (50%) and increasing overall efficiency (47%). 

Considering the Average Performers have reported only just meeting performance expectations—or even falling short—and are also looking to increase efficiency in 2024, you’d hope to see a more balanced approach in their priorities. Customer acquisition sitting squarely ahead of other key priorities, like improving customer satisfaction, suggests a misunderstanding of what it takes to achieve business (and revenue) growth.

As we’ve touched on, customer satisfaction and retention can be significantly more cost-efficient for brands. But from a reputation perspective, we mustn’t underestimate the sheer power of brand loyalty here, too. While your existing customers are often happier to try your new products and services, you should also consider how a base of loyal customers can lead to brand awareness via their advocacy.

Implementing Local Marketing Tactics

Let’s look at the marketing tactics businesses are working with. In doing so, we might be able to highlight just what the High Performers are getting right—and understand some areas where our Average Performers are missing opportunities.

• High Performers are 25% more likely to use video as a local marketing tactic than Average Performers (63% vs. 38%).
• High Performers are 16% more likely to focus on reputation management as a local marketing tactic than Average Performers (46% vs. 30%).
• Average Performers are 13% more likely to be using outreach for local marketing than High Performers (59% vs 46%).

Similar proportions of High Performers and Average Performers use social media, paid advertising, and local content as local marketing tactics.  

The key areas where the High Performers are focusing more are video, local rankings optimization, reputation management, and local citations. However, the local marketing tactic that Average Performers rely on significantly more than High Performers is outreach (59% vs. 46%). This finding, and their focus on customer acquisition above all else, suggests that Average Performers have been over-reliant on outreach marketing to fulfill this goal. 

Video marketing can be tricky to implement if the budget and talent are hard to find, but it’s clearly an area that High Performers are taking advantage of more than Average Performers. If you’re reading this and your brand isn’t currently working on video, it’s worth considering where you can start. Could you take a handful of your locations as a test and see what results it yields?

While video sits much more in brand awareness and engagement, the remaining three tactics that High Performers use more than Average Performers (local rankings optimization, reputation management, and citations) are fundamental to ensuring visibility in the right places, so that the right people can find you with the search terms you want to be found for.

Analyzing Multi-location Strategies by Business Size

Challenges, tactics, and strategies all change with scale. The more locations you work with, the more complex the marketing will be.

Now that we’ve looked at what marked High Performers out against the rest of the pack, let’s take a look at how multi-location businesses of different sizes compare.

First, let’s recap how we defined these business sizes:

• Big Brands: businesses with 101+ locations
• Regional Challengers: businesses with 51-100 locations
• Local Players: businesses with 11-50 locations

We’ll start by looking at business objectives for the coming year.

Business Objectives, Priorities, and Challenges

• Regional Challengers are prioritizing customer satisfaction (51%) and customer retention (54%) the least out of all groups, but prioritizing profit margin (57%) and location footfall (41%) significantly more than the other sizes.
• Big Brands are prioritizing profit margin the least out of all the groups (46%).

The Top Three Marketing Objectives Multi-location Businesses Have Been Working Towards

Much like the High Performers, Big Brands appear to show the most consistency in evenly weighting their business priorities. The two lowest priorities, where the percentages drop more, are profit margin and location footfall.

However, the biggest gaps between the groups appear to concern the Regional Challengers. 51% of Regional Challengers said their marketing activities focus on customer satisfaction, compared to the High Performers benchmark level of 67%. The next biggest gaps appear in gaining market share (41% against the High Performers benchmark of 54%) and customer retention (54% compared to the High Performer benchmark of 64%). 

If your brand falls within the Regional Challengers group, you might see this as a chance to review your current marketing output. Are there some missed opportunities around these areas?

As we’ve already found, a relationship exists between underperforming brands and their prioritization in attaining new business over satisfying existing customers. It looks like Regional Challengers are following a similar pattern.

Another interesting difference is how Regional Challengers appear to focus on specific location footfall over the other groups. Again, it does suggest a ‘quantity over quality’ imbalance. Are Regional Challengers focusing too much on increasing feet through the door when they could be increasing the average basket spend, for example?

• The High Performers benchmark for customer retention (45%) is significantly higher than individual business sizes.

The Top Three Marketing Priorities for Multi-location Brands in 2024

When looking at the different sizes of multi-location businesses and their priorities, we can see some interesting differences between the groups.

Firstly, the Local Players, Regional Challengers, and Big Brands are generally far behind the High Performers benchmark with customer retention. It’s a theme that keeps cropping up and provides all the more reason for multi-location businesses of all sizes to pay attention to this area.

You’ll notice that nearly half of our Big Brand respondents (49%) have highlighted AI and automation as a focus area for 2024.

Artificial Intelligence in itself is not a new concept. However, the constant—and very newsworthy—developments in generative AI throughout 2023 have put the words into every marketer’s mouth.

Since the boom of generative AI, larger brands and market leaders will likely face higher pressure to adopt new AI-driven technologies than smaller-sized organizations. There is somewhat of an expectation to “keep up” with the others in the big leagues. 

Retail, hospitality, and entertainment feel like obvious examples of where you might expect to see this in the mainstream. Plenty of brands are rolling out implementations of generative AI in digital environments to aid customer experiences. Will we start to see this in physical environments, too?

• 42% of Big Brands cite increasing labor costs as a key challenge for 2024, against 24% of Regional Challengers.
• 39% of Local Players feel increasing material costs will be a big challenge in 2024.
• 35% of Regional Challengers cite increasing competition as one of the biggest challenges in 2024.

We asked marketers about their top three challenges for the year ahead, and the groups have some notable differences.

As we’ve seen with Big Brands prioritizing AI in 2024, it’s a no-brainer that they’ve also placed emerging technology as one of the biggest challenges for this year. Their top challenge, however, is increasing labor costs, with 42% of this group agreeing that this is one of the biggest current issues. Without getting too conspiratorial, is one of these challenges seen as an opportunity to resolve the other?

It’s worth looking further at the responses around technology here: compared to the 42% of Big Brands, only 19% of Regional Challengers are worried about emerging technology in 2024. Yet when it comes to updating their existing tech stacks, 32% of Regional Challengers see this as a big challenge for 2024. This is higher than Big Brands (19%), Local Players (25%), and the High Performers benchmark of 29%.

What could this suggest? Perhaps Big Brands don’t view their tech stack as a problem, or maybe their focus is slightly clouded by the genAI race. If the latter is the case, it would be interesting to see what challenges they may encounter later, in terms of integrations and streamlining.

We can see that Regional Challengers aren’t currently getting the most out of their tech stacks, and may well seek to update these in 2024. 

Regional Challengers see increasing competition as the biggest challenge (35%). This goes hand-in-hand with their top priority for 2024:  brand awareness (51%). There’s clearly an awareness of, and a need to, raise brand profiles to remain competitive.

Local Players see increasing material costs as their biggest challenge in 2024. It makes sense, as smaller brands may have less bargaining power in the buying market and will likely feel the squeeze of increasing costs more than larger competitors.

If this is their biggest business concern, it also makes sense that they would be less concerned with technological advances, either in their tech stacks or in adopting emerging technologies.

Local Marketing Deep-Dive

The Importance of Strategy and Knowledge

When putting together our questions for respondents, we hypothesized that the bigger the brand size, the more mature its local marketing strategy would be—that is, having a dedicated local strategy in place and a team with a strong understanding of the nuances between local and traditional or typical SEO.

• 92% of Big Brands have a dedicated local marketing strategy, the closest to the High Performers benchmark of 94%.
• Businesses with 51-100 locations (Regional Challengers) are the least likely to have a local SEO strategy in place (16%), followed by Local Players (11-50 locations).

Proportionately, the Big Brands show more local SEO maturity, with 92% stating that a dedicated strategy is in place. This is just two percentage points behind the High Performers benchmark, which generally reinforces an assumption that Big Brands would have more mature local SEO practices.

As we found earlier, 10% of all businesses do not have a local marketing strategy (and 4% were unsure if they did). So, we can see from the chart above that this segment is mostly made up of representatives from Regional Challenger and Local Player-sized businesses.

However, you’ll notice that Local Players are more likely to have a local marketing strategy in place than Regional Marketers. Why might this be?

It could be that Local Players, having a smaller (and possibly more concentrated) portfolio of branches, have a better understanding of their markets and local area requirements. Brands in the Regional Challengers group are more likely to have experienced a rapid period of expansion in recent times, meaning that a more comprehensive strategy is needed—or that their previous one no longer fits.

• Regional Challengers appear to have the biggest gaps in local SEO knowledge, with 27% claiming their teams have a ‘Fair’ or ‘Poor’ understanding.
• Local Players are the closest group to the High Performers benchmark (94%), with 90% stating a ‘Very good’ or ‘Good’ understanding of the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO.

90% of Local Players rate their marketing teams’ understanding of local SEO as ‘Good’ to ‘Very Good’, compared to 83% of Big Brands, 73% of Regional Challengers, and against the High Performers benchmark of 94%. Why might Local Players be the most knowledgeable?

It could well be that that greater local marketing maturity is not achieved simply by being a larger business that has existed in the space for longer. Instead, it could suggest that local marketing maturity is ‘elastic’: it develops and changes as the requirements of a brand also change. 

Understanding of local area requirements will vastly differ when a business goes from 11-50 locations to hitting a milestone of 100 and scaling up further to the nationwide level. 

Local Marketing Tactics in Action

• Big Brands appear to be the biggest users of local-specific content (58%), while just 40% of Local Players implement this tactic.
• 69% of Big Brands and Local Players use paid ads as a local marketing tactic, compared to 59% of Regional Challengers and 61% of High Performers.

Analyzing local marketing tactics by business size, we can see that Big Brands broadly follow the High Performers benchmark by investing in a wide range of tactics rather than a select few. 

Citations and business listings are important for brands of all sizes to ensure that business information is consistent and uniform online. This challenge only gets greater for Big Brands, as having hundreds or even thousands of locations to update and maintain becomes more difficult and time-consuming.

We’ve covered just a few of the detrimental effects of incorrect business information on brand reputation in the Local Business Discovery and Trust Report 2023.

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There are some tactics that Big Brands appear to be investing in more than High Performers, which could suggest that they are spending too much time (or money) in some areas. The most notable example of this is local-specific content (58% vs. 46% for High Performers).

Too much content can be a problem, particularly if it confuses or cannibalizes your SEO efforts or jeopardizes your user experience. This could even be a legacy issue as SEO best practices have evolved. 

