Google has updated its local ranking documentation and Tips to improve your local ranking on Google page. The new wording is shorter and has fewer details than the older version.

A lot of the page was actually updated, so you can compare the old document here to the new document here.

Here is a side by side on the ranking section that talks about relevance, distance and prominence:

OMG National I believe first spotted this and notified me of this change on X, he wrote:

Google has quietly updated its documentation on local ranking factors, and the changes are significant.

The section on “Prominence” has been completely reworded, removing key phrases SEOs have relied on for years.

This sentence has been completely DELETED from the “Prominence” factor description: “Your position in web results is also a factor, so search engine optimization (SEO) best practices apply.”

They also simplified what contributes to Prominence. OLD text mentioned: “…links, articles, and directories.” NEW text now says: “…how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.”

So, the takeaway? It seems Google is simplifying “Prominence” to focus heavily on links & reviews, while pointedly removing the mention of traditional SEO best practices.

I agree with @JoyanneHawkins

— Mike Blumenthal (@mblumenthal) July 14, 2025

I am not sure if this means any ranking changes were changed in the core local ranking system – I kind of doubt it – but who knows.

Forum discussion at X.

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Google long ago filed a patent for ranking search results by trust. The groundbreaking idea behind the patent is that user behavior can be used as a starting point for developing a ranking signal.

The big idea behind the patent is that the Internet is full of websites all linking to and commenting about each other. But which sites are trustworthy? Google’s solution is to utilize user behavior to indicate which sites are trusted and then use the linking and content on those sites to reveal more sites that are trustworthy for any given topic.

PageRank is basically the same thing only it begins and ends with one website linking to another website. The innovation of Google’s trust ranking patent is to put the user at the start of that trust chain like this:

User trusts X Websites > X Websites trust Other Sites > This feeds into Google as a ranking signal

The trust originates from the user and flows to trust sites that themselves provide anchor text, lists of other sites and commentary about other sites.

That, in a nutshell, is what Google’s trust-based ranking algorithm is about.

The deeper insight is that it reveals Google’s groundbreaking approach to letting users be a signal of what’s trustworthy. You know how Google keeps saying to create websites for users? This is what the trust patent is all about, putting the user in the front seat of the ranking algorithm.

Google’s Trust And Ranking Patent

The patent was coincidentally filed around the same period that Yahoo and Stanford University published a Trust Rank research paper which is focused on identifying spam pages.

Google’s patent is not about finding spam. It’s focused on doing the opposite, identifying trustworthy web pages that satisfy the user’s intent for a search query.

How Trust Factors Are Used

The first part of any patent consists of an Abstract section that offers a very general description of the invention that that’s what this patent does as well.

The patent abstract asserts:

• That trust factors are used to rank web pages.
• The trust factors are generated from “entities” (which are later described to be the users themselves, experts, expert web pages, and forum members) that link to or comment about other web pages).
• Those trust factors are then used to re-rank web pages.
• Re-ranking web pages kicks in after the normal ranking algorithm has done its thing with links, etc.

Here’s what the Abstract says:

“A search engine system provides search results that are ranked according to a measure of the trust associated with entities that have provided labels for the documents in the search results.

A search engine receives a query and selects documents relevant to the query.

The search engine also determines labels associated with selected documents, and the trust ranks of the entities that provided the labels.

The trust ranks are used to determine trust factors for the respective documents. The trust factors are used to adjust information retrieval scores of the documents. The search results are then ranked based on the adjusted information retrieval scores.”

As you can see, the Abstract does not say who the “entities” are nor does it say what the labels are yet, but it will.

Field Of The Invention

The next part is called the Field Of The Invention. The purpose is to describe the technical domain of the invention (which is information retrieval) and the focus (trust relationships between users) for the purpose of ranking web pages.

Here’s what it says:

“The present invention relates to search engines, and more specifically to search engines that use information indicative of trust relationship between users to rank search results.”

Now we move on to the next section, the Background, which describes the problem this invention solves.

Background Of The Invention

This section describes why search engines fall short of answering user queries (the problem) and why the invention solves the problem.

The main problems described are:

• Search engines are essentially guessing (inference) what the user’s intent is when they only use the search query.
• Users rely on expert-labeled content from trusted sites (called vertical knowledge sites) to tell them which web pages are trustworthy
• Explains why the content labeled as relevant or trustworthy is important but ignored by search engines.
• It’s important to remember that this patent came out before the BERT algorithm and other natural language approaches that are now used to better understand search queries.

This is how the patent explains it:

“An inherent problem in the design of search engines is that the relevance of search results to a particular user depends on factors that are highly dependent on the user’s intent in conducting the search—that is why they are conducting the search—as well as the user’s circumstances, the facts pertaining to the user’s information need.

