Study: Google Reviews Determine Local Carousel Rankings

Since the the launch of the Google “Local Carousel” in Gregorian calendar month, SEOs and marketers are attempting to reverse engineer the ranking variables that elevate listings into that holy ground. microphone Blumenthal offered an honest early roundup of stories and analysis.

Now Digital promoting Works (DMW) has conducted an intensive study of what can be referred to as “Carousel results” square measure available} to the conclusion that the standard and amount of Google reviews are the one most vital variable determinative inclusion and ranking.

The agency examined more than 4,500 search results in the hotels category, in 47 US cities. Each SERP featured a Carousel result.  Here’s more on the methodology of the study from DMW’s verbatim discussion:

For the top 10 hotels of each search, we collected the hotel’s name, rating, quantity of reviews, and rank (as displayed in Carousel). We also recorded the travel time and distance from each hotel to Google’s definition of the given city . . .

Our research yielded approximately 42,000 data points, including data on approximately 1,900 distinct hotels . . .

Our study look[ed] for correlations between a hotel’s rank in a search result with each of the following: 1) Google review rating (out of five stars), 2) quantity of Google reviews, 3) travel time from the hotel to the searched city, and 4) driving distance from the hotel to the searched city. We can look for these correlations within all combinations of query type (like “best hotels in…”) and market tier. For example, we were not surprised to see a strong correlation between rank and travel time/distance: closer hotels ranked higher.  

There were four main findings from the study:

    Review quality Associate in Nursingd volume: “Carousel rank correlates extremely with Google review ratings… Our study additionally showed an equally robust correlation for a hotel’s amount of Google reviews”
    Distance and period of time area unit ranking variables
    Google seems to be coefficient results supported a a lot of nuanced understanding of queries and inferred user intent
    The findings and ranking variables control true in each massive and little markets

It doesn’t seem that third party reviews (e.g., Yelp) area unit factorisation within the Carousel rankings in step with DMW.

The agency goes into significant extra detail regarding its methodology and evaluation, still as sensible recommendations and takeaways from its findings. It’s value taking a better look.