While content is still vital for boosting visibility and building trust by reflecting your expertise and authority (see: Google’s E-E-AT), there was a time when brands and agencies thought that churning out reams of ‘fresh’ content was the answer. Some brand marketers may not be up to date on the latest SEO best practices or no longer work with agency partners, so could be over-reliant on some tactics they feel they understand well.

In the data above, Regional Challengers appear to be using social media, email marketing, and paid advertising the most as local marketing tactics. Against the High Performers benchmark, the gaps that highlight some potential opportunities for them are video, local rankings, citations, and reputation management.

While we previously highlighted the difficulties of video marketing, this tactic may actually present an opportunity for some business sizes and types. Where Big Brands are pretty much using the tactic in line with High Performers, we notice a gap between them and Regional Challengers and Local Players, suggesting there may be a chance for the latter two groups to learn from what the most successful brands are doing.

Email marketing tells a similar story to video, highlighting how Big Brands use it more than Regional Challengers and Local Players. It’s always a good idea to look at what competitors are doing, or even brands in other industries, to highlight areas of opportunity and improvement in your own marketing. Could Big Brands be using email as a customer loyalty tool, nurturing customer segments with tailored content that isn’t just sales-led?

Gap Analysis: Search Marketing Tactics 

Local rankings and reputation management are two areas in which Local Players seem to be fairly behind, compared to both the High Performers benchmark and their peer groups. They’re also the least likely to use local content (40%) out of all the groups.

If we group all of the marketing tactics by the outcomes they’re designed to impact, we can see a theme as far as content, reputation, local rankings optimization, and citations are concerned: the importance of search visibility.

It’s worth remembering that your competitors aren’t necessarily just the biggest names or the market leaders in your industry. In the multi-location world, you must also consider who else is in your potential customer’s proximity.

Without focusing on key visibility tactics and hoping to get by on brand name alone, you run the risk of failing on other fundamental areas that can turn people away—being outranked in the local map pack, incorrect or inconsistent business information causing confusion, and avoidable negative reviews.

Other Findings: AI, Economic Outlook, and Channel Investment and Impact

Despite only hitting the mainstream at the start of 2023, generative artificial intelligence has already caused a dramatic influx of new ‘AI-assisted’ tools aimed at both business and consumer audiences.

In August 2023, our own Local Search Industry Survey found that 93% of local marketers had already experimented with AI tools. So, in the question below, we wanted to know to what extent generative AI is now used at the multi-location scale.

• 88% of multi-location businesses are already using generative AI.
• 28% of multi-location businesses say they are using generative AI “to a great extent”.
• Only 11% of multi-location businesses aren’t using generative AI “at all”.

70% of marketers state that generative AI is used “to some extent” or “to a great extent,” suggesting that the technology has made waves within these organizations.

Furthermore, when asking those who are investing about the returns seen so far, it appears that generative AI mostly exceeds expectations.

• 64% of multi-location businesses said the ROI of generative AI has exceeded expectations.
• 98% of multi-location businesses said the ROI of generative AI has “met or exceeded expectations”.
• Just 2% of multi-location businesses felt the return of their generative AI investments fell short of expectations.

We’ve seen many examples of brands using generative AI in fun and clever ways for digital and out-of-home advertising and social content. It can leverage strong brand USPs and positioning surprisingly cost-effectively: take this advertising battle between McDonald’s and Burger King, for example. 

So, where do multi-location see the biggest opportunities with the continually evolving tech? We asked marketers to select up to three areas.

It looks like marketers are looking for assistance with more technical endeavors than creative ones. 36% of marketers highlighted data analysis as an area that generative AI can impact the most, while 24% highlighted SEO, and 23% cited forecasting and prediction. 

While it’s easy to first think of generative AI’s capabilities to create new, original media, there are a whole host of genAI tools in the market specifically designed to assist with—and speed up—data analytics. Creating engaging data visuals and summarizing vast amounts of data to provide impactful insights are just two use cases for such tools. 

However, that’s not to say that ‘data analytics’ can’t lend itself to other areas, like personalization, in order to create unique experiences. Think about personalized menu recommendations for restaurants, virtual ‘try-on’ experiences in retail outlets, or custom fitness profiles in gyms and health centers. This term also encompasses ‘forecasting and prediction’, of which data analysis is the very heart.

As the technology continues to evolve, though, there’s no doubt we’ll see opportunities and use cases for all industries unfolding.

Economic Optimism in 2024

How are multi-location marketers feeling about the year ahead? The good news is that businesses say they are looking pretty resilient and, as we’ve seen above, are already making strides in how they’re adopting and adapting to new technologies.

Despite economic challenges, the sentiment among multi-location marketers for the year ahead is high, with 77% feeling optimistic about 2024’s economic conditions. 

Only 10% of multi-location businesses feel pessimistic about the economic conditions ahead of them in 2024.

On top of this, brands also have a good appetite for business expansion.

81% of multi-location businesses told us that they are likely to open new locations in 2024. So, despite the challenges discussed earlier in the report, the multi-location business landscape is staying positive and ready to tackle what comes its way.

Channel Investment and Impact 

We’ve previously discussed marketing channel investment at a high-performance level. In this next section, we’ll go further to take a look at the impact that marketers are seeing on their revenues as a result of channel investment.

We’ve summarized each group with some key findings below.

High Performers vs. Average Performers

• High Performers invest more than Average Performers in 9 our of 10 marketing channels.
• Average Performers invest more in PPC than High Performers.

• High Performers see a good impact on revenue from SEO, considering their investment level (7.0 Investment Score vs. 7.3 Impact Score).
• Despite lower investment than Average Performers in PPC, High Performers see a better impact on their revenue in this area (5.9 Investment Score vs. 6.6 Impact Score, against 6.3 respectively for Average Performers).

Local Players

• Local Players see the most impact on revenues from social media (7.6/10).
• The channels seeing the highest impact on revenues are PPC and Direct Mail.
• Local Players are investing the least in PPC among their marketing mix.

Regional Challengers

• Regional Challengers see the most impact on revenues from social media (8/10).
• The channels seeing the highest impact on revenues are Radio, Direct Mail, and SEO.
• Regional Challengers are investing the least in radio advertising out of all channels—but the impact for those investing is fairly strong (5.6 investment score vs. 6.5 impact score).

Big Brands

• Big Brands are seeing the highest impact on revenues from paid social (7.5/10) compared to the other channels.
• The channels seeing a higher impact on revenues are PPC and Paid social.
• Out of all the channels listed, Big Brands invest the least in radio advertising.
• Big Brands appear to see the least impact on revenues from SEO (7.7 investment vs 7.5 impact).

Summary

If your marketing performance fell short of expectations in 2023, we’re not here to tell you to increase your local marketing function by a certain percentage or that adopting new marketing tech will immediately boost your results.

But the beauty of benchmarking is that it allows you to lift your head out of the sand (or various other reports) and consider opportunities for improvement: to compare what competitors in the multi-location marketing space are doing and pinpoint why they may have been outperforming you. 

Perhaps your team has even had a hunch about implementing a particular tactic or tool and has not quite had a case to prove to unlock some budget. We hope that this report’s findings will help strengthen that case for you and highlight new areas to think about.

One thing stands out for sure, though, and that is the overarching importance of local marketing in contributing to brand performance. It’s clear from our benchmarking that brands with dedicated, knowledgeable local marketing teams and local-specific strategies in place are outperforming others. 

When looking at individual local marketing tactics, too, we can see that High Performers are implementing many that others aren’t yet. Local rank tracking and optimization, reputation management, and citations reflect the continued importance of ensuring and maintaining brand visibility in increasingly competitive local environments. 

So, how is your brand measuring up? If you have any thoughts about the Brand Beacon Report 2024 research and findings, we’d love to hear from you. You can share your thoughts with us on X, LinkedIn, or our own Facebook community, The Local Pack. Alternatively, you can contact research@brightlocal.com with any questions.

Publishers and individuals are welcome to share findings and charts from this report, crediting BrightLocal and the URL https://www.brightlocal.com/research/brand-beacon-report/. 

Methodology

This research was conducted in partnership with Sapio Research, a B2B market research company, to survey a panel of 200 marketing decision-makers for multi-location and franchise businesses in the USA, the UK, and Canada. A comprehensive screening system was implemented to ensure only respondents fitting the criteria could participate.

Breakdowns of survey respondents by geographical location, industry, and business type can be found below.

Spotted first by Saad Alikhan and then Khushal Bherwani on Twitter, the feature presents ‘offers’ and ‘events’ Google Business Profile (GBP) Posts sourced from four local businesses. This feature is only visible for local searches on mobile devices. It has not yet been spotted on Google Maps. 

Google > Mobile

I saw "Nearby events and deals" section in SERPs (featuring local listings), this might be new.

Sending to: @rustybrick SIR. pic.twitter.com/WcdMrkttZs

— Saad AK (@SaadAlikhan1994) January 1, 2024

What does ‘Nearby events and deals’ look like? 

Clicking on one of the tiles directs you to a full-screen view of the GBP offer post, alongside a tile for the business’s GBP, which, when clicked, takes you to the business’s GBP. The four-pack does not seem to have a ‘show more’ option. 

This result tends to show up further down the SERP, below the local pack, organic results, ‘People also ask’, and ‘People also search for’. However, its location isn’t always consistent from SERP to SERP.

Each of the four tiles shows the Google Posts’ original image and title alongside the business’s name and Google review score.

How does ‘Nearby events and deals’ work?

To test what does and doesn’t show with this feature, our team took to Google to discover what appeared when searching for local businesses across a variety of both large and small cities. We also wanted to test which industries were likely to show this, and what this could mean for local businesses. 

We only managed to trigger this new feature when searching for businesses in the food and restaurant vertical. All of our results were based around North American (US and Canada) cities; UK cities did not trigger this feature.

Queries in larger cities such as Chicago and New York City were far more likely to return this feature, as was the Canadian province of Ontario. In smaller cities, such as Durham, NC (population 332,680) and Pomona, CA (population 146,017), the presence of the feature varied, indicating that business volume may have an impact on Google’s decision to show this panel. Only one search conducted for Pomona returned the panel. 

This is further supported by the fact that the feature consistently shows in a pack of four, indicating that a greater volume of businesses with active Posts is needed. 

That being said, multiple searches returned Posts of seemingly unrelated businesses. For instance, a search for ‘boba ontario’ returned a ‘nearby events and deals’ section fully populated by two coffee shops, a chain bakery, and a brewery.

