I think that Matt noted that he had seen an alpha listing.

I have not seen it but it makes sense if all else fails, I will keep an eye out.

Mike

listings seem to be made based on alphabetical order. Anyone else seeing anything like that?

Dave

It is complex, and I think that it is changing and evolving over time. My post about differences between Onebox and local results based upon location prominence only touches upon some of the issues involved.

I know that some topics/subjects that people searc for involve showing maps at a greater or smaller scale.

I also know that some locations have a greater density of businesses than others, and that can influence the scale of the map.

The concept of which centerpoint to use has and can change over time – center of a specific zip code, center of a range of zip codes, center of a smaller map in OneBox, center of a larger map in Local, distance from a specific location when address information is very specific, use of latitude/longitude as a center point, use of GPS as a center point. Different queries may determine that different ones are used. Different locations – rural, suburban, urban – may determine which ones are used.

The concept of distance from a centerpoint is also something possibly subject to change. Do you measure it by how the crow flies, or by the mileage if you have good road information, or by driving times if you can estimate those – and if you have different information – more complete or less complete – for some areas, do you mix that information up?

When you have incorrect or inconsistent location information for a business, is there a lessening of the ranking for a site, that ties it to a specific location, which makes it might not rank as highly.

When you have rating informationfor a business, or review information, you probably don’t treat all reviews equally – so a review from Yahoo might be worth more than a review from the Newark Post, or from the World Weekly News. So a site with a single review from an excellent resource that is editorially controlled – like one of the food critics from the New York Times – might carry more weight than a user’s review from Judy’s Book.

I’m just painting with broad strokes at some of the complexities. And I think that Google is experimenting as we go, to see what seems to get the best reactions based upon click-throughs and non click-throughs, time spent on pages, similar searches in the same search session (or online session), and many other things. With millions of results to interpret, and the time to slowly make changes, they are going to cause those of us trying to follow along some headaches along the way.

Cheers.

Bill