Thus, given the same query by two different users, a given set of search results can be relevant to one user and irrelevant to another, entirely because of the different intent and information needs.”

Next it goes on to explain that users trust certain websites that provide information about certain topics:

“…In part because of the inability of contemporary search engines to consistently find information that satisfies the user’s information need, and not merely the user’s query terms, users frequently turn to websites that offer additional analysis or understanding of content available on the Internet.”

Websites Are The Entities

The rest of the Background section names forums, review sites, blogs, and news websites as places that users turn to for their information needs, calling them vertical knowledge sites. Vertical Knowledge sites, it’s explained later, can be any kind of website.

The patent explains that trust is why users turn to those sites:

“This degree of trust is valuable to users as a way of evaluating the often bewildering array of information that is available on the Internet.”

To recap, the “Background” section explains that the trust relationships between users and entities like forums, review sites, and blogs can be used to influence the ranking of search results. As we go deeper into the patent we’ll see that the entities are not limited to the above kinds of sites, they can be any kind of site.

Patent Summary Section

This part of the patent is interesting because it brings together all of the concepts into one place, but in a general high-level manner, and throws in some legal paragraphs that explain that the patent can apply to a wider scope than is set out in the patent.

The Summary section appears to have four sections:

• The first section explains that a search engine ranks web pages that are trusted by entities (like forums, news sites, blogs, etc.) and that the system maintains information about these labels about trusted web pages.
• The second section offers a general description of the work of the entities (like forums, news sites, blogs, etc.).
• The third offers a general description of how the system works, beginning with the query, the assorted hand waving that goes on at the search engine with regard to the entity labels, and then the search results.
• The fourth part is a legal explanation that the patent is not limited to the descriptions and that the invention applies to a wider scope. This is important. It enables Google to use a non-existent thing, even something as nutty as a “trust button” that a user selects to identify a site as being trustworthy as an example. This enables an example like a non-existent “trust button” to be a stand-in for something else, like navigational queries or Navboost or anything else that is a signal that a user trusts a website.

Here’s a nutshell explanation of how the system works:

• The user visits sites that they trust and click a “trust button” that tells the search engine that this is a trusted site.
• The trusted site “labels” other sites as trusted for certain topics (the label could be a topic like “symptoms”).
• A user asks a question at a search engine (a query) and uses a label (like “symptoms”).
• The search engine ranks websites according to the usual manner then it looks for sites that users trust and sees if any of those sites have used labels about other sites.
• Google ranks those other sites that have had labels assigned to them by the trusted sites.

Here’s an abbreviated version of the third part of the Summary that gives an idea of the inner workings of the invention:

“A user provides a query to the system…The system retrieves a set of search results… The system determines which query labels are applicable to which of the search result documents. … determines for each document an overall trust factor to apply… adjusts the …retrieval score… and reranks the results.”

Here’s that same section in its entirety:

• “A user provides a query to the system; the query contains at least one query term and optionally includes one or more labels of interest to the user.
• The system retrieves a set of search results comprising documents that are relevant to the query term(s).
• The system determines which query labels are applicable to which of the search result documents.
• The system determines for each document an overall trust factor to apply to the document based on the trust ranks of those entities that provided the labels that match the query labels.
• Applying the trust factor to the document adjusts the document’s information retrieval score, to provide a trust adjusted information retrieval score.
• The system reranks the search result documents based at on the trust adjusted information retrieval scores.”

The above is a general description of the invention.

The next section, called Detailed Description, deep dives into the details. At this point it’s becoming increasingly evident that the patent is highly nuanced and can not be reduced to simple advice similar to: “optimize your site like this to earn trust.”

A large part of the patent hinges on a trust button and an advanced search query:  label:

Neither the trust button or the label advanced search query have ever existed. As you’ll see, they are quite probably stand-ins for techniques that Google doesn’t want to explicitly reveal.

Detailed Description In Four Parts

The details of this patent are located in four sections within the Detailed Description section of the patent. This patent is not as simple as 99% of SEOs say it is.

These are the four sections:

1. System Overview
2. Obtaining and Storing Trust Information
3. Obtaining and Storing Label Information
4. Generated Trust Ranked Search Results

The System Overview is where the patent deep dives into the specifics. The following is an overview to make it easy to understand.

System Overview

1. Explains how the invention (a search engine system) ranks search results based on trust relationships between users and the user-trusted entities who label web content.

2. The patent describes a “trust button” that a user can click that tells Google that a user trusts a website or trusts the website for a specific topic or topics.