This seems to be more common with some searches, with ‘boba new york city’ also returning a group of seemingly unrelated results.

There were also many repeats across SERPS, such as two of the four results being the same for both the queries ‘bottomless brunch new york city’ and ‘buffet new york city’.

It’s worth noting that non-food and restaurant queries conducted across a variety of verticals yielded no results of this type at all. The non-food and restaurant queries we tried were the following: ‘nail salon’, ‘divorce lawyer’, ‘gyms’ ‘yoga’, ‘bouldering’, ‘bike shop’ ‘dentures’ ‘toy shop’, ‘fish market’, ‘bachelorette parties’, ‘bed and breakfast’, ‘jewelry store’, ‘bridal gowns’, ‘healthcare’, and ‘organic market’, all tested using both Durham, NC and Chicago, IL.

Let’s look at the queries that did yield this type of result:

Why should I care?

For anyone managing business profiles for food businesses and restaurants, you’ll already know the importance of using Google Business Profile Posts to boost conversion. Now, it would also seem that to get the chance to be displayed in the new SERPs feature, you need to be actively posting and optimizing your GBP Posts. 

The images used on Posts are important to get right, especially as they’re now more visible with this new feature. Make sure your images are high quality, eye-catching, and with text that is easy to read. The ‘Nearby events and deals’ feature crops images into a square, so keep the text within a safe space in the center of your image so important information won’t be cut off in the margins. 

What does this mean going forward?

It’s possible that this selection could grow more and more accurate as the feature ages—especially if businesses take this opportunity to dive into the world of Google Posts. With this knowledge, this is a good time to make the most out of your GBP Posts—especially ‘events’ and ‘deals’ posts—to ensure that you’re maximizing the possibility of eyes on your profile. 

The Power of Google Business Profile

First, it’s important to emphasize why GBP matters. It’s often the first point of contact for potential customers, providing essential information about a local business, including location, hours, reviews, and photos. A well-optimized GBP can significantly impact local search visibility and customer trust.

The Importance of Google Business Profile

Learn More

A study found it’s the top factor for ranking in the local pack on Google. Our research in 2020 also showed that 82% of local marketing experts agree that tweaking a GBP is a super effective way to improve your local search rankings. 

So, how can BrightLocal help you supercharge your or your client’s GBP? Let’s dive into the strategies and tools available:

1. Auditing for Optimization

As well as being aware of what a critical tool Google Business Profile is, you’re probably also aware that Google doesn’t give away any competitor insights. 

For example, let’s imagine that you’ve just started work on local SEO for a dental practice in New York. You want to know why a specific competitor ranks above them in local search and what they need to do to outrank them. You head over to Google and search, but this is all you see:

Without an intelligent tool, figuring out how to beat the competition and get into the top local results is challenging. That’s why we made our Google Business Profile Audit tool and Local Search Grid. They do all the checking and analysis you need.

Once you’ve set up a Google Business Profile Audit report, you can ensure the accuracy of your listing and understand your performance. 

Ensuring Accuracy and Health of Your Listing

Once set up, the ‘Summary’ page of a Google Business Profile Audit serves as your primary dashboard for evaluating the overall health and accuracy of your GBP listing.

Here, you can identify and eliminate any duplicate GBP listings associated with your business, scrutinize the consistency of Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) information, and identify and address essential local ranking factors. 

Embarking on these steps within the GBP Audit report not only ensures the accuracy of your listing but also lays the foundation for a robust and trustworthy online representation of your business.

Understand Your GBP Performance

You can thoroughly understand your GBP performance by incorporating Insights into the GBP Audit’s report. 

Unlike Google Business Profile Insights, which only offers six months of data, GBP Audit extends its horizon to 18 months, providing a comprehensive and extended view of your listing’s performance.

You can:

• Analyze the discovery points on Google through search or Google Maps to strategically optimize your online presence.

• Extract valuable data on customer actions, unraveling users’ common behaviors on your GBP, from visiting your website to requesting directions or making calls.

• Delve into phone call trends, pinpointing peak days and times and aiding in meticulous staff availability planning.

By utilizing the Google Business Profile Audit tool, you ensure the accuracy of your listing and gain in-depth insights into your GBP’s performance, enabling informed decisions for optimization and growth.

4 Ways GBP Audit Can Help You Optimize Your Listing and Outrank the Competition

Learn More

Competitor Insights 

Local Search Grid provides essential data from Google Local Finder, offering insights into your competitors’ performance. 

For example, once you’ve set up a Local Search Grid report , you can see what primary and secondary categories your competitors are using. This allows you to ensure that you select categories that align with high-performing keywords and match those used by successful competitors.

2. Taking Action

Customer reviews and GBP posts are crucial elements that significantly contribute to the credibility and utility of your GBP. Two BrightLocal tools can help you with these. 

Manage Your Reviews

Reputation Manager enables you to monitor reviews, gather feedback, and address negative comments promptly. Helping you to cultivate a positive online reputation and attract more customers.

Once you’ve created a Reputation Manager report, you’ll be able to keep tabs on all reviews from essential review sites, allowing you to observe the growth of reviews over time.

If you also link your business’s Google Business Profile and Facebook accounts to the report, BrightLocal will automatically check for new reviews daily and notify you of any arrivals. With your report connected to your GBP and Facebook, you can conveniently respond to reviews directly from this report, streamlining the process and helping you stay on top of your reputation more efficiently.

Managing your reviews is just the start. If you need help getting them in the first place, a tool like BrightLocal’s Get Reviews is key. It will help you grow your reviews and increase your star ratings.

Schedule Google Posts

GBP Post Scheduler makes managing your GBP much easier and simpler. It offers effortless scheduling, multi-location distribution, and AI content generation. 

Effortless Scheduling

You can set the perfect time for each post and decide when it should expire, ensuring a steady flow of content for potential customers. You can also monitor everything from one dashboard to keep an eye on what’s live, what’s scheduled, and what’s expired.

Multi-location Distribution

When dealing with a multi-location brand, there might be times when you want to share the latest national promotions with all locations at once. Instead of doing it individually, you can publish a post to multiple locations simultaneously, saving you hours of effort. It’s a quick and easy way to ensure consistent content across your entire network of locations.

Craft Posts with AI-Powered Content Generation

Input a brief description of the message you want to convey, and within seconds, our AI writing assistant will provide you with creative content ideas to work with and enhance.

Our Help Center has more information on how our GBP AI works.

3. Active Sync

Active Sync helps you care for your GBP and other vital listings like Facebook, Apple Maps, and Bing, ensuring they’re accurate and up-to-date. 

Once you’ve connected your GBP to your BrightLocal account, you can set up additional categories, opening hours, the business description, and additional data, such as Google Business Profile Attributes, from your BrightLocal account and push them out to those listings. 

Once you’ve set Active Sync up, it will send you alerts when external changes are published to a listing. For example, if Google publishes a suggested edit, you’ll be notified rather than having to log in.

You can accept or reject the changes suggested within the BrightLocal platform, which allows you to shield the listings from external edits and ensure their accuracy.

Your Google Business Profile is a powerful tool for local business success, and when combined with the comprehensive suite of BrightLocal tools, it becomes an unstoppable force. By conducting regular audits, managing your reputation, and optimizing your online presence, you can stand out in local searches, attract more customers, and drive business growth.

This post will provide some foundational understanding of the ad type and how to think of it in your marketing plan. We will be doing a more advanced companion piece that will dive into more specific questions folks face when running these campaigns, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled!

What are LSAs?

First and foremost, LSAs are ads. This means they require a budget to serve. While they benefit quite a bit from local SEO, they are still, first and foremost, an ad. They are charged based on recorded phone calls that last at least two minutes or messages that get sent through (if you opt-in to that feature) that come via the ad.

Think of LSAs as business cards, allowing your customers to identify and communicate with you directly. They allow white and blue-collar professionals to appear at the top of the Google search engine result page (SERP) for queries relating to the specific type of business they offer. 

An LSA placement can appear on a mobile or desktop device and can include: 

• A photo of the professional
• How long the business has been in business 
• Ratings 
• Link to the website (if provided)

LSAs require you to choose whether you are open to more “general” inquiries or if you require the leads to be more specific. If you opt not to go for the volume of general leads, you retain the right to dispute calls/messages that do not align with the categories you select.

Where do LSAs appear?

LSAs can appear on all types of SERPS (and have been spotted in Google’s AI Search Generative Experience). That said, they are predisposed to have a higher mobile focus. This is because the main call-to-action is “call”.

The user is presented with three ads on both desktop and mobile. At the bottom of the ad unit, the user can click or tap to view additional ads for businesses.

The number of ads in a market and within specific categories can vary considerably. You might see only a few, or you might see dozens. It just depends on how many businesses are in that market category. The most ads I’ve seen after clicking through to view the entire list for a specific search is 100, so that may be the maximum.

This is what you’ll be presented with if you choose to expand the ad unit on desktop:

Which countries are LSAs available in?

Currently, LSAs are only available in a small number of countries. These are:

• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada
• France
• Germany
• Ireland
• Italy
• Spain
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• United States

Benefits of LSAs for Local Businesses

There are many benefits to LSAs, though depending on your business model, you may be predisposed to value some more than others.

They’re cheaper than traditional paid search

First and foremost, LSAs are typically cheaper than traditional paid search. This is due to their ad format. It’s not bound by the same auction as paid search is. As such, you might pay anywhere from 10-40% less per call/message lead than you would otherwise. 

However, before you fully commit budget to LSAs, it’s important to remember they don’t always show and can be subject to far more volume volatility than traditional search. This is why it’s typically a good idea to include them as part of a holistic marketing strategy.

Your local SEO efforts benefit them

The second big benefit is that they draw directly from solid local SEO practices. You’re golden if you’ve set the foundations well for your Google Business Profile, structured your site well (i.e., easily crawlable), and are active in your review responses/acquisitions. If those things aren’t true, you will likely take longer to ramp up your LSA profile.

You only pay per lead

Finally, LSAs charge based on recorded phone calls or messages. This is a huge benefit over most other marketing channels because you can pay per lead. However, if your intake/sales team isn’t able to respond to the leads promptly or you’re not able to service the volume, you won’t just lose money; you’ll begin to lose rankings for your profile. 

What types of businesses are eligible for Local Service Ads?

When LSAs first hit the market in 2016, there was a huge waiting list to get onboarded. Now, it’s fairly straightforward, and most local verticals are accepted. So long as you’re a local business that accepts clients through lead gen (as opposed to software that would let a person sign up on the site or buy a product directly), you’re likely eligible.

