Local SEO
Darren Shaw on Why Citation Consistency Stopped Mattering in 2018 | Local Marketing Secrets with Dan Leibrandt
Aug 19, 2024
I had Darren Shaw on the podcast, and this conversation was absolutely incredible. Darren is arguably the number one guy in local SEO. Everyone references him. He's the goat of local SEO. He runs Whitespark, which is a company that helps with local SEO software and services. He's been running that since 2005, almost 20 years. He's been in local SEO for over 16 years and in SEO for almost 30 years.
He also runs the Local Search Ranking Factors blog, and he's been doing that for six years now. This is a huge honor. It got passed over by David Mihm, and everyone basically refers to this thing. I refer to it all the time with clients. It's basically a consensus of the top 30 to 50 local SEO experts to decide on what the local ranking factors are.
We talked about everything from why citation consistency stopped being important in 2018, to why you should treat Google Posts like ads instead of social media posts, to how competitors are dragging map pins into lakes to tank your rankings. If you're running a local business or doing local SEO, this episode is packed with insights you absolutely need to know.
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From Web Development to Local SEO
I asked Darren to jump to the very beginning of SEO. I think he said he was helping his sister with a website in the late 90s. What was going on there?
He went through computer science in university. He actually failed a lot of courses because he was busy in the lab building websites with HTML and JavaScript. He was just obsessed with web development. That's actually how he got started into SEO.
He started making websites in the late 90s and built a website for his sister's company. She had an educational teaching supply store where she would sell teaching supplies to teachers. They built an e-commerce website, and then Darren was like, oh, how do I get this ranking in AltaVista, which was the hot search engine at the time?
He started researching that, and then when Google came out, he was working on that a little bit. But this was a side hobby at the time. It wasn't his dedicated job.
In 2005, he went full-time with Whitespark. He created the brand, created his first website, Whitespark.ca, and started doing web development for local businesses. That's sort of where Whitespark got started.
The First Few Years of Whitespark
The first few years, years one and two, it was just Darren, freelance web developer, making websites for local businesses, trying to pay the bills, chasing people to pay their invoices.
He did that from 2005, 2006, into 2007. By 2007, he had enough client base to hire somebody, so he hired his first co-developer. They were both building websites.
By the time they reached 2009, they had grown to a team of four, all really web development. In 2010, they launched their first SaaS software for local SEO.
2008 is when a lot of his web development clients were saying, hey, how do I get ranked in Google? There's this new local pack thing. How do I get in there? How do I rank my website?
So then he started offering SEO as a service. He's like, I don't know, but fake it till you make it. He started researching, figuring out how all this worked, giving people a retainer, and they were paying him for it.
He started doing SEO and optimizing their websites and getting results. It was kind of a golden era of SEO. It was much easier then because the competition was so much less. He'd pull a few levers, get them ranking, they would happily continue paying him.
He really started to fall in love with SEO then.
The Citation Finder That Got David Mihm's Attention
In 2010, they launched their local citation finder software. Darren had read a cool blog post and was like, I bet we can automate that process. They built a real basic version of the software and gave it out for free.
The first version was this free little thing, and that triggered David Mihm's attention. David was like, oh, this is really cool. Darren got on a call with David Mihm, and he was like, oh my God, I'm talking to David Mihm. It was really exciting.
That brought him into the local search community. He got to know people. Over the course of the next two years, they totally dumped web development. They stopped making websites for clients and focused completely on SEO services.
He met Yaz Laabzov, they launched their listing service, and they just turned into a local SEO company. Since then, they've continued to add local rank tracking software, software for managing reviews, excellent Google Business Profile management software, the listing service, and a full SEO agency service.
That's how they got to where they are today.
The Biggest Citation Shift: Consistency Stopped Mattering
I asked Darren how citations have changed and particularly his service back then versus now, because I'm sure it's changed a lot. Are there different platforms that you need to be on? Are they more or less important?
