Does Google Use A SAB's Mobile Phone Location/s As A Signal?

[painperdu]

Does Google use a local service area business's mobile phone location/s as it would a stationary business's address?

I have a lawn care client who's leads come from areas he's actually visited very recently. He uses a Google voice number with mobile tracking and Google timeline functions turned on. Leads will come from locations often only a few doors away from the job he just left.

 

[djbaxter]

Word of mouth is powerful advertising.

Does your client have signage on his vehicles and equipment?

Especially in the lawn care / snow clearance niche, it's not at all uncommon for neighbors to see the quality of the work being done and call that company - or ask the neighbor using the company who they contract with.

 

[painperdu]

No signage. I'm becoming convinced that Google uses mobile phone coordinates of local service businesses as it would an address when it can.

 

[Rich Owings]

Fascinating hypothesis!

 

[Tony Wang]

Get your client to ask some of those clients how they found him, that would tell you a lot. Also, do a search simulating some of those locations and see if he turns up.

But kinda hard to believe he would show up in the local pack temporarily, based on him being in the location recently.

 

[Steven12]

It's not hard to believe. Google Ads works like that. When you have a perimeter set up around a certain area, they now show your ads to people who have recently been in your perimeter even though they don't live there.

 

[Tony Wang]

Hmm, are you sure they show ads if you've recently been the ad radius? I thought they show ads if you are in the radius, which is based on real-time. If I've been driving around town doing various things and now I want to find a sushi bar, why would they show me ads for places I've been rather than where I am?

In any case, ads are very different from organic search. Not sure how it would be better results by serving a dynamic local pack based on where the provider was recently.

Perhaps it could be a useful signal if the provider spent a lot of time in a certain neighborhood, showing local relevance, but I think it would be much more meaningful if the recency were over the past few months, say, than where he was in the past hour.

Not to mention it would only work if provider is answering his own phone, which makes him a pretty small provider and eliminates other providers from using this signal. AND if he's using Google voice.

 

[Steven12]

It didn't use to be like that, but exact match use to be "Exact" too. Local is totally different I agree. I just thought I would throw that out there because it's true.