The main distinction is between white collar vs blue collar work (i.e., is this a professional service where the customer will likely come to the business or vice versa). 

However, eligibility varies greatly from region to region, as seen in the examples below.

The list for the UK, while made up of many similar verticals, is much shorter.

If you’re in a region that doesn’t yet support LSAs for your industry, don’t despair. Google (and Microsoft) see the need and desire for this ad product and are constantly adding new regions and verticals. The full Google list can be found here. 

How LSAs Work

LSAs behave slightly differently from traditional paid search campaigns. Rather than bidding on keywords or audiences, brands designate services you are interested in. In doing this, you gain a far simpler targeting method but lose the ability to “outsmart” the algorithm through more manual intervention.

Unlike Local Search Ads (the map pack), you do not appear automatically just for connecting your Google Business Profile. These ads don’t require keywords, audiences, or ad creation (like traditional search ads or Performance Max). 

They require you to either set up a separate account or allow your LSAs to share the same client ID (CID) as your existing Google Ads account. You’ll rank better or worse based on the information you provide, the bids and budgets you set, and how well you respond to leads.

Getting Google Guaranteed

Setting up LSAs is much simpler than it used to be; however, it still requires careful planning. You’ll still need to verify your ad account and go through a background check to get the Google Guaranteed component.

What is Google Guaranteed? 

The Google Guarantee is a badge displayed whenever your LSA is shown. It sends a trust signal to customers.

What You Need to Get Google Guaranteed

The background check component used to take as much as two weeks to complete. Now, it’s usually a matter of a few business days. 

You’ll need the following information to set up your LSA profile:

• Name of business (and any DBA)
• Your legal name
• Phone number (this can be a call recording number—but can only be changed through a Google rep)
• Website (if any)
• Photos of your business 
• Photos of you
• Business Insurance
• Year your business opened/years of experience.
• Professional License  

I find it’s best to collect the info you’ll need before you begin rather than trying to fix it once launched. This means setting up call recording numbers beforehand (use a non-dynamic number).

LSA Best Practice

As we discussed, you cannot do much to manage LSAs. However, the things you can do have a big impact.

Consider your budget and bid aggressively early on

First and foremost, your budget and bid will greatly impact how often your ad serves and where it serves in the LSA bracket. As a general rule, budgets should be set more aggressively than you intend actually to spend. This will give Google the room to ramp up while also ensuring you are competitive in the auction. 

For example, if you intend to spend $10K per month, the budget should be set closer to $30K-$50K per month during the first 60 days of the profile. Once your account is running, you can experiment with dialing the budget back.

Experiment with manual bids

If you’re struggling to get traction, you can experiment with manual bids, which will let you set more or less aggressive bids by the services you’ve opted into. While this usually isn’t ideal once an account is running and bringing in steady leads, it can be a useful tactic to help get the campaign going/improve performance during a slump.

Be disciplined about the services and locations you target

On the subject of services, it’s important to apply a disciplined approach to the number of services and locations you opt into. Profiles can’t really support all eligible services and markets—you’ll want to create multiple profiles to support multiple markets. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to focus on no more than three main services and locations. This way, your budget can do the job you want it to do, rather than being spread too thin. 

While the three maximum is a good rule to live by, it’s also important to be practical. If you’ve historically valued leads the same and/or there isn’t enough volume for a service/location to get its own profile, it can be ok to include it. Just be aware that LSAs do factor proximity into ranking.

Make sure your images include elbows (yes, really.)

Finally, here’s a note about the images you use for your team members. Google has been known to disapprove of images that don’t show the elbow of the person in them. So make sure your headshot highlights at least that much of you. 

Monitoring the Performance of Your LSAs

The lead volume and cost are the main things to keep an eye on with LSAs.

Lead volume is tracked based on calls and messages received. Reports will show you how many leads you received and how many you were charged for. You can also see a breakdown of new, active, and archived leads. 

Archiving a lead means it didn’t work out, so you couldn’t get the business. Disputing a lead means the lead flat out isn’t right. Disputing is a way to potentially get money back and teach Google that they need to amend the kind of traffic they’re sending you. 

Cost and cost per lead are shown in the reports section. It’s normal for lulls in the middle of the month and spikes at the end/beginning. This is due to Google doing its best to spend your budget. 

We also gained impression share in 2023. This means we can get useful insights into whether the volume we’re getting (or not) is due to competitiveness or lack of market.

Get Started with LSAs

Local Service Ads are a powerful channel and are absolutely worth testing if you’re a local business. They have a “first person mover advantage” mechanic, so if you haven’t set them up yet, you may find main metros to be competitive. Consider targeting slightly outside the main metro, and don’t be afraid to restart a profile if it seems to be stuck. 

Don’t forget about Microsoft’s Bing. Microsoft launched a professional service ad offering that harnesses the same functionality as traditional campaigns. If Google is crowded, that’s a way to bypass the competition. 

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. That was one of the reasons I created a Looker Studio report to help break down and visualize the data in easy-to-understand chunks.

The search data in GSC can be overwhelming, especially for many business owners venturing into GSC for the first time. But after following the steps in our first GSC post, we can now show you how to take a slightly deeper look at the search data from a more local perspective. (Not read the first post but eager to get advanced with GSC? No problem! Let’s dive in.)

In this guide, I’ll show you how you can filter through the search data in Google Search Console to help you with:

• Understanding your visitor’s local intent
• Using GSC to create ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ content on your site
• Gathering ideas for Google Business Profile posts 
• Posting your own GBP Q&A from questions asked by users
• Using the data to build additional content or expand on what the user may want to know more about
• Tracking your UTM tagging from your GBP (Google Business Profile)

Filtering the Search Data Using Regex

We’re mostly going to use something called ‘Regular Expressions’ (or ‘regex’) to filter the search data.

When you apply a regex pattern, Search Console goes through your data and only shows you the parts that match your instructions. It’s like filtering out the clutter and zooming in on the important stuff.

For example, if we want to find all queries that contain the word “local” or “near me”, it would look something like this:

(?i)\b(?:local|near me)\b

What does it mean?

• (?i): Case-insensitive flag, ensuring matches regardless of capitalization
• \b: Word boundary, ensuring the words are whole words, not parts of other words
• (?:...): Non-capturing group, grouping the words without creating a capture group
• local|near me: Alternatives within the group, matching any of the specified words
• \b: Another word boundary to complete the word match

Example Matches

If we looked at the search console data for a local restaurant we might see queries such as:

• “find local restaurants”
• “restaurant near me”

We are going to use the example above later in this post but let’s start with something a little easier.

Let’s start with your local town/city and state

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and dive into the search data. We’ll start easy and then increase the complexity of our regex filters. We’ll start by looking at how to filter the results just to show queries that contain just your town or city.

The regex would look like this:

(?i)\b cityname \b

Just copy the above example and replace ‘cityname’ with the name of your town or city, but first, let me show you how and where we’re going to add it.

Log into your GSC dashboard, and under ‘Performance’ choose ‘Search results’.

Now, above the main table of search data, we’re going to edit the settings and apply our first filter.

Select ‘+ New’ and then ‘Query…’

Select ‘Custom (regex)’

We now want to copy the regex example:

(?i)\b cityname \b

And paste it as follows:

You will have replaced cityname with the name of your town or city. Now just click “APPLY”.

Your ‘Queries’ table should now only contain the top queries containing the name of your town/city.  Look at the search data and see what your customers are searching for that includes the name of your town. It can be very revealing.

Well done, you’ve done your first filter using regex! Now let’s build on this.

We’re now going to filter the search data by town/city and state.  For example, my next example is going to use Atlanta, which is in the state of Georgia, which may also be written as ‘GA’.

My regex would look something like this:

(?i)\b(?: atlanta|georgia|ga )\b

Note the use of the pipe ( | ) – the OR operator. Using this means that any of the three options, ‘atlanta’, ‘georgia’, or ‘ga’, can be matched.

Now my search data will list any query containing the words ‘Atlanta’, ‘Georgia’, or ‘GA’.

Local Intent

In our very first regex example, we used this example:

(?i)\b(?:local|near me)\b

Now let’s expand on this just a little and include a couple more variations:

(?i)\b(?: local|nearby|near me|best in )\b

Example matches:

• “Find local restaurants”
• “Best pizza nearby”
• “Grocery stores near me”
• “Best coffee shops in Atlanta”

Context matters. Analyze queries within your specific industry and location. Intent can be implicit or explicit. Not all local queries contain obvious location terms.

Tip: Increase the date range from 3 months to at least 12 months. This will increase the amount of query search data you are filtering and give you more insights.

What questions are your users asking?

Have you ever wanted to know what questions your potential customers are asking to find your product or service? Well, you can do so by using the simple regex snippet below. Just copy and paste the following, as we have done before.

(?i)\b( what|where|when|why|do|who|how|can|which|will )\b

You can now use the results from your search data on your website and GBP to:

• Create Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) content on your site
• Discover ideas for Google Business Profile posts 
• Post your own GBP Q&A from questions asked by users
• Build additional content or expand on what the user may want to know about

Tip: You can always just trim down the regex and start with the what, where, when, and why.

(?i)\b( what|where|when|why )\b

You can adapt any of these patterns to include additional words beyond common question words. For example:

Commercial Intent:

(?i)\b( best|top|vs|review )\b

Transactional Intent:

(?i)\b( buy|cheap|price|purchase|order )\b

Question and Keyword

What if I wanted to know what questions were being asked that contained a particular keyword?

For example, I have a personal injury lawyer and I want to know what questions are being asked concerning trucks.

The regex for this would be:

(?i)\b( what|where|when|why|do|who|how|can|which|will )\b *\b truck \b

Example Questions:

• what personality traits do truck drivers have
• can truck drivers sleep on the side of the road
• why truck accidents are not like car accidents

Just change the word ‘truck’ for the service or product that relates to your business.

Company Name Tracking

With this regex snippet, you can gain valuable insights into your company’s online presence. By tracking trends in brand awareness, identifying top-performing pages, and even uncovering potential issues, you can use this information to improve your content, SEO strategies, and overall brand visibility.

Pinpoint your company name variations. List all possible ways people might search for your company:

• Full company name, e.g. “Amazing Products Inc”
• Common abbreviations, e.g. “Amazing Products”
• Potential misspellings, e.g. “Amazing Products”
• Variations with modifiers, e.g. “Amazing Products reviews,” “Amazing Products near me”

(?i)(\b Amazing Products Inc \b|\b Amazing Products \b|\b Amazing Products \b|\b Amazing Products near me \b)

Replace placeholders with your actual company name variations.