Definitely. One of the hugest shifts that's happened from the early days to now is that they started with an audit and cleanup service. That was what they provided. You've changed your address, whatever, now you've got an NAP consistency issue. We've got to go out and clean all that, clean up the internet.
That was actually a pretty significant service. A lot of people wanted it because back then, this concept of citation consistency was such a hallmark of local SEO. You still see people talking about it, but today it actually doesn't matter.
"I think it's that I want to communicate that citation consistency stopped being an issue around 2018 even earlier 2015 when Google changed to uh an entity-based Knowledge Graph from a static database of local businesses so when it was a static database you needed to have everything match up now that it's entity-based partial matches are fine," Darren explained.
The actual concept of consistency isn't important for SEO. It's only important now because if someone's looking up your business on an industry-specific site and it has the wrong phone number and they call the wrong phone number, then you don't get that lead. Or they have the wrong address and they go to the wrong place, and that's annoying. So you're only doing that consistency cleanup for humans, not for the algorithm.
That's a huge change that has shifted.
Citations Don't Move the Needle Like They Used To
The other thing that has changed is in the early days of local SEO, citations really were this amazing thing that was a competitive difference maker. You could go and build 200 citations, and you would really shoot up to the top of the rankings. It would have such a huge impact.
These days, it doesn't. There are multiple reasons for that, but the biggest reason is that the directories themselves have less value from Google's perspective, especially some of these more obscure directories. Google's not leaning on them so much for ranking purposes anymore.
But also because they're no longer the competitive difference maker they once were. Almost everybody's got them. If you're in a competitive space, then everybody's done it because it's an easy once-and-done checklist activity. You've got a brand new business, what do you got to do? Well, you've got to start getting reviews, you've got to build out all the citations, you've got to create your Google Business Profile, you've got to optimize it.
It's just one of these things that everybody does. Now because local SEO has been identified as being so valuable for local businesses getting in that local pack, it just doesn't shoot you to the top anymore. It just says, okay, now you are on an even playing field with the rest of these 200 businesses that you're competing with.
That has changed. Darren's approach now is a real simple cleanup on the most important sites in the local search ecosystem. The top 13 kind of sites, including the aggregators and sites like Bing and Apple. You want to be correct on sites where people are going to see you.
Then you're going to build out about the top 50, and then as many industry-specific sites and city-specific sites as you can find. Then check, your citations are done. You don't have to worry about them ever again. If you move, you only have to update the core sites. You don't have to update the whole internet.
How Important Is Bing?
I asked Darren about Bing. I'm actually curious about that. He probably knows better than most people. How important is Bing, and should you be updating your Bing listing as well?
Pretty unimportant because it doesn't get a lot of traffic. It's like, oh, should I go and update my listing on MapQuest? It's almost similar. Bing has a little bit more traffic, but because it's low volume, it's definitely a low priority activity.
But it also is a once-and-done. Just get it done. It's so easy. It can be a competitive difference maker on that site itself if you do take the time. They have a very good Bing Places management tool. They have an excellent Bing Webmaster Tools. Darren thinks it's better than Google Search Console.
Most people sleep on that and never look at it, but it's really great. You get a lot of interesting insights out of the Bing Webmaster Tools. Create your listing, optimize your listing, call it a day.
Taking Over the Local Search Ranking Factors Survey
In 2018, David handed over the Local Search Ranking Factors Survey. I asked Darren what led up to that and how he initially established that relationship with David.
As Darren mentioned, he got to know David quite early. His career really was built on the relationships he was fortunate enough to establish. He had some initial calls with David Mihm. He used to go to MozCon every year, and then David's company Get Listed got bought by Moz, so he was at MozCon.
They would meet up in person there. David was just starting this thing called Local University with him, Mike Blumenthal, and a number of local search people. They were like, hey, you should run an event in Edmonton. It'll be our first international event. Darren's in Canada.
