Do geotagging photos with longitude and latitude actually help my Local SEO?

[localseoteam]

Curious to hear from industry experts whether or not they've seen a lift in traffic/leads from geo-tagging photos on our website with longitude & latitude. And is there a way to do this on GBP as well?

 

[fisicx]

Don't bother. It can easily be faked so Google will just ignore. There is some miniscule benefit in making sure the exif data is correct but it's probably not worth the effort.

A quick google will return any number of apps and website you can use to fake the location.

 

[searchscope]

Total pain to do and does not help at all. Better ROI oriented tasks to do I reckon to boost local performance.

 

[M Zeeshan]

There seems to be some contradiction around this some say geo-tagging helps improve rankings for “near me” keywords, while others claim it has no impact.
Experts, what’s your opinion on this?

Personally, I believe it does play an important role, especially in enhancing local relevance. If its done properly.

 

[fisicx]

Experts, what’s your opinion on this?

It does nothing.

Do you have a link to an article where someone has shown it adds value?

 

[JS Girard]

There seems to be some contradiction around this some say geo-tagging helps improve rankings for “near me” keywords, while others claim it has no impact.
Experts, what’s your opinion on this?

Personally, I believe it does play an important role, especially in enhancing local relevance. If its done properly.

As far as I'm aware, there never existed any published results that showed clear differences before and after using geolocalized photos.

Also, all metadata are stripped by google on upload, so that they could influence anything is even more speculative.

 

[Joe Burnich]

We used to geotag photos for all our clients and never saw any measurable ranking results.

 

[CoreyB]

Typically taking the photos with an iPhone is my recommendation. I've only heard good things about this, especially from some service clients. The business owner has to be on it though, and just take pictures of jobs completed in those areas.

It makes sense why it would work, and aligns with the policies for posting to Google business profiles.

 

[fisicx]

Typically taking the photos with an iPhone is my recommendation. I've only heard good things about this, especially from some service clients. The business owner has to be on it though, and just take pictures of jobs completed in those areas.

It makes sense why it would work, and aligns with the policies for posting to Google business profiles.

But...

You can change the location in seconds using an iPhone. And because of this geolocation is meaningless.

 

[CoreyB]

But...

You can change the location in seconds using an iPhone. And because of this geolocation is meaningless.

You can change your IP, user signature, and lots of things. Doesn't mean it's meaningless and that Google doesn't use it. I'm sure you still use Google Analytics and Search Console even though most of the impressions used to be bots and spoofed IPs.

They're computer scientists and data scientists at Google... of course they use the data for local map stuff and data is very rarely perfect. I'm sure the rate of real geo locations on photos is much higher than the rate of bot clicks and search interaction.

It used to have a higher weight on it before people started exploiting it. It still helps though and is in Google's own guidelines to recommend taking the photos yourself.

I'm not jumping to conclusions here or saying any of this is true. It's just general consensus in the SEO circles I'm in.. and basically within the Google guidelines to take real pictures and not use stock or designed things.

Talking about the locations in each too makes a lot of sense, it'll help you rank locally because then that's understood to be your service area.