(?i)(\b YOUR_COMPANY_NAME \b|\b ABBREVIATION \b|\b MISSPELLING \b|\b COMPANY_NAME modifier \b)

Remember to monitor the results and adjust the pattern as needed, based on your specific needs and search trends.

UTM Tagging

If you’ve been being a good local SEO, then you’ve been using UTM tagging within your GBP for many years now, for everything from your website links to GBP posts. If you haven’t, then read Claire’s guide on UTM Tagging for Google Business Profiles and fix that right away!

How to Use UTM Tagging with Google Business Profile

Read more

You can see your UTM data quite easily within your GSC search data. However, because UTMs are associated with the page URL, we have to apply the regex to ‘Page…’ and not ‘Query…’.

…and paste, as before:

\?(?:utm_source|utm_medium|utm_campaign|utm_term|utm_content)=[^&]+

Then, switch between the ‘Pages’ tab to see the top pages that are performing, and then switch to the  ‘Queries’ tab to see which queries are producing clicks from your GBP.

Conclusion

For local businesses, mastering regex can unlock a hidden vault of Google search data about your customers. But like any powerful tool, precision and ongoing adjustments are key to keeping up with evolving marketing goals and staying ahead of the game.

I hope these regex examples prove valuable. Should you have any questions, please reach out to me on X (formerly Twitter).

But, you did, and here at BrightLocal we certainly all did. As we’re winding down for the end-of-year festivities, we’ve found it’s a good time to reflect on 2023 as a whole… maybe even take the time to wrap it all up neatly, into a box with a bow.

So that’s what we’re going to do. It’s time to grab some paper, scissors, tape, and ribbon and see what comes out on top in BrightLocal’s 2023 Wrapped.

The Biggest Google Updates for Local

Did you blink? Because Google probably rolled out another update. For a few months, it felt like when everyone was just calming down from one, they’d announce another. Oh, and then another.

It appears that Google execs were booby-trapping their house, making sure it got harder and harder for people to game their system, which you have to respect… to an extent. We can almost see them rolling another update out and saying, (in the words of Kevin McCallister): “Do you guys give up? Or are you thirsty for more?”

While the dust is still settling on these, it feels like some of the biggest changes for local were:

1. A new ranking factor… well, maybe. Opening hours or, in Google’s words ‘openness’.

Since the news broke, the situation has evolved. It’s been confirmed by Google that openness has been a factor for a while, but that the strength of the signal has dialed up considerably recently. However, they also say that may change.

The team tells me we've long used "openness" as part of our local ranking systems, and it recently became a stronger signal for non-navigational queries. This might change in various ways, as we continue to evaluate the usefulness of it, however.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 15, 2023

We’ve done a study to see how it’s currently affecting rankings. You can find that here.

Study: Business Opening Hours and Local Rankings

Using Local Search Grid to conduct a measured study and analyze the relationship between "openness" and local rankings for 50 business locations.

Read more

2. They’re introducing an updated reinstatement process for suspended profiles.

There’s a whole new process! Both for getting suspended and being reinstated. This has been a long time coming—and you can hear all about it in our webinar with Ben Fisher and Sherry Bonelli.

3. GA4 finally arrived, and it made everything really, really hard for everyone.

It’s been a difficult year for many a marketer, with the switch from universal analytics echoing the famous plot of It’s a Wonderful Life; imagine if the dependable person you knew, just never existed at all.

Fortunately, we have a guardian angel here to help you get your GA4 sorted.

Getting Started with Google Analytics 4 for Local SEO

Read more

4. SGE was teased and, for some people, rolled out.

Generative AI was the buzzphrase of the year. Google, ever the trend leader, launched its search generative experience (SGE) and released it for testing in the USA. They’ve been running various tests and, honestly, the situation keeps changing… there goes Google keeping us on our toes again.

Currently, there’s no confirmed date for it rolling out for everyone, but when it does, it could shake up search (including local search) forever.

5. They (finally) added social media link management to GBP! It pretty much made our own social media manager’s year…

It may not feel huge, but it’s been a pain for years and is a real game-changer for GBP managers.

Bloopers from our Local Search Expert, Claire Carlile

Our hostess-with-the-mostest, Claire Carlile, is nothing but professional… that being said, she does spend quite a few hours in front of a camera, and that leads to some absolute gold.

So here are our favorite Claire Carlile bloopers of 2023:

1. The time Claire got so distracted by Biscuit’s cuteness “behind the scenes” of a webinar that she had to apologize to the viewers when she went live.

WOAH that was awesome @ownyourserp – thanks for the KNOWLEDGE NUGGETS you just gave us all – what a fab @brightlocal webinar. If you joined us sorry about the funny start, this is why we were only thinking about CUTE DOGS! Watch the recording on Youtube https://t.co/UmLkccuyHC pic.twitter.com/G0nFfHKyZv

— Claire Carlile (@clairecarlile) March 30, 2023

I mean… can you blame her? 

2. The time when Claire’s daughter Betsi bought about her professional downfall live on air.

Thanks for joining me on an AWESOME Local Search Clinic @StefanSomborac – so many excellent questions and so many excellent answers!
Watch again here, and at the end enjoy my professional downfall as my child decides to make an entrance…
https://t.co/mhfq5tqufS pic.twitter.com/7ahUZ9q1jA

— Claire Carlile (@clairecarlile) June 22, 2023

3. The time Claire’s internet completely dropped out immediately before she was supposed to host Local SEO for Good. Which caused just a little bit of panic.

4. The time Claire and Crystal Carter had so much fun during a podcast recording that their laughs messed with the sound levels and made it nearly impossible to edit.

5. Finally, this last one is a curveball. Our wonderful Sammy, the expert behind our fantastic research (and mother to the aforementioned Biscuit), managed to get herself locked in her bedroom while the team was busy putting the finishing touches on this piece.

So, we’re awarding her an honorary place in this list. From eyewitness reports, the door just closed behind her and the handle refused to turn, leaving her stuck with none other than Biscuit himself. 

Worry not, she managed to escape through a window and get someone to come over with a spare pair of keys for her front door.

BrightLocal Product Releases and Updates

We’ve had quite the year here at BrightLocal, and we’re incredibly proud of the advances we’ve made to our local SEO tools and services. Not only have we gone beyond the Horizon with the launch of our new multi-location command center, but we’ve also created our own GBP post scheduler and changed the listings game with Active Sync.

1. BrightLocal Horizon
Just this month we launched our brand new multi-location command center. This powerful tool uses Local Search Grid to give you a country-wide view of the rankings for all your locations. 

2. Active Sync
We changed the listings game with Active Sync, an API solution for listings management, offered at a fraction of the cost of other services.

3. GBP Post Scheduler
With this useful tool, you can now you can publish to all your Google Business Profiles from one convenient location.

4. Local Rank Tracker 2.0
We upgraded our already fantastic Local Rank Tracker to add a host of new features and insights.

5. Local Search Grid Flexible Grid Points

Now, you can place your Local Search Grid grid points where you want, making our tracking even more accurate.

And that’s just scratching the surface of what we’ve managed to achieve at BrightLocal this year. We’ve also added all kinds of sites to our local citation builder service’s network, grown the team behind the product across the globe, and so much more!

The Content We Loved, by You

There’s a lot of content on local SEO published every single day. With AI flooding an already cluttered space, we wanted to highlight the hard work of people across the internet who are creating excellent content on SEO and local marketing—no AI-Grinch stealing everyone’s hard work on our watch.

1. Miriam Ellis, Moz: The Local Business Content Marketing Guide

It’s a wondrous collection of guides, and just another example of Miriam’s excellent work. We’re always a fan of Miriam’s content here, like this guide on GBP photos and this piece for Wix on being COVID-conscious.

2. Greg Sterling, Near Media: Google SGE: Meet the New Pack

Near Media’s content is always excellent and their newsletter is essential for anyone working in local. Go subscribe. Seriously.

3. Kick Point Playbook: Grow Your Agency with Google Analytics Training & Templates

The whole Playbook is well worth your time to help you with your analytics—plus it comes with a ringing endorsement from Claire Carlile (and Biscuit!).

4. Marie Haynes, Marie Haynes Consulting: Search News You Can Use Newsletter

A wonderful resource for anyone looking for SEO news or insights, with a real focus on AI… all in one helpful feed.

5. Ann Smarty, Smarty Marketing: The State of the Link Building Industry 2023

Ann surveyed 300 SEO professionals from across the industry (all with years of experience) to find out what they’re doing to build links in 2023, and whether it’s working. It’s an incredibly thorough study and worth checking if you’re planning on doing link-building in 2024.

Our Favourite Insights

At BrightLocal, our mission is to help every business be successful at local SEO—whether that’s through our tools or our content. We’ve performed insightful research, given people a platform to talk about the industry, and helped thousands navigate local SEO with BrightLocal Academy. Plus, we re-launched our podcast, and our webinars have gone up a level too.

Here are a few that we’re particularly proud of:

1. Local business discovery and trust report

Our research speaks for itself, from the Generative AI Study to the first-ever Big Brand Review Showdown, but we’re particularly proud of this year’s trust report, which highlights the discovery platforms local consumers trust the most and least.

2. How to Do Insightful Competitor Analysis for Local SEO on BrightLocal Academy

A question we get asked all the time! Well now you can do an excellent course in BrightLocal Academy… and it’s completely free! Plus, it’s with Greg Gifford, so you know it’ll be a blast.

3. Adventures in Local Marketing with Crystal Carter: Powerful Applications of Schema Markup

Our podcast came back with a bang this year, and Claire’s chat with Crystal on schema is well worth your time.

4. Live GBP Audit with Colan Nielson

In the first of our new live audits, Colan looked at auditing and optimizing the GBP for a dental practice. It’s not to be missed.

5. George Nguyen, Wix: Diversifying Your Publication

We launched BrightLocal Spotlight this year, a column where industry professionals were given a platform to talk about issues important to them. George’s encapsulated everything Spotlight stands for and is an important, insightful read.

The Most Essential Guides

We’ve published some absolutely essential guides this year, continuing our mission to help educate local marketers, whatever level they may be. A lot of our guides come directly from questions we get asked in The Local Pack or our webinars, so never hesitate to ask!

1. Abigail Leow, BrightLocal: How to Rank Outside Your Area.

A question we seem to get asked more than any other. Abigail busts myths and collates all the advice you may need on the subject of ranking beyond your physical location.

