Page 62 - SEO Mad Scientist 2020 Report

We saw little to no change, which could mean multiple things; these aren't major signals, they
take more time to show impact, there’s a spam filter built into their impact, or they require some
sort of external/additional signal to be considered. We were testing these signals individually, as
well as together so we could determine not only impact, but also the level of impact and how it's
measured or influenced.

We knew a GMB with a website linked from it, will get negative results if it has a relevant
description and then you remove the description. But what about a listing where we included
terms it was ranking for poorly or not at all in the description?

We got the same results - absolutely no change in rankings. Since we previously saw removing
the description having a negative effect, we believe there must be an external signal influencing
the description impact. This listing has no optimization, no website - just a category, phone
number, and now a description.

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