What is geotagging on Google Business Profile?
Geo-tagging Google Business Profile photos means adding geographical information to uploaded media in general and images on GBP in particular. This usually happens by assigning geo-coordinates (latitude and longitude) and geo-related keywords to images’ metadata.Â
Â
The goal of geo-tagging is to make a photo more relevant for a geographical-related search. This can be either a specific location-dependent search query or refers to the location of a searcher.Â
Â
Sometimes people refer to geo-tagging as the whole optimization process of image data even when it doesn’t have anything to do with a particular geographic area. The geographic data helps with optimization, so that certain keywords in images can also be helpful and increase relevance.
How does geotagging work?
Geotagging images and manipulating Exif data are proven tactics to increase website visibility.
Â
However, the effect is very small and you wouldn’t even notice a difference between normal and competitive markets. Only areas with very little or no competition offer good opportunities to rank using only geotagged images.
Â
If you look at it from a search algorithm perspective, you will realize that it indeed makes sense to use this information in the ranking evaluation process.
Â
Image metadata gives Google a better understanding of where and when the picture/image was taken/created. The problem is that it is relatively easy to manipulate, which in turn is the reason for its limited influence.
Â
To manipulate metadata, you can either edit an image in Photoshop Lightroom, use a geotagging tool, or open the image settings on your computer and change the data manually.Â
How does geotagging Google Business Profile photos affect local rankings?
One of the biggest local ranking factors is relevance. The more relevant your business listing is to a specific search query the better your rankings. In order to increase relevance we need to feed Google with relevant information.
Â
To find an answer to that question, I ran a more aggressive GBP posting strategy, which included uploading and posting images via GBP blog post feature.
Â
When I tested this for the first time, I was told that the effect would only be visible if you upload the Google post images through an interface (API) and not directly in Google Business Profile. That’s why I signed up with a third-party GBP posting app that connects Google Business Profile via API.
Â
The idea is that Google would use the information inside images (through API) and doesn’t strip it off as it normally does with uploaded images. There is no evidence that that would actually work but due to the fact that so many people are convinced of this tactic I thought I give it a try and test it.Â
Geotagging on Google Business Profile - An Experiment
I’ve published 18 posts with one image each over the course of one month. I used Brightlocal’s rank tracking app* and created a new campaign based on the location I want to check the rankings for.
The place I chose is not very close to the company’s actual location so that it can hardly be influenced by external factors. However, it´s still close enough to influence this area’s rankings. I can’t say where it is because I don’t want to influence anything falsely by driving irrelevant traffic to the listing.Â
I wanted to make sure that I affected the rankings in that area only by adding geo-data inside the uploaded images and isolate other factors. Distance, relevance, and prominence should have had little to no influence on the area’s rankings before I start testing.
Test Criteria
- Area must not be a direct neighborhood.
- A good mix of low and high competitive keywords including a keyword with the area´s name.
- 16 Keywords tracked
- Duration: 1 month
- Number of posts: 18
- Geo-tagging trough third party API
Since testing only one keyword wouldn’t be very reliable, I’ve tried 16 different keywords, including five that contain the town’s name.
The Geo-Tagging Case Study
The first five keywords face very high competition and couldn’t make it to the top 50 during the time of the test. I waived to add screenshots for the other four.
From #51+ to #51+
The following five keywords define the primary category of the business, which is a truck repair shop. During the time of the test, local rankings increased in all surrounding ranking areas for those keywords, not only in the area that I used for this test.Â
From #10 to #7
From #7 to #6
From #38 to #37
From #6 to #4
From #3 to #3
The following three graphs show low competition keywords. The city keyword dropped off the top 50 rankings after a couple of days.Â
From #9 to #17
From #11 to #51+
From #8 to #8
Another 3 low competition keywords. The city keyword dropped as well. Not much fluctuation on the other two.Â
From #4 to #4
From #21 to #51+
From #2 to #2
Conclusion
- 3 keywords improved
- 4 keywords dropped
- 9 keywords didn't fluctuate
- 2 keywords dropped to 51+
- 9 keywords didn't change
When we look at this test, there is a high chance that geo-tagging images on Google Business Profile is just a myth and that this tactic currently has no effect on the local rankings.Â
Â
The fluctuations are very random and it is impossible to discern a pattern. The only noticeable thing is the drop off of the two city-related keywords. Though I don’t think this had anything to do with the image uploads.
Google updates its algorithm every day and competitors don’t sleep either, which is why there will always be fluctuations that you cannot control yourself.Â
Â
The results of this test are not really surprising when you consider that even keywords in file names have no influence on the local Google rankings.Â
Â
If you liked the test please leave me a comment below and share the post with your friends. Thank you!
Great content!
Thank you, Rodrigo!
So keywords aren’t important at all? Or they still are important in posts and simply don’t affect rank?
Hi Jerry, yeah keywords don’t affect rank directly when used in posts. They could have an effect on click-through rates though. You may want to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSHacSR5jA0
Thanks for sharing this informative Content. My question is “when an image is geo-tagged and we use this image for creating off-page links like business listing, and image sharing on different platforms? Does it impact ranking?”
Thank you
Hi Steve! I don’t think geotagging should be a priority at all. The exif data has an effect on organic rankings but it doesn’t impact rank significantly enough to worry about it.
Thank you for this case study. We’ve been geotagging for a year and can finally eliminate this from our strategy. Can’t say we’ve seen results either.
Thanks for the comment. I agree 100%!
Thanks. We won’t be wasting our time doing this any longer.
Thank you! Great idea!
We did this for a painting contractor on the advice of a Google advisor. Our results were devastating. We did not use a 3rd party. We used GBP Post. About 15 photos added keywords and cities. All GBP keywords in areas dropped beyond contention to nowhere. We think Google considered these as keyword stuffing and penalized us rather than reward