Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google Local Restaurant Search Autofilters on Best, Cheapest Like Phrases
Several weeks ago Mary and I had a discussion at the Deep Dive at Local U about whether Google was using review sentiment in ranking. While I noted that the new patents for entity rank seemed to indicate that professional reviews might influence rank, that I had not seen any indication that sentiment as expressed within a review influenced ranking or that ranking for a good review corpus comparatively had a strong influence.
That all being said within Google restaurant search, Google is now autofiltering results based on phrases like good, best, cheapest etc. (As a note, while I just started noticing this recently it may have been present for quite some time).
The searches for things like “Best Restaurant NYC” works on both the desktop and mobile but the results are more obviously labeled in the mobile result. “Best” as a modifier returns only 4 star listings or better and “cheap” returns one $ sign listings. You can combine these modifier words and see results for Best Cheap Restaurant NYC:
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4 Comments
Thanks for the update. Hadn’t paid attention to it.
In a search in my area an ad for Olive Garden showed up!!!
On a separate issue vis a vis all smb’s and then with restaurants:
Best is a modifier we have seen in search and in adwords impressions for years and years. Its a great descriptive word for a website and matches search phrases.
We see Lots and Lots of searches for “Near Me” these days…not so many for nearby. Near Me, as I believe you noted in the past has really taken off as a search phrase…and many websites apply it in their titles.
Lastly of those breakdowns by restaurant types…those are popular for categories and for titles and pages for restaurants.
One way to grasp the value and importance in those titles is to run google trends.
Thanks for the update.
Re: “Best” as a modifier returns only 4 star listings or better and “cheap” returns one $ sign listings.
Might be a USA thing… or perhaps I’m not doing something right 😉
I don’t get those results up here in Edmonton, Canada (iPhone 6/Google browser and/or Maps search).
“best restaurants near me” and “cheap restaurants near me” provided similar results with little to no distinction in review quality or $.
@andy do have any ” quality” filters?
Not on my setup – perhaps on Android. I’ll find out 🙂
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