3. The patent says a trust related score is assigned to a website when a user clicks a trust button on a website.

4. The trust button information is stored in a trust database that’s referred to as #190.

Here’s what it says about assigning a trust rank score based on the trust button:

“The trust information provided by the users with respect to others is used to determine a trust rank for each user, which is measure of the overall degree of trust that users have in the particular entity.”

Trust Rank Button

The patent refers to the “trust rank” of the user-trusted websites. That trust rank is based on a trust button that a user clicks to indicate that they trust a given website, assigning a trust rank score.

The patent says:

“…the user can click on a “trust button” on a web page belonging to the entity, which causes a corresponding record for a trust relationship to be recorded in the trust database 190.

In general any type of input from the user indicating that such as trust relationship exists can be used.”

The trust button has never existed and the patent quietly acknowledges this by stating that any type of input can be used to indicate the trust relationship.

So what is it? I believe that the “trust button” is a stand-in for user behavior metrics in general, and site visitor data in particular. The patent Claims section does not mention trust buttons at all but does mention user visitor data as an indicator of trust.

Here are several passages that mention site visits as a way to understand if a user trusts a website:

“The system can also examine web visitation patterns of the user and can infer from the web visitation patterns which entities the user trusts. For example, the system can infer that a particular user trust a particular entity when the user visits the entity’s web page with a certain frequency.”

The same thing is stated in the Claims section of the patent, it’s the very first claim they make for the invention:

“A method performed by data processing apparatus, the method comprising:
determining, based on web visitation patterns of a user, one or more trust relationships indicating that the user trusts one or more entities;”

It may very well be that site visitation patterns and other user behaviors are what is meant by the “trust button” references.

Labels Generated By Trusted Sites

The patent defines trusted entities as news sites, blogs, forums, and review sites, but not limited to those kinds of sites, it could be any other kind of website.

Trusted websites create references to other sites and in that reference they label those other sites as being relevant to a particular topic. That label could be an anchor text. But it could be something else.

The patent explicitly mentions anchor text only once:

“In some cases, an entity may simply create a link from its site to a particular item of web content (e.g., a document) and provide a label 107 as the anchor text of the link.”

Although it only explicitly mentions anchor text once, there are other passages where it anchor text is strongly implied, for example, the patent offers a general description of labels as describing or categorizing the content found on another site:

“…labels are words, phrases, markers or other indicia that have been associated with certain web content (pages, sites, documents, media, etc.) by others as descriptive or categorical identifiers.”

Labels And Annotations

Trusted sites link out to web pages with labels and links. The combination of a label and a link is called an annotation.

This is how it’s described:

“An annotation 106 includes a label 107 and a URL pattern associated with the label; the URL pattern can be specific to an individual web page or to any portion of a web site or pages therein.”

Labels Used In Search Queries

Users can also search with “labels” in their queries by using a non-existent “label:” advanced search query. Those kinds of queries are then used to match the labels that a website page is associated with.

This is how it’s explained:

“For example, a query “cancer label:symptoms” includes the query term “cancel” and a query label “symptoms”, and thus is a request for documents relevant to cancer, and that have been labeled as relating to “symptoms.”

Labels such as these can be associated with documents from any entity, whether the entity created the document, or is a third party. The entity that has labeled a document has some degree of trust, as further described below.”

What is that label in the search query? It could simply be certain descriptive keywords, but there aren’t any clues to speculate further than that.

The patent puts it all together like this:

“Using the annotation information and trust information from the trust database 190, the search engine 180 determines a trust factor for each document.”

Takeaway:

A user’s trust is in a website. That user-trusted website is not necessarily the one that’s ranked, it’s the website that’s linking/trusting another relevant web page. The web page that is ranked can be the one that the trusted site has labeled as relevant for a specific topic and it could be a web page in the trusted site itself. The purpose of the user signals is to provide a starting point, so to speak, from which to identify trustworthy sites.

Experts Are Trusted

Vertical Knowledge Sites, sites that users trust, can host the commentary of experts. The expert could be the publisher of the trusted site as well. Experts are important because links from expert sites are used as part of the ranking process.

Experts are defined as publishing a deep level of content on the topic:

“These and other vertical knowledge sites may also host the analysis and comments of experts or others with knowledge, expertise, or a point of view in particular fields, who again can comment on content found on the Internet.

For example, a website operated by a digital camera expert and devoted to digital cameras typically includes product reviews, guidance on how to purchase a digital camera, as well as links to camera manufacturer’s sites, new products announcements, technical articles, additional reviews, or other sources of content.

To assist the user, the expert may include comments on the linked content, such as labeling a particular technical article as “expert level,” or a particular review as “negative professional review,” or a new product announcement as ;new 10MP digital SLR’.”

