Does a location name included in the domain have an influence on a "near me" search?

[Cagro]

I am curious to learn if taking out a domain name that includes a "service" and "city" name would be a positive ranking factor when someone searches for the service from the city they search from using the term "near me"?

Scenario:
User searches from desktop or mobile: Wedding venues near me
User location: Coral Gables
Domain: weddingvenuesnearcoralgables_com

 

[Tim Kahlert]

Hi Cagro!

It's hard to say whether this, as an individual factor, has an impact or not. However, what does have an impact though is when the content of the particular page contains the location name. (i.e. title tag, headlines, image alt texts etc.) If someone close to Coral Gables searches for Wedding venues near me, your page would be a possible search result. However², you would need a Google My Business connection to be able to rank in local search for that particular term. (organically as well as 3-pack and maps)

A whole different scenario would be if the search term includes "Coral Gables" as then the Google My Business connection wouldn't be 100% necessary to rank for the term because you can look that up from overseas or somewhere else and you don't have to be located anywhere close to the desired location. I hope that makes sense.

 

[NexstarNickR]

Tl;dr: not directly, yes indirectly.

I know I am late to this, but I still wanted to chime in. Moz recently posted that domain name does not effect seo rankings:

"Are domain names important to SEO?
Broadly speaking, while your domain name itself isn't considered to be a direct Google ranking factor, elements of your domain name may play into your overall SEO success. These include elements such as memorability, length, keyword usage, brand-ability, and more."
Source: Domain Names — SEO Best Practices [2021]

So no, having the name of the city in the domain doesn't mean that it would have any impact on results, or "near me" searches by itself. It would have to come with other optimizations as well, or you would have to get more traffic because users trust it more because the URL is local, which would in turn improve the SEO.