SERPs showing Knowledge Panel instead of Local box

[leadjoint]

I'm helping a friend out with his local business. He has a very healthy GMB profile - good number of reviews, nicely mapped location, constantly updated GMB profile, etc. Ideally, he should be ranking at least in the top 2-3 in the local box.

The only problem is that for his search term (say, "widget providers in London"), the SERPs show a knowlege graph of the top company on the right sidebar instead of the usual onebox. We have tried using the feedback option to tell Google that this is a local search and as such a onebox should appear, but that has not changed anything.

I have tried searching for this keyword for multiple locations across the world, and notice that this issue appears on several locations (and not on others as well).

Any idea how to fix this?

 

[JoyHawkins]

This normally happens when:

1. It's a niche term (ex: truck accident lawyer) that doesn't have massive search volume
2. The business that gets the one-box has a very keyword-rich business name and/or website content

In any of these cases I've run across, I haven't found any way to break the one box if you're trying to stay within Google's guidelines.