Page 48 - SEO Mad Scientist 2020 Report

Retest: November 6, 2020

If you aren't familiar with the Hanover, PA area or Gettysburg, these are two smaller towns located
about 40 minutes away from each other. Because of their size, when searching for a service in
maps, you often get a wider area shown on the map. When searching for plumbers, while in
Hanover, OR searching for "plumbers near Hanover", the map is zoomed out far enough to show
Gettysburg and vice versa, as you can see in the screenshot below:

Our test listing was NewDay Plumbers, which was showing in search for “plumbers” while
searching in Hanover, PA. The listing also showed for “plumbers near Hanover” terms regardless
of location.

We chose the target keyword “plumbers” for this listing as our GMB metrics indicated it was
shown most for this term. We then did a "search from location" using Bright Local’s local search
tool and confirmed we could not find the listing on any of the pages in maps. We also checked
"plumbers near Gettysburg" while in Hanover and Gettysburg and found the same - no listing.

Over the next few days, we continued to check the listing. It still wasn’t listed in maps while
searching for Hanover or for Gettysburg, but the listing consistently showed when in Hanover or
searching plumber queries with "near Hanover". It wasn't until about a week after that, while
reviewing the Gettysburg SERPS, we saw it pop up for our plumbers term while searching from
Gettysburg. Not only that, but all search terms referencing "Gettysburg" also showed in the maps
listings.

It took about 3 times as long for our Miami test listing to show while searching in Miami, which we
believe is due to the actual proximity signal. When your listing is in maps, the map position is

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