Editing Service Areas

[Yourname]

All things equal, if New York City is removed from "Service Areas" in GMB, will a previously 3 pack ranking business in NYC now no longer show to searchers in NYC?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Nope. Does the Service Area in Google My Business Impact Ranking? - Sterling Sky Inc

 

[Yourname]

Thanks Colan. Very helpful article as well. The conundrum is this. Since you're in Toronto, I can use the actual city names.

The business address is in Burlington. They sometimes show in Oakville's 3pack as well as Milton's 3pack. The leads coming in from Milton have been extremely bad, costing a lot (in sales person's time on phone), etc. They are fine with ranking in Burlington and Oakville, but would prefer not to rank in Milton.

 

[Yourname]

I guess what I'm trying to figure out is how to not rank in GMB in a specific city @Colan Nielsen

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Have you removed any instance of those cities from the website?

 

[Yourname]

Not yet, the website often mentions "Halton Region" and not the cities by name. There may be some mentions spread out, but sparse. Do you recommend removing those names @Colan Nielsen ?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

That's a tricky one because all three of those cities fall under Halton Region, so I wouldn't want to de-optimize for Halton Region as it's a good local signal for Google.

I'd do a site: search for the website + Milton plus scan the web for any mentions as well. Either way, might be tricky since they all fall under Halton Region and Milton is smaller so it's easier to rank there even if not physically located there.

 

[Yourname]

Makes a lot of sense @Colan Nielsen thanks. Yes, removed all instances of Milton a couple months ago from service pages. But some blog posts mention it. Remove from blog posts too?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I would, if the goal is to stop showing up in Milton.