He did it. He put together a Local University, and David, Mike Blumenthal, Matt McGee, Mary Bowling, Aaron Weiche, all came up for this awesome event. Darren got to know everybody personally. He was part of that Local U crew.
When it came time for David, who was getting into a consulting world and didn't have time for the Local Search Ranking Factors, it's a big job, it's a huge undertaking to go and do it. David put out a message to various local search people that were actively highly engaged in the local SEO community.
Darren was the only one that put up his hand. He was like, I would love to take over the Local Search Ranking Factors. Everyone got behind him and said, yep, Darren, do it. It's great.
He said yeah, he's going to take it over. He built a new survey, updated it. He's gotten pretty nice accolades from David every year when he publishes it. David's pleased that he thinks he's put it in good hands.
Darren's always trying to meet David's approval. He feels like it's a sacred piece of content in the local search community, so he tries to do his best with it.
What It Takes to Put Together the Survey
I asked Darren to tell me about what it takes to put it together. He told me it takes like months and months, and you have to get all these people and all of their opinions on different things.
Every year, the pre-work is reviewing all the questions. Are there new questions? Are there new factors? This year coming up, he's going to be working on it in early fall, kind of preparing the new survey, and then it goes out to contributors.
Preparing the new survey means going through all the questions. Are there new things that are happening in local search? Does he want to now bring in questions related to generative search engine optimization, ranking your business on all the AI engines? He does. So he's going to have to conceptualize some new questions to ask the participants about that.
Any new local search ranking factors? Well, there are. They have services now that wasn't actually in the previous version. They have opening hours, they have menu highlights, they have menu items. These things are new local search ranking factors. They have to get added to the list.
It's really important for Darren in this position to make sure he's highly engaged in the local SEO community and knowing what's happening and being on top of things. When it comes to writing the new survey, he's not missing anything.
What's new? Because he now needs to ask all the participants if they're seeing changes. What is the impact of this? Where would you rank this as a ranking factor in terms of importance?
Services is going to be quite high up there. Different things change. Are we seeing less importance in citations? He's always just trying to finesse it each year and be like, what's been happening over the past year that I definitely want to make sure I'm talking about and asking questions about in the survey?
Then he rebuilds the survey. He has it in Survey Monkey. He makes a clone of it, tweaks it, updates it, adds all his new questions. Then it goes out to the contributors, and the contributors get about two to three weeks to do it.
At the end of the three weeks, then he has to chase at least 10 people. Are you going to submit it? Are you going to submit it? Then he's got to keep giving them a deadline, and then he's got to extend that deadline a few more days because he's like, Mike Blumenthal, please, I really need your responses.
There's a chasing period, and then once he gets all the responses, then it's digesting the information, reviewing it, calculating it, running all the percentages, building the charts, creating the new web page that he publishes it on.
It takes a few weeks of finessing the survey and getting it ready, a month for people to contribute, and then another month for him to process all the information. It's not a solid month of work, but he runs a whole company. He's busy. He's only putting in like a couple hours per week just trying to get this thing done and published.
How Many Ranking Factors Actually Matter?
In the most recent one, which is the 2023 one, for at least the GMB ranking factors and the organic search, which is the website ranking factors, there are 149 different ranking factors for each one. I asked Darren which ones are actually important because I think that geotagging images and maybe some other smaller things are in there. Do we only have to pay attention to the top 30 or top 50 or top 100?
Darren did a really fun video shortly after launching this. He's like, there's like five underrated local ranking factors. He has personal beliefs about this.
First, we should clarify this is not Google telling us what these are. We are guessing. We are based on what we see. We're doing stuff, we're testing things, we're identifying the impact. We're like, wow, I did this thing, it seemed to have a positive impact on ranking.
One person doing that is just one person's opinion. This is where that survey becomes valuable because you aggregate the opinions of notable smart people that are really actively working local SEO, like 40 different people that are the top of their game. Now you get a powerful resource because it's the aggregation of all those ideas and all those opinions.
