It appears to me that your business title is keyword stuffed to the gills (Web Design South Melbourne, Brand, Corporate Identity, Graphic …), so I am not sure that you should be hoping for action any too quickly by Google on the keyword stuffing issue. When I searched on “graphic designer Melbourne“, your listing shows up at #2 for me this morning.

It appears to me that every web/graphic designer in Melbourne has not done due diligence on Local Optimization and nor have they taken the time to understand the primary ranking factors. Fortunately it appears to be a congenial crowd and they have not turned each other in for keyword spamming.

There are a number of obtainable factors that influence ranking beyond Business Title….the most important are geo phrased in bound links, citations, geo rss/kml citations and total number of reviews. It appears that neither you nor any of your peers have put forth much effort in those arenas.

You need to have your business name and address mentioned on locally prominent websites, in IYP directories and every other location that you can find it. On the search “Simple ID” “level 4″ Melbourne you show only 139 results in Google worldwide and 117 in Australia proper. Part of the problem with having your business name listed in Maps the way it is, is that Maps could have trouble “clustering” results it does find with your listing.

You should return your business name to some semblance of reality or change the name legally. Then you should embark on an ongoing local citation/geo link campaign. With a modicum of effort you will easily pull ahead of your competitors and it will stand you in good stead going forward.

You’ve been lucky up this point. Its time to get down to it and do it right. So there’s might advice. Hopefully it is not indigestion inducing.

Mike

Thanks for your comments and offer to have a look.

Yes got to hate how sites drop off for days as google amends its indexing.
A few days later the onebox listing is back but down 1-2 spots, It is annoying given that pos1 & 2 are keyword stuffing “Provided by the business owner?” entries for “graphic design melbourne”. lets hope google picks this up sooner rather than later.

One of the things that still stumps me is that we are shown in onebox for “website design south melbourne”. http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4HPNN_enAU310AU301&q=website+design+south+melbourne&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryAU

however although we have more reviews and our entry appear ok it is nowhere near even making the first 10 for variants such as “web design melbourne”, “web site design melbourne” in onebox local results.

look forward to your thoughts.
Cheers,
Paul

Sometimes a change in ranking is just a temporary aberration that subsides once all of the indices have realigned. In general my sense is that the OneBox rankings which correlate very highly with Maps can viewed in terms of the above or SMX Local presentation model.

If you have a specific listing you would like me to look at, I would be glad to.

Mike

Given your blog has some new comments, would appreciate your input as to how you believe onebox is evolving compared to maps?

We were ranking in pos1 for ‘graphic design melbourne’ and slipped off onebox and shortly after the same happened on maps.
I have also found if you search for “graphic design melbourne” we show organically but for “graphic design south melbourne” not shown organically or in onebox.

Thanks and look forward to your thoughts.
Paul.

However, where there is adequate inventory, location with the the zip codes defined by the city geo search is absolutely critical. What zips that are included with the city search are determined by Google so often you will see things like Scottsdale included within the greater Phoenix search area.

Mike