2. Andy Simpson, Digital Law Marketing: How to Choose the Next Location for Your Business Using Local SEO

Local SEO may not be the first thing you consider when deciding where to open your next branch, but Andy Simpson makes a very convincing argument on why you should.

3. Emily Brady, Podium: How to Craft Unique and Helpful Location Pages

Location pages are a key part of local SEO for multi-location brands, and this guide goes into everything you need to know.

4. Dani Owens, Pigzilla: Local SEO Schema: Types and Templates

Schema doesn’t need to be as mystifying as it appears. Dani’s templates are simple to understand and easy to implement.

5. Gyi Tsakalakis, AttorneySync: Local SEO for Lawyers

Gyi does a deep dive into everything a law marketer could ever need to know about local SEO. 

The Times Barry Schwartz Told People it’s “Not New”!

It happens to the best of us. It feels like not a day goes by without an expert being absolutely certain they’ve spotted something new and game-changing in the SERPs. They tweet it to Barry Schwartz, only for the one-man-search-encyclopdia to reply with two withering words; “not new”.

Here are some of our favorites from just the last 12 months.

1. The time he trademarked it.

Hey @okaylizzi "not new" has a https://t.co/QAZRV9WF1r pic.twitter.com/ZdW8IjKw7W

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 2, 2023

2. Google charging for phone support.

Not new https://t.co/RmAEF8KzSQ

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) December 14, 2023

3. Places of interest.

yea, rare to see but not new

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) December 1, 2023

4. Special SERPs for cities.

that is not new, it is pretty old, i need to find when i covered it

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) April 26, 2023

5. The time he got not newed himself, by Mike Blumenthal.

Image of notifications from Sept of last year pic.twitter.com/2SZra8ZiFi

— Mike Blumenthal (@mblumenthal) June 22, 2023

The Best Conference Talks of 2023

2023 was another huge year for the conference circuit. While we helped make brightonSEO special with our Pin It to Win It game, we also enjoyed a number of talks here and elsewhere. Plus, we hosted a virtual conference of our own to raise money for charity.

Here are our favorite talks from around the SEO world:

1. Claire Carlile, BrightLocal at brightonSEO: Google’s Local Knowledge Panel—The CMS You Never Knew You Had

2. Harmony Huskinson, Victorious at Local SEO for Good: Developing Your E-E-A-T Strategy for Local SEO

3. Syphaïwong Bay, Assonance Agency at Women in Tech SEO: Creating Meaningful Content

4. Dana DiTomaso, Kick Point at LocalU: Customizing GA4 for Local Business Reporting

5. Amanda Jordan, RicketyRoo at MozCon: Build Better Backlinks for Local Brands

Oh wow, it’s been a big year for every part of the business. Whether that’s the Philippines team’s annual basketball tournament, the hackathons with our Ukraine and Poland teams, or the big refresh of our brand, there’s something for each team to celebrate.

A few big moments from across the year include:

1. BrightLocal at brightonSEO

Not once, but twice our stand stole the show, surprising and delighting visitors with the absolute best swag and the most engaging game: Pin It To Win It. We hope you enjoyed coming to see us, and we can’t wait to see you next year.

2. The Phillippines Christmas Party

It was hard to pick just one moment from this team, who consistently show up the rest of the business when it comes to having fun! Their Christmas party really stood out this year, though.

3. Local SEO for Good

We put on a two-day virtual conference of our very own and raised $78,401.47 for a host of charities, all while connecting marketers with experts to help them learn something new.

4. The Big Rebrand

You may have noticed, but the website looks just a little different than it did at the start of the year. Our design team did an amazing job completely revamping the site and our illustrative style.

5. Our Hackathon in Poland

Our product and development teams got together to come up with a host of new ideas. In fact, this is where BrightLocal Horizon was cooked up. It was a great few days of fun and, evidently, awesome ideas.

This just scratches the surface! There was so much going on at BrightLocal this year that it was hard to really narrow it down.

See You in 2024

We can’t wait for what 2024 will hold for BrightLocal and local search marketing. We’re sure there’ll be a whole host of surprises from Google, at the very least. In the meantime, happy holidays from the entire BrightLocal team, and we’ll see you in January.

As we wrote about recently, at the start of the month, Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky caused a slight thunderclap in the local search world. She announced a new local ranking factor: opening hours.

You can read the thread of events in the piece linked above. But with such heated discussion on the matter, and only several small-scale tests conducted so far, we wanted to carry out a study with a greater breadth of business types, covering various US states and timezones.

So, we took 50 business locations across 10 primary business categories and used BrightLocal’s Local Search Grid to analyze their local rankings outside of their listed opening hours and during opening hours.

Local Search Grid Study Results

The charts below show the average local ranking for each primary category outside of business hours against their open hours. This average looks at all keywords tracked in the Local Search Grid reports.

Across the board, it’s clear to see that Local Search Grid reports run during each business’s opening hours reflect higher local rankings, on average.

The primary category ‘Fast food restaurant’ appears to show the biggest fluctuation, with local rankings improving by 2.4 positions on average during opening hours.

However, if we compare these results with some of the previous tests conducted in recent weeks, the fluctuations we see are much less severe.

While previous tests have shown dramatic fluctuations between reports for individual business locations and specific keywords, taking the average across a list of 10 keywords reflects a more steady variation.

We can look in more detail at some of the business categories and show their results day by day. 

Open vs Closed

Coffee Shop

With the exception of Coffee Shop #3, each coffee shop business in the chart above reflects a fairly steady result across three days and shows higher local rankings during open hours.

Although we did not use any navigational keywords for the coffee shop report (i.e. ‘coffee shop near me’), it does make sense that a coffee shop listing would be prioritized higher in local rankings if it is open when the user is searching. This doesn’t necessarily mean it is the most helpful result. As we’ll discuss later on, there are plenty of reasons a user might be searching for something like a coffee shop other than to visit it in the immediate future.

Dentist

We have included the above chart for Dentist here, as you will note that Dentist #1 and Dentist #2 offer slightly differing opening hours and are closed entirely for some days of the study.

For example, Dentist #1 was closed on Fridays and Dentist #2 closed on Wednesdays. We continued to run manual Local Search Grid reports in the timeframe they would normally be open (10am CST for Dentist #1 and 9am EST for Dentist #2) to note what happened to local rankings.  

We can see here that their local rankings during the day—when other nearby dental practices are likely open and operating—drop much lower than their typical local rankings outside of normal practice hours.

Businesses set to ‘Open 24 hours’

Some locations selected for the study are listed on Google Business Profile (GBP) as ‘open 24 hours’. So, it’s interesting to compare their local rankings to similar businesses listed with standard business opening hours.

HVAC Contractor

For HVAC Contractor #3, despite being listed as ‘open 24 hours’, we ran the reports at two different times of day (8am and 10am PST) to determine any fluctuations in local rankings. As you can see above, this remained steady across the three days at 3.5, except for one result showing an average of 3.6.

However, Contractor #4 also shows a good level of consistency in its local rankings across the three-day study. It also maintains an average local ranking of around 2, so it does not appear that setting opening hours to ‘open 24 hours’ necessarily gives an advantage for better rankings.

Real Estate Agent

For real estate agents, it does not look like setting opening hours to ‘open 24 hours’ helps maintain consistency in local rankings. Both Real Estate Agent #1 Real Estate Agent #3 show fluctuations across the three days.

It’s not clear why this might be from just these results, but I do wonder if Google has somehow weighed up the legitimacy of these business opening hours. It makes sense for service area businesses to work outside of standard hours and on an emergency basis, but real estate agents? It feels a little bit like a ploy to be more visible on GBP (see also: Lawyer in Appendix).

What if there are no opening hours listed on the Google Business Profile?

Movie Theater

It’s interesting to note that some business types appear not to show any opening hours on their GBPs as a sort of ‘industry standard’. We found that this was the case with the category ‘Movie theater’, which makes sense given the changing nature of movie releases and schedules, as well as one-off screenings such as late-night premiers. But would local rankings be penalized as a result?

These results are particularly compelling as they show that movie theaters do not appear to be affected at all by using opening hours as a local ranking signal.

It could be the case that each business has opted to show as ‘Open with no main hours’ as per the GBP editing screenshot below, and that they are technically shown as ‘always open’.

However, a quick Google search for three of the five movie theaters’s names plus ‘opening hours’ does return an immediate snippet-type result by Google. So, it’s not entirely clear if Google is pulling this from other business listing sites like Yelp. Either way, it does not appear that any of the movie theaters are impacted by the existence of opening hours.

Electrician

As with the movie theaters, Electrician #1 has no opening hours listed on its GBP and is not ‘open 24 hours’. We ran two LSG reports a day, at times when most electricians would typically be closed (6am HST), and when they would typically be listed as open (8am HST).

In this instance, as we saw with the dentists that were closed on typical days you might expect to be able to visit, it appears the local rankings suffered more for Electrician #1 at a time when searching for an electrician is deemed more common.

Electrician #4 appears to follow the same pattern as discussed with HVAC Contractors listed as ‘open 24 hours’ and shows consistent local rankings throughout the study. 

What do these results mean?

As of December 15 2023, Google Search Liason confirmed that Google has long used “openness” in its local ranking systems, but that it has recently become a stronger signal. However, given such polarized reactions within the local search community, this may change if Google decides to ‘dial back’ the signal strength.

The team tells me we’ve long used “openness” as part of our local ranking systems, and it recently became a stronger signal for non-navigational queries. This might change in various ways, as we continue to evaluate the usefulness of it, however.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 15, 2023

And there are plenty of reasons why they should dial it back. Although for navigational queries or searches that demonstrate the intent of wanting/needing something ‘right now’, it makes sense to prioritize businesses that are open and available to you in that moment, there are a whole host of other reasons why people may be researching different businesses outside of typical open hours.

I, for one, am an avid food researcher when I travel. I could be looking for brunch, lunch, street food, or dinner establishments in another European country at any given point in the day, weeks before I’m due to visit.

For professional services such as law and real estate, or healthcare like dentistry, a prospective customer will likely be doing their research in several stages before deciding to book an appointment or instruct a professional.

Agreed. Those are good points that I and a few others are discussing with the team. It’s why I said this might change in various ways.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 18, 2023

As we stated in our previous write-up, it’s important not to make any drastic changes to your business’s GBP as a result of what we’re seeing currently. At the very core, your business information should be accurate so that it meets your customers’ needs and provides them with the most helpful and useful information. 