The factors are speculative. We are speculating on what the factories are. But Darren would say the top 20 for sure.
He was scrolling through, and some of them are kind of questionable. Factor number 23: HTML NAP matching GBP NAP. He's like, really 23? He'd put that lower. But enough people put it higher that it floats to the top of the list because it's important to other people.
He's not the one who has a final say in this. It's the aggregate. But there are some other ones in the 60s that are interesting. Keywords in titles across entire website, that's number 52. That's an important factor, man. You've got to optimize your title tags across your whole website.
He would say you can't just stop somewhere. You kind of have to pick through the whole list and build a checklist, a to-do list, off of the Local Search Ranking Factors.
I told Darren I just think it's so valuable because you watch local SEOs on YouTube or maybe you see them on Twitter or LinkedIn. Everyone is saying kind of the same thing, but it's all variations of the same thing. Some people are saying you have to add geotags or that you have to change your title tags.
Having that landmark to know that this is kind of what everyone's saying, this is what we're pretty sure is right based on a ton of people saying it instead of one person. It's not just the Darren Shaw blog or the David Mihm blog.
"One opinion is just an opinion 50 opinions you might be getting somewhere might you might be you know the the the group think right the hive mind get that together and then then you really have something special where you're like I think I think we're we got something here," Darren said.
The factors that are at the very top, they're at the very top because we see an outsized impact and everybody sees it. You change your primary category to be a better fit for the keyword you want to rank for, and it's like almost overnight. You put keywords in your business name, kaboom, you go from 30 to number two.
He's not the only one seeing this. Everyone sees this. That's why that factor floats to the very top in high importance.
The $1 Per Month Tool That Can Save Your Rankings
I wanted Darren to tell me more about Whitespark. Where has it been at in the past few years now, and what are you doing?
They're up to 40 employees now. The revenue streams are divided up, almost a little heavier on the services side. Listing service and SEO services are driving maybe 60% of the revenue. The other part of the revenue is their software.
They have their rank tracker, which is probably their highest earner on the software side. It's really fantastic local rank tracking software. Obviously, Darren thinks it's the best in the industry because he built it.
They have that local rank tracking software, which is excellent. In production right now is their grid ranking thing like the Local Falcon. That's coming in the next couple months.
They have their local citation finder software, which is useful. It's the original Whitespark software. But as they talked about, citations are less valuable. If you look at the stats, the growth of their other software is always up and to the right, and the growth of local citation finder is like a real slow trickle down in terms of usage.
They have a great reputation software called Reputation Builder that's for managing your reviews, tracking your reviews across all different review platforms, responding to reviews, sending review requests via email, SMS, review reporting. It's really an excellent platform for that.
Then their newest software is what they call Local Platform, and Darren feels like every business in the world and every agency needs to use this software. It's a dollar per month per location. It's so cheap.
What it does is it monitors your Google Business Profile, and anytime something changes on it, it sends you an alert and lets you know, and you can reject that.
That is huge because Google doesn't alert for so many things. One of the things that's been happening lately, and this is actually probably a big deal in pest control, is competitors are dragging the map pin of your business into a lake or 200 miles away or over to another city. Your rankings shift with that map pin.
You used to rank great in the city. Your rankings have fallen off a cliff. Why? Because some jerk took your map pin and dragged it.
Anyone can do it. You go to Google Maps and you say suggest an edit, and then you move the map pin. Google in all their wisdom is like, oh, somebody on the internet said that this business is actually now in the middle of this lake, so I guess we trust them.
Google accepts all these edits, and it has a very negative impact. You need a system that will alert you when anything changes on your profile so that you can deal with it. Otherwise, people can go months and not even know that their rankings have fallen off a cliff because somebody messed with their profile.
They have this great software. It'll also tell you when Google adds categories to your profile, updates your services. Google's making changes to your profile all the time.
