A post over at Mike Blumenthal’s blog on Understanding Google Maps & Local Search regarding receiving a score of 100% in the Local Business Center for completeness of your Local Listing got me thinking.
Carter Maslan, Director of Product Management for Google answered a series of questions from Mike back in June about the new data rich Desktop for the Local Business Center. One little gem of an answer indicated that the percentage of completeness (say that 10 times fast) doesn’t have any bearing on your ranking in the 10-pack (or #-pack, depending on the day.)
Mike’s post showed us that use of categories doesn’t contribute to percentage of completion at all – but experience tells us that use of categories can have a profound effect on your ranking.
The irony: Google is showing a score for relevance based on how complete your listing is for human consumption, yet not for how complete your listing is for the search engine to show your listing to the humans you’re being scored for.
