Google PlaceRank in the wild

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Google has sent QR Code stickers to about 190,000 businesses across the US that have been tagged as a Favorite Place (they have a mobile version of their website). Favorite Places are the mobile equivalent of Place Pages (aka Google Places).

Example of a Favorite Place
Example of a Favorite Place

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuVSpG-ZdkU[/youtube]

Google Video explaining Favorite Places

TechCrunch has quoted Google Earth VP John Hanke, “Google will be adding these businesses incrementally. ‘They are selected based on their PlaceRank,’ says

Example of a Favorite Place sticker

John Hanke, VP of Google Earth, Maps, and Local. PlaceRank is like PageRank for places It tries to figure out how prominent a place is based on factors such as ‘references on the Web, reviews, photos,’ says Hanke, ‘how many people know about it, how long its been around.'”

PlaceRank isn’t new – but I believe this is the first acknowledgment of its use with Google Maps in a local search context. Bill Slawski reported it back in 2007 in this post, which is well worth reading (like the rest of his site). Here is a link to the patent that describes Place Rank (two words) and Interestingness.

Undoubtedly, Local Search SEOs will be excited by a new unit of measure (will we get another green pixel bar? – I think not). I think this is a good move, but are Americans and the West in general ready to use QR Codes?

How to SEO for PlaceRank

The patent offers some clues about the ranking algorithm.

[0047] In an embodiment, this ranking, which can be referred to as place rank, is computed based on the weighted contributions of various non-cartographic meta attributes about a geospatial entity. Rather than directly measuring a characteristic of a physical place, such as its population, these attributes reflect traits of abstractions or representations associated with the geospatial entity. Examples include an attribute of a description of an entity (for instance, the amount of detail in the description of an entity or the number of times a description has been viewed), an attribute of a definition of an entity (e.g. the context or downloads of a definition of an entity, or attributes about the creation of an entity in a public forum), an indicator of the popularity of a geospatial entity (such as the number of views, downloads, or clicks on the entity or a placemark associated with the entity or an attribute based on a ranking or score assigned to an entity), or the relationship of an entity to its context, such as the category to which an entity belongs. Attributes that fit into each of these categories are described in greater detail below:

Here is my summation of the ranking detail in the patent:

  • Longer descriptions are preferred. Very short descriptions might incur a penalty.
  • The author of the Favorite Place content, that is, their authoritativeness can matter, e.g. a trusted provider of data versus a random individual.
  • The context of the Favorite Place mention, e.g. a discussion in the Google Earth community.
  • The number of replies in the above thread.
  • The number of clicks to a linked Favorite Place.
  • The number of views of a Favorite Place.
  • The community stature of the author e.g. number of posts, rank etc (really?)
  • The number of Favorite Places within a collection of Favorite Places, which I believe could be a shopping mall with lots of recommendations. MallRank anyone?
  • Age of the original recommendation.
  • The relative importance of the discussion within a thread – the subsequent posts might contain additional information, or even substantially more information. This score is added to the original post.
  • The relative importance of a sub-forum within a forum, e.g. a post in the What’s New forum might get a lower score than a post in a more “permanent” sub-forum.
  • An externally awarded score to a forum, e.g. a rating value, number of stars, and so on.
  • The density of forums in a geo-spatial context, e.g. the score for a San Francisco restaurant may place more importance on ratings gained from San Francisco-centric sites than from sites in other cities.
  • The click-through rate of an entity, e.g. a Google Group discussion of pizza shops might contain links to various outlets. The CTR data would be available to the algorithm.
  • The enablement rate of entity categories. e.g. On some maps you can choose to display or not display certain markers, e.g. schools, banks, churches, etc. Android GPS devices could be used to collect this information.
  • The estimated score for a web page associated with an entity, such as its PageRank.
  • Some of the above factors could be combined to derive a score for each entity.

So, there are numerous factors in this algorithm that might seem too complicated for an individual SEO to influence, which basically suggests that gaming PlaceRank will be very difficult. 🙂

29 Replies to “Google PlaceRank in the wild”

  1. Pingback: Tweets that mention How to SEO for Google PlaceRank | Net Magellan -- Topsy.com
  2. I am not sure about some of the factors such as the reputation of the member in the community in Google map will place his/her recommendation in top positions. But yes, it will be very difficult to game it with so many diverse factors influencing it. 😉

  3. Pingback: Online Marketing Blog » Blog Archive » 30 Resources on Google, Search & SEO Changes in 2010
  4. I like to read your article. It’s gives me more knowledge about the important matter of SEO Google PlaceRank. Making me aware on this peculiar subject matter is my greatest achievement. This piece of writing serves as an impetus that fosters every reader to act in accordance to what is right. Maybe SEO companies is really great help for those person who work with SEO companies. Specially for those new of these job. Thanks…

  5. thx for sharing,
    Reciprocal Link Checker Link building is very crucial to effective SEO. An easy way of building back links is through reciprocal linking, which is the exchange of links with other webmasters. Not all webmasters you exchange links with will keep your link in their site however, as some of them remove it soon after you exchange links. The more the exchanges you make, the harder it becomes to keep track of the number of reciprocal links you have. This tool enables you to check how many reciprocal links you have and their status with one click.

  6. Thanks Ash, Great info.

    Are you saying that active participation in the Google Earth community could improve your placerank – or was that just an example of one of many forums? Any others that seem important?

    I want to be a favorite place ;^D

  7. No need to overanalyse the local SEO at the moment.
    Do the basics in filling out your listing. Then get as many reviews and user generated refrences as possible. User generated content from panoramio and my maps are key

  8. Pingback: Google PlaceRank y Google Maps | Marketing en Internet
  9. juliemarg,

    Well, the patent certainly uses that example, but it would be an interesting challenge to reverse-engineer some of the featured places to see where else they get anointed. I’d expect the Google Maps newsgroups to be high on that list.

    Google has partnered with a few Yellow Pages sites and judysbook.com (see my earlier post about Reputation Trend) so existing ratings sites would also provide some long-term reputation insights.

    Ash

  10. Ash,

    This is great stuff! Thanks for sharing. The way your broke down the patent into a comprehensive bulleted list sure did make sense of it. Great translation! The algorithm used is very interesting to me. BTW, love the comment to the spambot. 🙂 I get so tired of all the comments I have to remove. Keep up the outstanding work.

    Brian

  11. Pingback: 30 Resources on Google, Search & SEO Changes in 2010 | Dawson Barber | Internet Marketing Solutions
  12. Many thanks. The Google Earth community was of most interest to me and something that I have never thought about.

  13. Having your business listed as a Favorite Place on Google is beneficial to both consumers and businesses. It brings online traffic offline. Plus, it is a high badge of honor that can turn your business into a success, increasing your clientele and revenue.

Mastodon