The changes are not like Google makes them and says, hey, business owner, do you want this change, yes or no? Google has already done it and then just alerts you and is like, we did it, and you can reject it if you want. But the changes are live immediately as soon as Google makes a change.
Google can change your primary category. They talked about that as a huge local ranking factor. Your primary category might be pest control company, but for some reason, Google decided to change it to service business. Now your rankings have plummeted.
That stuff is happening all the time. Their system will alert you. It's only a dollar per month per location, and it keeps getting better. They keep adding stuff to it. It's awesome, and it keeps your Google Business Profile safe.
Why Google Posts Aren't Social Media Posts
I asked Darren what are the things that people need to be doing on a recurring basis for their Google Business Profile?
"Weekly Google posts please please please please and let me just tell you do not treat your Google posts like social media posts it's a very different thing so this is a mistake that most people use like oh well we're already posting once a week to our Instagram so we'll just take that post and put it on Google post no don't do that," Darren said.
The reason is you have very different audiences on the two different platforms. If someone is seeing your content on Instagram, they are your customer already. They're your follower. They have gone to the trouble of saying I like this company, I want to follow it.
Everyone looking at your Google Post on your Google Business Profile has no idea who you are. They don't follow you. They are new prospects, new potential customers.
Every Google Post shouldn't be, hey, yeah, look, our company did a holiday party and here's some pictures from it. That's a waste on your Google Business Profile.
Your Google Business Profile posts should be sales. They should be focusing on why someone should hire you. What is special you have running right now? What are some testimonials? What are some case studies? What are some before and afters?
Getting those things on your Google Business Profile post, so every post should be used to either directly sell or convince a person that you are the company to hire. You're running all of your posts almost like ads. Every Google Post should be like an ad.
Weekly Google Posts is an ongoing task that every business should be doing.
Review management: responding to your reviews as they come in.
At least monthly overview of the profile. Looking at the services, looking at the categories. Google adds new categories every single month.
Darren just got a post about it. They shared this on their channel just today. New Google categories added this month: physical rehabilitation center, psychosocial therapist, rental car return location, wire and cable supplier.
What does this mean? If Google makes a brand new category, almost nobody is using it. Let's say you were a physical therapist. You add as an additional category physical rehabilitation center, which is a category that just came out. Now you are going to absolutely increase your rankings for that specific term while your competition has no idea that even happened.
It's good to know what's happening. New categories are coming out. New services that Google has added. Regularly updating your services section.
They like to drip feed photos up to the profile. They want new photos every week. Photos directly impact rankings, but they also really have an impact on conversions.
They like to optimize their photos with text on the photo. They know that Google reads that text. They also know that humans read that text, and that can really help be compelling. It makes your photo stand out from the competition.
Videos are really powerful when you can get them from clients. Obviously, it's hard to get videos from clients, but they will make their own videos for clients in Canva. They'll go in and make a photo slideshow with words. They'll take content they've been using for Google Posts and from the Q&A section.
Sometimes you'll make a video based on a Q&A. You just get some nice photos to put in the background, and you answer the question in a video.
The reason why videos are so powerful is because they autoplay. If you're scrolling Google Maps, then videos autoplay. It's very similar to having a website. Your Google Business Profile is a website. It's on Google.
You could have a website and create it and never touch it, but it is smart to continually update it because Google likes fresh content. The same thing's happening in your Google Business Profile. You're constantly updating it with fresh content.
It can be such a powerful rankings mover because of the engagement that you're getting. You're showing Google that you are an active business owner managing the profile. You're regularly adding stuff. But then all the new content you're adding is also getting engagement from customers, and that is a huge signal that really helps things.
My Main Takeaway
The biggest thing I learned from Darren is that citation consistency stopped mattering in 2018 when Google changed from a static database to an entity-based knowledge graph. For years, everyone was obsessed with making sure every single citation had matching NAP information down to the period and comma. Now? Partial matches are fine. Google's smart enough to figure it out. You're only doing consistency cleanup for humans who might call the wrong number or go to the wrong address, not for the algorithm. This completely changes the citation game. Focus on the top 13 sites including aggregators, build out the top 50, get industry-specific and city-specific citations, and you're done. Don't waste time and money on citation audits and cleanup like it's 2015.
