Page 47 - SEO Mad Scientist 2020 Report

It's important to note that when the locations of the listings being shown are further apart, the
map zooms out to accommodate where the business is located. When we checked the keywords
previously, the map zoomed all the way out to show Pennsylvania for SOME of the keywords, but
with the "branded" terms we didn't see this which you can see in the previous test snapshot.

The big question we have now is, "With enough prominence signals, can we get Google to show
those "hidden" listings on pages 7 & 8?"

Update: November 6, 2020

Multiple theories were shared as to why a listing verified in PA, but with a Miami SAB was
showing in the service area’s local rankings. Chaz Edwards theorized that the reason the listing
was given the opportunity to show in local maps was due to its service area being listed there,
regardless of proximity. Mike Milas on the other hand believed it was only showing due to the
proximity signals we had built after the listing went live, mostly citations and submitting data
aggregators.

Like most SEOs out there, even though we follow the facts, it's easy to get caught up in
speculation. There are so many variables in a test that it's often hard to determine what EXACTLY
caused any given response. This is why single variable tests and multiple test results from the
same test, are best to determine how something actually works.

We believe our test results definitely prove a SAB that lists specific areas of a service area, is
given a proximity score based on geolocation, allowing that map to show in local search within
that location. But we wanted to make sure, so this test was repeated 3 times across two different
niches, title loans and plumbing, with listing age ranging from 2 weeks to over 2 months.

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