Study Says Keywords In Local Reviews Does Not Impact Google Local Rankings

A new study from Sterling Sky shows that putting keywords in the local reviews on business listings does not help improve the local listings ranking in Google Search. The study said, “it does not improve rankings.”

In short, the study put reviews with the keyword phrases “fresh cut Christmas trees” and “Christmas trees” in the reviews. And in there was no ranking improvement after the reviews were added. In fact, the results got worse for some of the keywords.

Joy shared charts below that tracked the two keyword phrases which shows that rankings did not improve. Specifically for the first keyword phrase the rankings got worse. Whereas in the second instance, rankings stayed relatively the same, the study showed:

This was an interesting study but it had a very limited test, just keep that in mind.

Forum discussion at Twitter.