Links From Expert Sites

Links and annotations from user-trusted expert sites are described as sources of trust information:

“For example, Expert may create an annotation 106 including the label 107 “Professional review” for a review 114 of Canon digital SLR camera on a web site “www.digitalcameraworld.com”, a label 107 of “Jazz music” for a CD 115 on the site “www.jazzworld.com”, a label 107 of “Classic Drama” for the movie 116 “North by Northwest” listed on website “www.movierental.com”, and a label 107 of “Symptoms” for a group of pages describing the symptoms of colon cancer on a website 117 “www.yourhealth.com”.

Note that labels 107 can also include numerical values (not shown), indicating a rating or degree of significance that the entity attaches to the labeled document.

Expert’s web site 105 can also include trust information. More specifically, Expert’s web site 105 can include a trust list 109 of entities whom Expert trusts. This list may be in the form of a list of entity names, the URLs of such entities’ web pages, or by other identifying information. Expert’s web site 105 may also include a vanity list 111 listing entities who trust Expert; again this may be in the form of a list of entity names, URLs, or other identifying information.”

Inferred Trust

The patent describes additional signals that can be used to signal (infer) trust. These are more traditional type signals like links, a list of trusted web pages (maybe a resources page?) and a list of sites that trust the website.

These are the inferred trust signals:

“(1) links from the user’s web page to web pages belonging to trusted entities;
(2) a trust list that identifies entities that the user trusts; or
(3) a vanity list which identifies users who trust the owner of the vanity page.”

Another kind of trust signal that can be inferred is from identifying sites that a user tends to visit.

The patent explains:

“The system can also examine web visitation patterns of the user and can infer from the web visitation patterns which entities the user trusts. For example, the system can infer that a particular user trusts a particular entity when the user visits the entity’s web page with a certain frequency.”

Takeaway:

That’s a pretty big signal and I believe that it suggests that promotional activities that encourage potential site visitors to discover a site and then become loyal site visitors can be helpful. For example, that kind of signal can be tracked with branded search queries. It could be that Google is only looking at site visit information but I think that branded queries are an equally trustworthy signal, especially when those queries are accompanied by labels… ding, ding, ding!

The patent also lists some kind of out there examples of inferred trust like contact/chat list data. It doesn’t say social media, just contact/chat lists.

Trust Can Decay or Increase

Another interesting feature of trust rank is that it can decay or increase over time.

The patent is straightforward about this part:

“Note that trust relationships can change. For example, the system can increase (or decrease) the strength of a trust relationship for a trusted entity. The search engine system 100 can also cause the strength of a trust relationship to decay over time if the trust relationship is not affirmed by the user, for example by visiting the entity’s web site and activating the trust button 112.”

Trust Relationship Editor User Interface

Directly after the above paragraph is a section about enabling users to edit their trust relationships through a user interface. There has never been such a thing, just like the non-existent trust button.

This is possibly a stand-in for something else. Could this trusted sites dashboard be Chrome browser bookmarks or sites that are followed in Discover? This is a matter for speculation.

Here’s what the patent says:

“The search engine system 100 may also expose a user interface to the trust database 190 by which the user can edit the user trust relationships, including adding or removing trust relationships with selected entities.

The trust information in the trust database 190 is also periodically updated by crawling of web sites, including sites of entities with trust information (e.g., trust lists, vanity lists); trust ranks are recomputed based on the updated trust information.”

What Google’s Trust Patent Is About

Google’s Search Result Ranking Based On Trust patent describes a way of leveraging user-behavior signals to understand which sites are trustworthy. The system then identifies sites that are trusted by the user-trusted sites and uses that information as a ranking signal. There is no actual trust rank metric, but there are ranking signals related to what users trust. Those signals can decay or increase based on factors like whether a user still visits those sites.

The larger takeaway is that this patent is an example of how Google is focused on user signals as a ranking source, so that they can feed that back into ranking sites that meet their needs. This means that instead of doing things because “this is what Google likes,” it’s better to go even deeper and do things because users like it. That will feed back to Google through these kinds of algorithms that measure user behavior patterns, something we all know Google uses.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/samsulalam

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On Saturday, June 28th, it appears that another significant Google Search ranking update occurred, although Google has not confirmed it. There has been significant search ranking volatility and chatter within the SEO industry over the past 24 hours or so.

Again, we haven’t had a confirmed Google search ranking update since the March 2025 core update, we have had tons of unconfirmed updates since then.

