5 Things to Check When Your Google Business Profile Rankings Drop

TL;DR

1. Check if your business pin is outside the city you’re trying to rank in, as this can cause ranking issues for geo-modified keywords.
2. Look for recent algorithm updates that might explain the ranking drop, using tools like Bright Local’s Local Flux tool.
3. Compare pre- and post-drop search results to spot changes like new competitors or shifts in the layout (e.g., 3-pack vs one-box).
4. Analyze keyword-specific drops using UTM parameters in Google Search Console to connect ranking changes to website traffic.
5. Determine if you’re being filtered by Google’s local filter, which may occur if multiple businesses share the same address.

When it comes to assessing local ranking drops, it is easy to find yourself in the weeds. Before you know it, you can’t see the forest for the trees, and trying to zone in on what specifically caused the drop becomes a frustrating process.

Because of that, I like to have a small “go-to” list of things that I check right off the bat. In my experience, most local ranking drops, and by local—I mean 3-pack/local pack rankings—can be figured out by going through the five tactics outlined below. This list has been incredibly helpful for the team at Sterling Sky, and I hope you find it equally useful. Enjoy!

1. See if you are outside the border of the city you’re trying to rank in

This is typically the first thing I check. I wrote about this in the article titled Physical Address vs. Mailing Address – What Does Google Base Ranking On?

When a business’s map pin falls outside of the physical boundary of the city they verified their listing in, it typically causes rankings for explicit keywords, aka keywords with a geo-modifier, to rank poorly.

In order to see if this is impacting your rankings, you need to do two things:

• Pull up the business knowledge panel and see if Google has automatically changed the city name. The name that they change it to is where Google considers to be physically located and where your profile will be ranked.

• In this example, the business verified the Google Business Profile in Olathe. Because her map pin falls outside of the Olathe physical border, Google is not ranking the Business Profile for “state farm Olathe”, but it ranks well for “state farm Lenexa”.

• Set up a geogrid ranking report and track both implicit and explicit keywords. If you are being impacted by this issue, you will likely see that your rankings for explicit keywords with the city you specified in your profile address are not great, but keywords with the city that Google thinks you are physically located in rank well.
• This is common for businesses on a street that serves as the city limit. When the border runs down the center of the street, all the businesses on one side are within city limits, while those on the other side, are outside. A small change to your map pin position can change the city in which Google considers your business to be located! To find the city limit, search for the city name on Google Maps, and pay close attention to your map pin position when you create a Business Profile.

Overcoming this challenge isn’t easy. I outlined some tactics to try in the article about physical vs mailing addresses.

1. 1. 1. Implement a strategy to earn backlinks with anchors that mention the city name.
      2. Optimize your website, including your internal linking to make it clear to Google that you have a presence in that city.
      3. Move your business inside the border of the desired city (most impactful).

2. Check if there was a recent algorithm update

The next thing I like to do is check to see if the ranking drop is related to a possible local algorithm update. A quick and dirty way to check that is to see if there is ranking fluctuation across the entire industry or local results as a whole using Bright Local’s Local Flux tool. According to Bright Local:

Local RankFlux is the only ranking fluctuation monitoring tool for local search. We track daily ranking movements across 14,000+ keywords to measure volatility and identify suspected algorithm updates.

If you come to the conclusion that the ranking drop is related to an algorithm update, the next step is to figure out what the characteristics of the update were, as we did with the Vicinity Update.

3.  Check what changed in the search results

One of the best, and most underutilized tactics to assess a ranking drop is to compare what the search results looked like before and after the drop. Comparing search results can tell you a few important things:

1. 1. 1. Which competitors are ranking now, that weren’t ranking before?
      2. Did anything fundamental change with the search results? For instance, is Google now showing a one-box and before the ranking dropped, there was a 3-pack? Or, maybe Google doesn’t consider the query to have enough local intent and removed the 3-pack from the results.
      3. Are there new, spammy listings that are now outranking me?

Both Bright Local and Places Scout have screenshot features that can be used for this assessment. To grab the screenshots in Places Scout, set the report date to before the ranking drop, click on a pin, and select “View SERP Screenshot”

After that, go back in and change the date to after the ranking dropped. Put the screenshots up on your computer, side-by-side, and take note of any new competitors ranking and/or changes to the search results layout.

4. Isolate what keywords you dropped for

If you tag your Google Business Profile website and appointment links with UTM parameters you have access to a treasure trove of data. What I love about assessing ranking drops in Google Search Console is you can filter the data by the URL with the UTM parameter, as well as by specific queries. This allows you to understand whether the ranking drop is also causing drops in website traffic originating from the Google Business Profile.

Read More: Why you need to use utm codes in Google Business Places to separate traffic that comes from local results

In the example below, you can see that we have filtered the data to only show us information related to the URL with the GBP UTM parameters. We compared three months of data before the ranking drop to the three months after the drop. We can see that the ranking drop resulted in a drop in clicks to the website, and now we can dig into specific queries to put a recovery plan together.

5. Check to see if you’re filtered

One of the most common reasons for a ranking drop is when the local filter comes into play. The local filter, which was named the Possum Update back in 2016, is still a thing to this day. The filter comes into play when two or more businesses, in the same category, are physically located at the same address.

We covered this in an article titled – Is Your Google My Business Listing Getting Filtered?

Read More: Uncovering Filtering Issues: A Guide to Using Geogrid Rank Trackers Effectively

Once you determine you are filtered, you need to identify who specifically is filtering you. Once you figure that out, your job is to figure out why Google is choosing them over you. Some things you will want to look at:

1. 1. 1. Which categories are they using? Are you missing any that they are using?
      2. Who has more reviews?
      3. Which business is closer to that scan point on the geo-grid?
      4. What does their GBP landing page look like? Is it better than yours?

Honorable Mentions

Here are a few more things that I typically check when assessing a ranking drop.

1. 1. 1. Did the primary GBP category get changed? If so, you need to figure out why it was changed
      2. Did someone change the URL that you link to from the GBP? This can have a dramatic impact on ranking.
      3. Did someone edit your business name?
      4. Did your map pin move? If so, move your map pin back to the correct address.

What do you do when you experience a ranking drop? What are the first things you look at to diagnose the drop?

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