Local business results from wrong country

[MOH]

Here's an odd glitch:
search for driving lessons sutton (broad match)

All the organic results are correctly from Sutton, Dublin - except all the Local Business results are for Sutton, Greater London, UK.

Even weirder - restrict it to 'pages from Ireland' - makes no difference, still includes the UK local business results.

 

[alastair_scs]

Hi MOH

Interesting find. Google seems to do it's consideration of searcher intent separately for the main search and verticals. I haven't come across an example like yours where they screwed up on location before. They are usually quite good on geo targeting.

Take a look at a search for "franchise" though. The search results almost universally assume that you are looking for a franchised business (which I think is probably correct). The news results (often 2 or so down at the bottom of the page) usually talk about American sports teams or "franchise" players. Two completely different meanings of the word. Sports teams and sports news etc. are almost totally ignored in the main results (as they should be) but totally dominate the news results.

 

[MOH]

By coincidence, I accidentally found out yesterday why this is happening. I was trying to add Sutton as one of a number of service areas for a Google places listing.

Sutton, Dublin doesn't exist in Google's eyes.

It's named on Google Maps, but a search for it there leads you to the London one. Sutton, Ireland leads you to a collection of markers, but I don't think any of them are "official".

So the search is actually returning organic results for the London Sutton, but putting some Irish Sutton sites at the top because we're both in Ireland, without even realising they're targeting somewhere in Ireland. (If that makes sense, it's been a long day and I need sleep)