As a reminder, the last time we reported on an update was June 25 and 26th, then June 18th and then June 9th and then June 4th, May 29th, May 21st, May 16th, then May 12 and 13, May 8th (I didn’t cover May 1st, I probably should have) but then it was a couple of weeks, not since April 25th and then before that, 22nd and 23rd volatility and then around April 16th and then before that around April 9th. We have yet to have second official update in 2025, we had the March 2025 core update but no other official update in 2025 – yet. I guess Google fibbed about more core updates, more often?

Google Tracking Tools

Here are what the tools are showing:

Semrush:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Mozcast:

Sistrix:

Cognitive SEO:

SimilarWeb:

Accuranker:

Mangools:

Wincher:

Data For SEO:

SERPstat:

Algoroo:

Wiredboard’s Aggregator of Tools – this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

SEO Chatter

Here is some of the chatter from within the SEO community over the past couple of days, including at WebmasterWorld and over on this site:

Hey, is it just me, or is Google’s ranking system completely out of control right now? The ranking of my news site changes by the hour, traffic spikes until Monday, then drops off a cliff. Today? Zero. Sometimes a category is really popular, and then it gets ignored for days. It’s impossible to keep track of it all.Google is doing some sort of update. Each time they are updating/tuning something, the crawl rate drops noticeably. There are some major changes happening at the moment, so it’s no wonder that my traffic has plummeted.This week USA traffic to my global site is down 33% but USA bots are still rampaging however I have managed to block one significant culprit from NYC.My site has dropped to the second page, and even some pages that were ranking in the zero position have fallen, despite not using any black or grey hat SEO techniques.We used to have drops in traffic when volatility rise. Not volatility is calmer and traffic is dying.

This one feels like a bigger one, but what are you all seeing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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Over the past two days it has felt like there was some sort of ranking adjustment made in the Google Search organic results. Yea, I know, organic search doesn’t send clicks anymore, but they are still ranked and it seems like there was some sort of larger shuffle in those rankings.

While we haven’t had a confirmed Google search ranking update since the March 2025 core update, we have had tons of unconfirmed updates and maybe we are having one now.

Some of the tools are showing a lift in volatility, and for some reason Semrush misreported yesterday (maybe a bug), but there is enough chatter in the SEO industry for me to report on this.

As a reminder, the last time we reported on an update was June 18th and then June 9th and then June 4th, May 29th, May 21st, May 16th, then May 12 and 13, May 8th (I didn’t cover May 1st, I probably should have) but then it was a couple of weeks, not since April 25th and then before that, 22nd and 23rd volatility and then around April 16th and then before that around April 9th. We have yet to have second official update in 2025, we had the March 2025 core update but no other official update in 2025 – yet. I guess Google fibbed about more core updates, more often?

Google Tracking Tools

Here are what the tools are showing:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Mozcast:

Sistrix:

Semrush (missed two days):

Cognitive SEO:

SimilarWeb:

Accuranker:

Mangools:

Wincher:

Data For SEO:

SERPstat:

Algoroo:

Wiredboard’s Aggregator of Tools – this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

SEO Chatter

Here is some of the SEO chatter from WebmasterWorld and comments on this site:

Something is going on again. Not sure if it already started yesterday (June 24th) or today (June 25th)Same awful traffic todayToday traffic very low. I see tech, news websites is rising.Has the USA been blown up today? Seen 0/1 USA visitors today so far in analytics every time I check, normally 80/90 per 30 mins! Funny I got all pages to display fireworks in lighthouse last week and CWV 100% on webmaster tools, (all I needed to do was remove adsense) but I seem to have been penalised since massively.I don’t know what’s happened but Economic Times has been scraping all our articles for about 2-3 years now. Earlier this year, we lost our top spots to them.

I believe there would have been more chatter if Semrush didn’t have a hiccup.

What are you all seeing over the past two days?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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It’s been almost ten days since I last reported on a Google search ranking update. Well, I had to stop the streak and cover what I’ve seen over the last 24 hours or so. It appears that the volatility in ranking positions in Google search results is shifting more than the norm.

The third-party tracking tools are showing a large spike in volatility from the past day or so, at least most of them. And while the SEO community is dead tired of talking about volatility, espesially without seeing clicks from Google search, there is some chatter throughout the industry about movement.

As a reminder, the last time we reported on June 9th and then June 4th, May 29th, May 21st, May 16th, then May 12 and 13, May 8th (I didn’t cover May 1st, I probably should have) but then it was a couple of weeks, not since April 25th and then before that, 22nd and 23rd volatility and then around April 16th and then before that around April 9th. We have yet to have second official update in 2025, we had the March 2025 core update but no other official update in 2025 – yet.