The second takeaway is that Google Posts are not social media posts, and treating them the same is a massive mistake. Your Instagram followers already like you. They're your customers. People looking at your Google Posts have no idea who you are. They're new prospects. So stop posting about your company holiday party or team-building events. Every Google Post should be sales-focused like an ad. Why should someone hire you? What's special about you right now? What are some testimonials or case studies or before-and-afters? That's what converts strangers into customers. Weekly Google Posts treated like ads, not like social media fluff, is one of the most underrated ranking and conversion factors.
The third insight is that competitors are actively sabotaging your Google Business Profile, and most business owners have no idea it's happening. Darren told me about competitors dragging map pins into lakes or 200 miles away, changing business names to remove keywords, marking businesses as closed, and Google just accepts these edits from random people on the internet. Your rankings can fall off a cliff, and you won't even know for months. That's why Whitespark's Local Platform for a dollar per month per location is such a game-changer. It monitors your profile and alerts you to any changes so you can reject them immediately. Without this kind of monitoring, you're vulnerable to attacks you don't even know are happening.
The fourth thing that struck me is the power of aggregating opinions from 40+ top local SEO experts instead of relying on one person's opinion. The Local Search Ranking Factors Survey isn't Google telling us the factors. It's speculation based on what smart people are testing and seeing work. But one person's opinion is just an opinion. Fifty opinions? Now you might be getting somewhere. The hive mind, the group think, that's where you really have something special. The factors at the very top like primary category and keywords in business name aren't there because Darren thinks they matter. They're there because everybody sees the outsized impact. You change your primary category, and boom, almost overnight you rank higher. That consensus is incredibly valuable.
The fifth lesson is about the evolution of local search beyond just Google. For the last decade, we've all been laser-focused on Google. Bing? Yeah, whatever. It doesn't get any search volume, so who cares? But Darren sees an evolution over the coming years where search is happening everywhere: TikTok, YouTube, ChatGPT, Perplexity. Being a little bit more aware of all the places you want your business to show up, then focusing on those things, actually looking at them, reporting on them, thinking about them, optimizing for them, changing your strategies per platform. It actually makes SEO a lot more complicated because now you're optimizing for seven different surfaces rather than just one. But that is the future of SEO. Social media optimization, video production, helping your clients become TikTok stars. That's the work we're getting into because that's how business discovery is shifting.
If you want to learn more from Darren, check out Whitespark.ca for their software and services. Sign up for their free Local SEO email course under the Resources section. There's a beginner stream with 20 emails, one per day, and an advanced stream with 20 emails, one per day. Darren put together this labor of love, and people are saying it's the greatest course they've ever taken. It's free. You can find Darren on LinkedIn primarily, then YouTube, then TikTok. He's all over the socials. The 2025 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey will be published in early January, so stay tuned for that. Darren's journey from failing university courses because he was too busy building websites to running a 40-person company and being the figurehead of local SEO is proof that obsession and relationship-building can take you to the absolute top of your industry.
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Darren Shaw on Why Citation Consistency Stopped Mattering in 2018 | Local Marketing Secrets with Dan Leibrandt
I had Darren Shaw on the podcast, and this conversation was absolutely incredible. Darren is arguably the number one guy in local SEO. Everyone references him. He's the goat of local SEO. He runs Whitespark, which is a company that helps with local SEO software and services. He's been running that since 2005, almost 20 years. He's been in local SEO for over 16 years and in SEO for almost 30 years.
He also runs the Local Search Ranking Factors blog, and he's been doing that for six years now. This is a huge honor. It got passed over by David Mihm, and everyone basically refers to this thing. I refer to it all the time with clients. It's basically a consensus of the top 30 to 50 local SEO experts to decide on what the local ranking factors are.
