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I think it is important that when analyzing Google Maps results we understand that there are two sets of rules.
1- the algorithms that are used inside of the Maps product
2-The local onebox results that show up in the SERP
The algorithms that are used inside of the Maps product seem to be fairly stable. Of necessity they use multiple factors in their ranking:
City of Business
Verified Entry (by whatever source not qt of sources)
Authoritative Page Page Rank
Number of Web Links and Page Rank of those link
Number of Reviews (not quality)
The reason that they use all of these is that in any given industry/market they may not have one or the other of these attributes.
In the onebox results, that is in flux but there appears to be currently only 2 algos...one, that emulates the Maps order and another that seems to use quality & relevance instead.
I think if you look that the data that I started developing here: http://blumenthals.com/blog/?p=63
and then match that up against Bill's patent summary here: http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=294
you will get a pretty good picture of how Google Maps is working.
Mike Blumenthal
Last edited by mblumenthal; 02-14-2007 at 05:50 PM.
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