Google Tracking Tools

Here are what the tools are showing:

Semrush:

Cognitive SEO:

SimilarWeb:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Accuranker:

Mozcast:

Mangools:

Wincher:

Data For SEO:

SERPstat:

Sistrix:

Algoroo:

Wiredboard’s Aggregator of Tools – this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

SEO Chatter

Here is some of the SEO chatter from WebmasterWorld and comments on this site:

It’s fun again. Google downgraded my news page on Friday. Suddenly, there’s no news traffic anymore. The ranking is rising, but normal searches bring just as many clicks as Bing, which is to say virtually none. But at least AI spam and articles that are actually advertisements are displayed as prominently as possible.

And as if that weren’t enough, the shop was also downgraded. The result: despite AdWords and high spending, there have been no sales via Google traffic since Friday.

Funnily enough, after several weeks of downhill traffic. Seems we are now increasing again. But are still -15% over last month. Granted this fall might not be 100% Google this time. I was meddling with the UI. So won’t play the blame game this time around.Google has boosted Reddit so much while ignoring other sites that, eventually, people will just go directly to Reddit and bypass Google. Every search I do, Google either lists mostly Reddit links or suggests more results from Reddit. At this rate, Reddit will survive, and Google Search may become irrelevant. Just look at Reddit’s stock performance compared to Google’s lately.A website affected by hcu that I observe, for 6 months has started publishing 50 news stories a day, previously it only dealt with guides on technology. The news appeared on Google news but nothing, the traffic remained low and now the site is stopped abandoned. He wanted to give it a try but he just wasted time and money. Better to cut with the past and devote yourself to social networks in my opinion, much less restrictive, a video is published on multiple platforms without problems, you can ask for money for sponsorships that no one says anything, AI content is not a problem for anyone. The social network could be the new opportunity, while continuing on websites only increases the frustration because the traffic of the past will no longer be there because of AIO and all the mess it has combined Google. Better to devote yourself to something else, even if it means starting over. At the moment my goal is 10000 followersLast 7 days zombies increased 70% AI overviews also raise no click expectations to shoppers! It is very confusing for searchers they will naturally stop clicking on ads as well!Today very bad… But my competitor is going up. Discover traffic nonsense, he have 350 000 daily users. My website have 50 000 daily users.

What are you all seeing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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Google’s John Mueller responded to a complaint about indexing issues and ranking drops within Google Search, citing that the possible reason is unrelated content on the site. John said in response to the complaint, “One of the things I noticed is that there’s a lot of totally unrelated content on the site.”

We have covered the topic many times before, some call it “staying in your lane,” and not writing content that is off topic to your primary coverage.

Now John Mueller said on Bluesky, “One of the things I noticed is that there’s a lot of totally unrelated content on the site.” He then asked if that “is that by design?”

He then gave him some ways to find this content. He wrote, “If you go to Bing and use [site:tpointtech.com watch online], [site:tpointtech.com sexy], [site:tpointtech.com top 10] , similarly probably in your Search Console, it looks really weird.”

Here is that post but click through to see the questions:

One of the things I noticed is that there’s a lot of totally unrelated content on the site. Is that by design? If you go to Bing and use [site:tpointtech.com watch online], [site:tpointtech.com sexy], [site:tpointtech.com top 10] , similarly probably in your Search Console, it looks really weird.

— John Mueller (@johnmu.com) June 10, 2025 at 10:24 AM

To be fair, Google has said previously that niche content isnt required and you don’t need to run a niche site to rank.

But yea, if you write about search engines all day and then start blogging about recipes, then maybe your readers will be confused.

Forum discussion at Bluesky.

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Quick Summary

• You need to understand which local SEO ranking factors actually make a difference before you can execute an effective strategy for your business.
• Google has revealed some of the key local ranking factors you should have in your SEO strategy.
• Effectively keeping track of your local rankings progress requires specialist tools, such as Semrush Local’s Map Rank Tracker tool.

What are local SEO ranking factors?

Local SEO ranking factors are the specific things marketers focus on to help improve the position of businesses in search results. Essentially, it’s what search engines like Google look for when deciding which businesses to display in prime positions like the local pack (or three pack).

Local search rankings for hair salons in Devon, UK

Google has been somewhat forthcoming about which local SEO ranking factors it considers important, but the specific algorithm is a closely guarded secret. So, based on what Google has told us, as well as Semrush’s significant industry experience, we’ve pieced together several actionable tips to improve your local search rankings and bring in more business for your company.

Which local SEO ranking factors does Google care about?

Google’s support page reveals the three local SEO ranking factors you should be focusing on. Relevance is how closely related a result is to the search query. For example, we’d expect local search rankings for “steak restaurants in Winnipeg” to favor restaurants that specifically state they are “steak” restaurants above general restaurants that happen to serve steak. 