How to Manage Your Business Opening Hours on Google Business Profile

A refresher on managing your business's opening hours in GBP.

Read the guide

As we found in the Local Business Discovery and Trust Report 2023, 62% of consumers would avoid using a business if they found it had incorrect business information listed. The report also delves into how things like incorrect opening hours can affect their trust in a business, therefore potentially damaging a business’s reputation, and even highlights the industries in which information like opening hours are deemed as most important to consumers.

So, for the sake of a couple of ranking positions that may or may not fluctuate throughout the day, and may also change if Google does re-evaluate the signal strength, please ask yourself: is it really worth it to mess with your opening hours?!

Summary

For full study data, including the local rankings for each business category across the three days of the study, you can find the remaining charts in the appendix below.

Publications and individuals are welcome to use the study findings, charts, and data, provided BrightLocal is credited and linked to via this page’s URL.

If you have any questions about this study, or what the results mean, please do not hesitate to contact us via X (formerly Twitter), The Local Pack, or by emailing us at research@brightlocal.com.

Appendix

Keywords

Day Spa

Department Store

Fast Food Restaurant

Lawyer

And, right around the same time that we saw RankFlux’s average score jump to a 4.38 out of 10, Joy Hawkins announced that she and her team at Sterling Sky had discovered a new local ranking factor: the opening hours stated on a business profile.

This announcement has led to lots of discussion throughout the community, with local SEOs sharing their take on the matter, speculating Google’s intentions, and running tests to verify the claim.

With no current consensus on the matter, what’s the best course of action? Leave those opening hours alone for now, and keep an eye on what’s going on. So… what exactly is going on?

What happened?

The announcement came during Sterling Sky’s Local Search Seminar with Joy Hawkins, Darren Shaw, and Luc Durand. Joy shared an image of two drastically different local search grids, noting that the two reports were run only two hours apart—one at 7am, before the business opened, and one at 9am, right after opening. 

The initial tests determining this were done on three businesses—seemingly in the categories lawyer, psychiatrist, and phone repair—and were all seen on desktop. 

3 so far. Trust me, it is.

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) December 4, 2023

Sterling Sky has since run tests on “at least a dozen” businesses across multiple verticals, according to the webinar that announced the finding.

Hawkins also noted a difference between ranking patterns for more competitive keywords and less competitive ones: competitive keywords seem to encourage more variation in ranking.

You'll notice more ranking variation for closed/open businesses on competitive keywords. Here is an example of a really competitive keyword ("car accident lawyer") with quite a bit of variation, vs a less competitive keyword ("slip and fall lawyer") where there is no change. pic.twitter.com/dV04KEx2xl

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) December 8, 2023

The Community Responds

It’s generally agreed upon that such a change to the algorithm could have big implications for both businesses and searchers. Alongside this, the announcement itself was met with apprehension and confusion, with many questioning Google’s intent. 

“I think it is more than likely a bug vs a feature that was not thought out. In some ways it kind of makes sense: if a business is not open, should you show them on the map pack?

“Based on what Joy is seeing, if a business is marked closed they will not display as ranking in a local rank tracker. This was not true before. But there are some great arguments as to why this is a bad experience, such as users searching for a business and are planning for a future visit or service.“

– Ben Fisher, Steady Demand

@dannysullivan really want to know if this is intentional or a bug. It makes sense for some industries, but not for others.

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) December 7, 2023

Additional questions have arisen regarding the significance of the long-standing ‘Hours’ dropdown, a Google feature that allowed searchers to filter their local pack results by hours. 

It’s been posited that in the case of an intentional change by Google, perhaps data from this dropdown led Google to believe that searchers would appreciate hours being taken into the algorithm’s consideration.

After all, there are conceivable benefits to hours as a ranking factor, according to some. Usually, these revolve around minimizing the possibility of searchers showing up to a closed business.

Yes, definitely.

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) December 8, 2023

However, alongside many others, Darren Shaw of Whitespark notes the potential issues of such a ranking factor, citing a variety of situations that would lead a searcher to look for a business that might not be open at that very moment. 

Andrew's tweet is a perfect example of why this Google update is terrible for the quality of the local search results.

Google is now only showing businesses that are open right now?

So many reasons why this sucks:
– It's my lunch break and I'm researching X to do after work.
-… https://t.co/cPfyYZDDSW

— Darren Shaw (@DarrenShaw_) December 7, 2023

In fact, his initial tests showed no indication to verify the effect of opening hours.

However, following further investigation, Shaw later went on to say that opening hours having an effect on ranking was “definitely a thing.” He also notes that opening hours aren’t a “binary ranking factor”—meaning that changing your ranking hours one way or the other won’t ensure that you rank… or that you don’t.

Yan Gilbert of Local Falcon also corroborated Sterling Sky’s data. 

Operating hours are now factored into the Google Maps rankings #localseo pic.twitter.com/Koxbnc3MV7

— Yan Gilbert (@YanGilbertSEO) December 7, 2023

Others posted their own examples of the change.

Somewhere in the world, it is 5:00 p.m. … in this case almost 9 but you can always check if the business hours are a ranking factor. This is maps results, just refreshing the page, nothing else. @mblumenthal @JoyanneHawkins @ColanNielsen @rustybrick @Kevin__Pauls pic.twitter.com/TCcwvZB9IK

— Stan Kolev (@stankolev) December 10, 2023

However, despite these endorsements across the community, many are still uncertain as to the longevity of these ranking fluctuations. 

Just to add a note here, if it’s a “bug” we’ve been seeing this since January of this year, and I noted what was happening back in April. This appeared way too consistent to be a bug in my opinion, particularly in the restaurant space. It appears that this is occurring in more…

— Matt Brooks (@m4ttbr00ks) December 8, 2023

What Google Has to Say

Ultimately, most seem to be looking towards Google for answers, with many echoing the sentiment that it could be a bug. 

And, while Google’s Search Liaison has answered briefly, Google has yet to elaborate on the matter.

I'll pass it on. I doubt it has to do with the core update. It seems more likely a local ranking change, if it is one.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 8, 2023

So… what next?

What does this mean for BrightLocal?

So far, we haven’t seen enough to say whether this is definitely a ranking factor long-term.

Before we confirm anything, make recommendations or change processes, we want to do due diligence to offer our customers the best service and insights possible.

That’s why we’re currently using Local Search Grid to run a wide-ranging and comprehensive study using data from 50 businesses across 10 verticals to truly understand whether a business’s opening hours impacts its ability to rank in the Local Pack.

We’re aiming to be analyzing the results of this study early next week, and intend to publish them shortly after. We hope that this study will allow the local SEO community to better understand the impact that opening hours have.

In addition to this, we are looking into what this means for our rankings tools as a priority and will be sure to let you know if any platform or report updates are required.

What should I do?

Until we know more, whether that be from the rash of studies that are cropping up or from Google itself, we would say to sit tight, don’t panic, and don’t make any huge changes to your opening hours in response. 

It does seem that changing your opening hours to 24/7 has an impact on ranking. However, there are risks associated with this, whether it be the big kind (a profile suspension) or a smaller kind (a scathing review), so we would advise against making any changes at this moment. The last thing you want is an onslaught of one-star reviews. 

In fact, according to BrightLocal’s 2023 Local Business & Trust Report, 62% of consumers would avoid using a business if they found incorrect information online. In some verticals, correct opening hours were especially significant, with consumers viewing correct opening hours as the most important factor for retail businesses (53%), food and drink businesses (51%), and entertainment businesses (47%).

“I encourage businesses not to jump the gun here; think about it and measure their calls. Do you really ever get a call at midnight?

“After this study was released I got a ton of calls from storefront clients, all asking ‘should I switch to 24 hours?’ My response is simple: if you will take a client at your door at 2AM, sure! If not, why risk being reported?

“Sure, 24 hours is least likely to lead to a suspension, but it can lead to a nasty review you will not be able to get removed, or if something else is fishy with your profile, you can be suspended.”

– Ben Fisher, Steady Demand

If you’re looking to investigate more closely, you can always run your own Local Search Grid reports during your business’s opening hours and compare them to the results of when it’s closed. Otherwise, just keep your eyes peeled for more information on this as we have it.

And, in the very wise words of our very own Claire Carlile:

Claire Carlile weighs in on opening hours

Local SEO Expert at BrightLocal

Waaaa, the sky is falling down! Quick, quick—set your hours to open 24/7! No, seriously, don’t do that.

It makes sense that Google would take opening hours into account when deciding how to rank results—especially when someone is very specific in their search query (for example ‘coffee shop near me open now’) or is looking for a service where immediacy is a factor (for example ’emergency plumber near me”).

I feel pretty sure that Google will turn down the dial on opening hours as a generic (in the sense that open businesses are better ranked and closed businesses are not ranked so well) ranking factor soon. 

Well, the time is upon us, and I imagine there’s a significant number of people that haven’t acted. Many people may even be wondering “what’s the big deal?”—but there are a lot of things to consider that may be attached to your Gmail account beyond emails.

And for brands, it could mean bad news for your Google Reviews.

So, consider this a good time to do a bit of account housekeeping! Check all of your logins and either update the email address if you’re not using Gmail, or log in to your Google account to ensure it’s active.

What does this mean for my business reviews?

Users who leave business reviews on Google must have an active account, so it could be the case that brands will see a drop in the total number of reviews their profile has if they are removed.

However, it hasn’t been confirmed if Google will remove the reviews or simply highlight the review poster as inactive/anonymous. According to Reputation America, reviews from deleted accounts do remain visible on business profiles but are no longer linked to personal information.

We asked Ben Fisher, Co-founder of Steady Demand and Google Business Profile Diamond Product Expert, about his experience with deleted Google accounts:

“In short, if the account is deleted and the GBP is live, the GBP will probably keep the reviews. The user name could change to ‘A Google User’, I have seen that before.”

– Ben Fisher, Steady Demand

It makes sense, given the importance of various review factors for building trust with businesses—and Google will want to maintain this integrity. As we know from the Local Consumer Review Survey, consumers are interested in more than just the top-level star rating for a business, looking at the experiences customers are describing.

What does this mean for Google Business Profiles?

To claim and manage your Google Business Profile (GBP) listing, you’ll need a Google account. If you’ve had various people associated with your GBP over the years, it’s a good idea to review the owners associated with the Profile and ensure the users with account access are up to date.

You can do this by heading to your GBP dashboard, clicking the three dots next to the profile strength indicator, and selecting ‘Business Profile settings’.

