Google My Business has updated their “Improve Your Local Ranking on Google” page for local businesses.  While there has been a lot of speculation and reverse engineering, this seems to be the first time they have given official guidance on ranking in the local 3-pack.

According to Google, they determine local rankings based on 3 criteria…. relevance, distance and prominence.

Relevance

Relevance refers to how well a local listing matches what someone is searching for. Adding complete and detailed business information can help Google better understand your business and match your listing to relevant searches.

Some of this is common sense, although it still isn’t followed widely.  For example, surprisingly not all businesses fill out their entire profile and business information.  And with Google now explicitly saying this helps them understand relevance for a business, you should definitely begin by ensuring your profile is as complete as possible.

Distance

Just like it sounds–how far is each potential search result from the location term used in a search? If a user doesn’t specify a location in their search, Google will calculate distance based on what’s known about their location.

So this could mean you rank higher in the 3-pack if someone searches from one area in the city than from another, dependent on location.

Prominence

Prominence refers to how well-known a business is. Some places are more prominent in the offline world, and search results try to reflect this in local ranking. For example, famous museums, landmark hotels, or well-known store brands that are familiar to many people are also likely to be prominent in local search results.

Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business from across the web (like links, articles, and directories). Google review count and score are factored into local search ranking: more reviews and positive ratings will probably improve a business’s local ranking. Your position in web results is also a factor, so SEO best practices also apply to local search optimization.

So links, articles, directories and other reverences will all factor into the prominence part of how Google is ranking a local business.

Of course, we know that reviews and ratings play a role.  For obvious reasons, Google doesn’t want to give the top spot to a business with a ton of low starred reviews.

But organic positioning does play a part.  While this had been speculated about, it wasn’t sure how much of a factor this is, but Google is seeming to confirm that organic rankings play a role… and this likely helps combat some spam issues as well.  So this confirms that regular search engine optimization will definitely be a part of local optimization.

You can find the information from the “Improve your local ranking with Google” page here.

H/T Mike Blumenthals