Distance is about how close a local result is to the user. This is an important local search engine rankings factor for smaller businesses, because it allows them to compete with larger businesses that have more reviews (and the resources to generate them). 

Prominence is how well known your business is. For example, the number of citations in directories, mentions and backlinks from respected local websites, online reviews, as well as the business’ website and blog content/structure.

Local search engine rankings for “best Indian restaurants in Birmingham

How to influence local ranking factors

Now we know a bit more about Google local ranking factors, it’s time to get to work on improving your business’ local search engine rankings. First, you’ll need to distribute your business listings to all the top online directories. To make sure your business has the highest chance of being seen as relevant to the user (one of the most important local search ranking factors), complete as many details as possible in your profiles. Name, address and phone number are essential (this is known as NAP data), but where possible, you should also include your logo, opening hours, onsite photos, categories, products, services, and a detailed description.

Top tip: Once you’ve got a large number of citations online, it’s important that you make sure everything is correct and that there are no duplicate listings out there. Semrush Local’s Listing Management tool makes it really simple to fix errors in your citations, suppress duplicate listings and update details across all directories in one simple interface.

Pay special attention to your Google Business Profile (GBP), which is what appears in the results page when people search your business name and also where Google Maps gets its data from. Of all your online citations, GBP is considered one of the biggest local search ranking factors, especially for Google results (for obvious reasons). Add content to your GBP, such as local photos and updates, to make it clear your business is active in your location.

The editing interface for Google Business Profile

Warning: Don’t try to game the system by cramming your Google Business Profile name and description with keywords or claiming a location as open to the public when it’s really a work-from-home address. Infringements against Google’s guidelines for representing your business can seriously impact your local SEO ranking.

Next, you’ll need a solid review generation campaign. This doesn’t need to be any more complicated than sending out a message (SMS, ideally, as they have the highest open rates) with a polite request for a rating, along with a link to your GBP.

When the reviews start coming in, be sure to reply to them in a timely fashion to thank people for their feedback or find out more about why a customer wasn’t satisfied (yes, you need to reply to negative reviews as well).

Optimize your website for local keywords and consider location-specific landing pages with an embedded Google Map and schema code so Google can easily check your NAP data.

Create relevant content about the local area and share on your social channels, email lists and GBP. Also reach out to relevant local website owners and encourage them to link to your content.

Make sure any content you create is high quality and optimized for local search. If users click on your content and immediately decide it’s not for them, you’ll end up with a high bounce rate, which sends a signal to Google that your content isn’t solving users’ queries. If you’re not confident you can write compelling local content yourself, consider hiring a writer with experience in SEO. Reach out to local newspaper websites whenever you have anything interesting going on (like a grand opening or fundraising event) and encourage them to link to your site in the write up.

Tracking your local rankings progress

Once you’ve started making moves on influencing the local SEO ranking factors that will determine your online success, you’ll need to get an objective view of how well you’re doing. Looking at Google search results doesn’t give you the most accurate representation of where your business ranks locally, because even in incognito mode, Google is influenced by you as a user.

The Map Rank Tracker view of Semrush Local showing Google local ranking results

For the most useful data on your local SEO results, use tools you can trust to give you a genuine average local ranking. Semrush’s Local Map Rank Tracker  lets you create clear reports on your local rankings progress so you can be certain all your hard local SEO work isn’t in vain. Map Rank Tracker enables you to create campaigns that monitor a certain city or region area for your target keywords. 

Prominence boost: Semrush Local’s Listing Management tool is the quickest way to get your business listed on more than 70 directories and improve local search engine rankings.

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This week we covered the ongoing Google search ranking volatility that spiked on June 4th. Have you heard of the Great Decoupling? Did Google start indexing less in late May? Google updated its ranking algorithm around explicit content and videos, plus they updated its SafeSearch documentation. I posted the monthly Google webmaster report for June 2025. Google is testing AI Overviews at the bottom of the page. Charts and data visualizations and analysis are now in Google AI Mode labs. Google Discover is testing generative AI summaries. Google Gemini Live is now available in the Gemini App. Google Lens is available on YouTube Shorts. Google AI Overviews and Bing Copilot Answers now include Shorts. Google search results tests clickable page include links in the snippets. Google Ads API version 20 is now out. Google published a help document on the new video ads. Google is testing a new ads label in the search results. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai was interviewed again, this time by Emily Chang from Bloomberg. Plus, Navah Hopkins is the new Microsoft Advertising Ads Liaison. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Sponsor: BruceClay one of the founding fathers of the SEO space, doing search marketing optimization since 1996. Bruce Clay is big into SEO training, check out seotraining.com to learn more and check them out at bruceclay.com. Also, check out their new product, Prewriter.ai – this tool empowers writers to write better and more efficiently, so check it out.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast player to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed. For the original iTunes version, click here.