Although it has not been confirmed what would happen to a GBP if its sole user was deleted, we can assume the profile would revert to an unclaimed business listing.

A GBP will still remain visible if it is not managed, so it doesn’t seem likely that Google would remove it, but you may need to go through the claiming and verification process again.

Ben’s thoughts pretty much echo this:

“I would think that if that account is the only account associated with a GBP, then the chances of a soft suspension are highly likely.”

– Ben Fisher, Steady Demand

A soft suspension on a Google Business Profile generally means that the listing becomes unverified and you lose control of it. So, if this is the case, you’ll need to act fast to re-verify your GBP and ensure you’re in control of your business information.

How to Verify a Google Business Profile

Use this guide as a refresher if you need to verify your GBP.

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What’s exempt and how do I know if my Google account is inactive?

Well, if you’re an Android or Google device user, there’s a good chance you won’t have to worry. If your system is logged into Google and connected to apps like Calendar, Chrome, Photos and Play Store, your use of any of these will count as activity. Likewise, if your YouTube account has videos posted to it, this is also safe.

According to Forbes, exemptions also include Google accounts that are connected to educational establishments and those that are business accounts.

What should I do?

If your personal Google account has been inactive for two years or more, but you have personal files, photos, and memories stored there that you don’t want to lose, you’ll want to consider logging in before it’s too late.

It’s not clear whether the mass deletion has commenced, but Google initiatives tend to take several weeks to fully roll out.

For GBP owners and managers, the chances of your GBP being associated with an inactive Google account seem quite unlikely, but take the time to review who has access to the account and update the details if necessary.

How to Access Google Business Profile Support and Get Help

Where to go for help and support for your Google Business Profile.

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And as for reviews, there isn’t much you can do to prevent these changes. For now, we’ll just have to wait for the effects of the great Google account purge.

Remember, it’s always good to keep your eyes on forums like X (formerly Twitter), the Local Pack, and Local Search Forum to see if any big changes or updates have been spotted, and how people are responding to them.

At last count, more than 80 million people head to the site each month in search of somewhere to eat, someone to fix an issue at home, or someone to get them on the road. With dozens of categories and a vast directory of local business information, it’s an indispensable tool for local consumers.

It’s also a great way to grow your online presence, generate leads, and boost your sales figures. From takeout joints to locksmiths and home cleaners to body shops, Yelp is a great way to put your business in front of local consumers.

While you may not see it as such, Yelp is kind of like a search engine. As with any other search engine, the more time and effort you pour into search engine optimization (SEO), the better your results will be. So we’re going to talk to you about Yelp SEO.

The good news is that there are plenty of steps you can take to increase the prominence of your Yelp listing, no matter how competitive or overcrowded your particular category may be.

Why does Yelp SEO matter?  

Yelp isn’t just a key review platform or a place to claim a free business listing. It’s also a business discovery tool in its own right. It ties these three elements together, and that makes it particularly useful for local business owners.

What makes SEO for Yelp especially important is the proactive nature of the directory’s user base. According to its own figures, 83% of Yelp users hire or buy from a business they find on the platform.

What’s more, 57% of users contact the business directly within 24 hours. Those are powerful incentives to make your business as visible as possible. Get that right and you can realistically expect your foot traffic, reservations, and bookings to increase by a notable margin.

Claiming your Yelp listing is also free. As with any other business directory, it’s a useful way to boost your local citation count. Plus it provides a wealth of useful information to consumers. Information such as opening hours, street address, and services offered along with reviews and images are all contained within your Yelp listing. This information makes it that much easier for consumers to match your local business with their immediate needs.

How to Claim a Yelp Business Listing

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You also won’t be charged for any user interaction with your business. That means calls, emails, and website visitors are all free. You just have to make sure your listing is visible and receiving traffic. That’s where knowing how to optimize Yelp business listing information comes in.

Not only this, but users themselves go to Yelp to perform searches. And, as with other platforms, Yelp has its own algorithm for ranking the businesses it returns.

7 Ways to Optimize Your Yelp Listing

The internet is full of information and tips, but much of it is outdated, confusing, and time-consuming to wade through. Yelp doesn’t tend to share as much insight or best practice advice as Google or Bing, which can make it even harder to know where to start.

The tips below will guide you through optimizing your Yelp business listing. These essentials include category selection, review responses, and the importance of regular updates.

Ready to tap into the enormous potential that Yelp offers? Read on.  

1. Choose a Relevant Business Category

If you’ve been responsible for your business’s local listing management for a while now, you may be familiar with the importance of business categories. It’s a vital part of Google Business Profile optimization and similarly important when it comes to acing SEO for Yelp.

Yelp allows you to select up to three categories when claiming or updating your business listing (more on that later). But that’s not to say you should select three if only one or two are actually a good fit.

How to Choose the Right Google Business Profile Categories

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One of the easiest ways to optimize a Yelp listing is to only select the most relevant business category or categories. There are 1500 categories available in total, so you’ll need to be as specific as possible to ensure you’re getting seen by the right kinds of consumers. 

If you’re a home automation expert, for example, you may be tempted to also select electrician as a secondary category. But, unless you’re also an electrical contractor offering services such as appliance repair or rewiring, you could be undermining your listing’s effectiveness. 

2. Add Relevant Services 

While a category is a broad definition of your business offerings, services allow you to be much more specific. Here, you can select as many services as you offer. And, you can do so for each category you select.

This gives both Yelp and local consumers a much clearer idea of what you can offer. It provides both Yelp and local consumers with a much clearer idea of what your business does, helping to boost your listing’s relevance within search results. 

Make sure you select every service that your business offers. Again, don’t add irrelevant services in the hope of attracting more traffic. Focus instead on what you do offer so that your efforts to optimize Yelp listing information deliver meaningful traffic which could boost your sales figures. 

3. Carefully Craft Your ‘From This Business’ Text

Yelp research suggests that as many as 90% of Yelp users use the platform to compare local businesses. Your ‘From This Business’ text is your opportunity to connect with Yelp users and introduce some keyword-rich content to your listing at the same time.

The ‘From This Business’ area of your listing is split into three sections:

• An introduction
• Business history
• Specialties

Each of these components provides a space to connect with local consumers, highlight how your business can meet their needs, and feed the Yelp algorithm with more intel about your local business.

Try and include keywords, such as products or service names, within the text. The specialties section in particular will naturally be keyword-rich, but you can also add other useful information in the intro and history sections.

4. Ensure Your Opening Hours Are Correct

Getting your opening hours right is a basic but necessary Yelp optimization task to tick off. Having incorrect hours can be frustrating at best and at worst, could actively cost you custom. BrightLocal’s Local Business Discovery & Trust Report found that 53% of consumers saw opening hours as the most important information for a business to get right on their listings.

A consumer who sees that you’re open on Yelp and travels to your location isn’t likely to have a great impression of your business if they arrive to find you closed. Chances are, they won’t risk it a second time and will go to a competitor instead.

One of the nice things about Yelp—and key to managing your Yelp business listing effectively—is the option to add special hours. If you’re closed on Thanksgiving for example but open 24 hours on Black Friday, you can add special hours to your listing. You can add as many special hours or extended closure details as needed, so be sure to keep this area updated.

How to Get Your Google Business Profile Holiday-ready

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To add special hours, just navigate to the business information section of your listing and hit edit.

5. Take a Proactive Approach to Photos and Videos

Visual content is a very powerful asset for any local business. Images and videos allow consumers to build a detailed picture of your business without ever having visited or tried your services.

They help in decision-making and allow you to showcase the quality of your offering, the ambiance of your venue, and the professionalism of your staff. What’s more, when you head to the Yelp home page, it’s impossible not to notice that the top spots are invariably occupied by listings that have plentiful visual assets.

Images and videos are also an easy way to build trust. This is especially true if your Yelp SEO activity leads to more consumers uploading images alongside their reviews.

Yelp’s official advice states ‘Upload multiple photos to look your best’. That’s frustratingly ambiguous, so as a good rule of thumb, we’d suggest mirroring Google Business Profile photos best practice and uploading a well-rounded selection of images.

How to Upload and Manage Google Business Profile Photos

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Aim to include shots of the interior and exterior of any location open to consumers, team photos, and product and service offerings. For bars, restaurants, and other hospitality venues, you’ll also want to include shots of your best dishes and most striking spaces.

It’s very simple to upload images.

1. Log into your Yelp business listing.
2. Select ‘Photos and videos’ from the left-hand menu.
3. Then upload from your device.

6. Respond to Reviews (Good and Bad)

Review management is a critical part of any local SEO activity. Yelp users are known to be very engaged, are prolific reviewers, and often call, message, and visit local businesses. We already know that reviews are a primary Google Business Profile ranking factor. They’re also vitally important to consumers, with 88% citing business owner responses as a top influencing factor when deciding which local business to choose.

Responding to reviews doesn’t only show Yelp users that your business is active, engaged, and values customer feedback; it also sends those same messages to Yelp, which could help you stand out from less responsive, less active competitors. 

It’s worth noting that how you respond to reviews matters too. We’ve shared lots of tips here to help you navigate responses to feedback both good and bad.

Responding to Online Reviews

Read more

7. Encourage a Regular Influx of New Reviews

A regular influx of good reviews is also important. Many consumers will only browse the most recent reviews. New reviews also help Yelp to understand more about your business, its popularity, and its relevance for consumers searching for specific products and services.

Yelp discourages local businesses from soliciting reviews. Suspected requested reviews are tagged as ‘not recommended’, with Yelp saying they can be more biased. However, there are ways that you can nurture a steady stream of incoming reviews to keep your business listing current.

One easy way is to link to your Yelp listing on your site. The platform also suggests using a ‘Find us on Yelp’ sticker at your physical location. You can take this a stage further by adding a link to your Yelp listing within your email signature, adding a Yelp logo to your business card, or including it within your physical marketing material.

Remember, you’ll need a plan to respond to your incoming reviews as quickly as possible. 

It’s Time to Work on Your Yelp Listing

Knowing how to optimize a Yelp business listing is easier than you may think. With many similarities to Google Business Profile optimization, it shouldn’t take too long to get to grips with.

Even better, growing your visibility on Yelp can directly impact the success of your business. With an engaged user base and the ability to share useful business information, it’s well worth adding Yelp SEO to your local SEO to-do list.

Not only will it help you be easier to find within Yelp itself, but optimizing your business listings is beneficial for your local SEO too. Making sure that each of your listings is accurate and working harder for you, rather than just building and forgetting, is a good move for any business.