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Google updated the Recipe Schema.org structured data documentation to reflect more precise guidance on what the image structured data property affects and where to find additional information about ranking recipe images in the regular organic search results.

Schema.org Structured Data And Rich Results

The SEO and publisher community refers to the text results as the organic search results or the ten blue links. Google refers to them as the text results.

Structured data helps a site’s content become eligible to rank in Google’s rich results but it generally doesn’t help content rank better in the text results.

That’s the concept underlying Google’s update to the Recipe structured data guidance with the addition of two sentences:

“Specifying the image property in Recipe markup has no impact on the image chosen for a text result image. To optimize for a text result image, follow the image SEO best practices.”

Recipe structured data influences the images shown in the Recipe Rich Results. The structured data does not influence the image rankings in the regular text results (aka the organic search results).

Ranking Images In Text Results

Google offers documentation for image best practices which specify normal HTML like the <img> and <picture> elements. Google also recommends using an image sitemap, a sitemap that’s specifically for images.

Something to pay particular attention to is to not use images that have blurry qualities to them. Always use sharp images to give your images the best chance for showing up in the search results.

I know that some images may contain slight purposeful blurring for optimization purposes (blurring decreases image size) and to enhance the perspective of foreground and background. But Google recommends using sharp images and to avoid blurring in images. Google doesn’t say it’s an image ranking factor, but it does make that recommendation.

Here’s what Google’s image optimization guidance recommends:

“High-quality photos appeal to users more than blurry, unclear images. Also, sharp images are more appealing to users in the result thumbnail and can increase the likelihood of getting traffic from users.”

In my opinion I think it’s best to avoid excessive use of blurring. I only have my own anecdotal experience with purposely blurred images not showing up in the search results. So, to me it’s interesting to see my experience confirmed that Google treats blurred images as a negative quality and sharp images as a positive quality.

Read Google’s updated Recipe structured data documentation about images here:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/recipe#image

Read more about images in Google’s text results here.

Read about blurry and sharp images here:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-images#good-quality-photos%20optimize-for-speed

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Dean Drobot

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Google has updated its search ranking algorithm to “more strongly affect the sites that host explicit videos but don’t allow Googlebot to fetch those video files” which may lead to a “significant drop in ranking” for some of these sites. Google also updated its SafeSearch documentation with new best practices and details.

Google wrote, “Google Search is updating the ranking algorithms to more strongly affect the sites that host explicit videos but don’t allow Googlebot to fetch those video files.” “These sites may experience a significant drop in ranking, especially in Video mode,” Google added.

Google linked to this new section that explains this part more. It reads:

If you have content behind an age gate or other access restriction, be sure to allow Googlebot to crawl your content without triggering the age gate. You can do this by verifying Googlebot requests and serving the content without age gate.

If you don’t allow Googlebot to crawl without triggering the age gate, it may cause your site to rank poorly on Google Search. Google might not be able to fetch your content, including image or video bytes, and therefore not be able to effectively rank that page for relevant queries. Additionally, if you host some non-explicit content behind age-gate and Googlebot cannot see it, there is a higher chance that this content or even the whole site gets classified automatically as explicit, which will make it ineligible to appear when the SafeSearch filter is on.

Meanwhile, the new documentation is over here and it goes through how Google handles explicit content in Search results, how SafeSearch works and how Google handles sites with a significant amount of removals of violative sexually explicit content.

SafeSearch is designed to filter results that lead to visual depictions of:

• Explicit sexual content of any type, including pornography
• Nudity
• Photo-realistic sex toys
• Sex-oriented dating or escort services
• Violence or gore
• Links to pages containing explicit content

Google also has these new sections for best practices for explicit content:

• Prevent user-generated harmful content on your platform.
• Allow Google to fetch your video content files.
• Allow Googlebot to crawl without age gate.
• Group explicit pages in a separate domain or subdomain.
• Mark specific pages as explicit with metadata.

Then Google posted a new document on troubleshooting issues wtih explicit content in Google Search. It includes:

• Determine if SafeSearch is filtering your website
• Resolve common mistakes such as:
• Adding the adult rating meta tag to content that’s not sexually explicit
• Labeling videos that aren’t explicit as not family_friendly in your video sitemap
• Allowing all UGC comments without content moderation
• Restricting Googlebot with an age gate
• Not separating explicit pages from non-explicit pages

So if you see a ranking drop, espesially for your videos, and you run an adult oriented site, you may want to review these new guidelines and best practices.

Forum discussion at X.

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