We talked about everything from why citation consistency stopped being important in 2018, to why you should treat Google Posts like ads instead of social media posts, to how competitors are dragging map pins into lakes to tank your rankings. If you're running a local business or doing local SEO, this episode is packed with insights you absolutely need to know.
/ / / / / / / /
From Web Development to Local SEO
I asked Darren to jump to the very beginning of SEO. I think he said he was helping his sister with a website in the late 90s. What was going on there?
He went through computer science in university. He actually failed a lot of courses because he was busy in the lab building websites with HTML and JavaScript. He was just obsessed with web development. That's actually how he got started into SEO.
He started making websites in the late 90s and built a website for his sister's company. She had an educational teaching supply store where she would sell teaching supplies to teachers. They built an e-commerce website, and then Darren was like, oh, how do I get this ranking in AltaVista, which was the hot search engine at the time?
He started researching that, and then when Google came out, he was working on that a little bit. But this was a side hobby at the time. It wasn't his dedicated job.
In 2005, he went full-time with Whitespark. He created the brand, created his first website, Whitespark.ca, and started doing web development for local businesses. That's sort of where Whitespark got started.
The First Few Years of Whitespark
The first few years, years one and two, it was just Darren, freelance web developer, making websites for local businesses, trying to pay the bills, chasing people to pay their invoices.
He did that from 2005, 2006, into 2007. By 2007, he had enough client base to hire somebody, so he hired his first co-developer. They were both building websites.
By the time they reached 2009, they had grown to a team of four, all really web development. In 2010, they launched their first SaaS software for local SEO.
2008 is when a lot of his web development clients were saying, hey, how do I get ranked in Google? There's this new local pack thing. How do I get in there? How do I rank my website?
So then he started offering SEO as a service. He's like, I don't know, but fake it till you make it. He started researching, figuring out how all this worked, giving people a retainer, and they were paying him for it.
He started doing SEO and optimizing their websites and getting results. It was kind of a golden era of SEO. It was much easier then because the competition was so much less. He'd pull a few levers, get them ranking, they would happily continue paying him.
He really started to fall in love with SEO then.
The Citation Finder That Got David Mihm's Attention
In 2010, they launched their local citation finder software. Darren had read a cool blog post and was like, I bet we can automate that process. They built a real basic version of the software and gave it out for free.
The first version was this free little thing, and that triggered David Mihm's attention. David was like, oh, this is really cool. Darren got on a call with David Mihm, and he was like, oh my God, I'm talking to David Mihm. It was really exciting.
That brought him into the local search community. He got to know people. Over the course of the next two years, they totally dumped web development. They stopped making websites for clients and focused completely on SEO services.
He met Yaz Laabzov, they launched their listing service, and they just turned into a local SEO company. Since then, they've continued to add local rank tracking software, software for managing reviews, excellent Google Business Profile management software, the listing service, and a full SEO agency service.
That's how they got to where they are today.
The Biggest Citation Shift: Consistency Stopped Mattering
I asked Darren how citations have changed and particularly his service back then versus now, because I'm sure it's changed a lot. Are there different platforms that you need to be on? Are they more or less important?
Definitely. One of the hugest shifts that's happened from the early days to now is that they started with an audit and cleanup service. That was what they provided. You've changed your address, whatever, now you've got an NAP consistency issue. We've got to go out and clean all that, clean up the internet.
That was actually a pretty significant service. A lot of people wanted it because back then, this concept of citation consistency was such a hallmark of local SEO. You still see people talking about it, but today it actually doesn't matter.
"I think it's that I want to communicate that citation consistency stopped being an issue around 2018 even earlier 2015 when Google changed to uh an entity-based Knowledge Graph from a static database of local businesses so when it was a static database you needed to have everything match up now that it's entity-based partial matches are fine," Darren explained.
The actual concept of consistency isn't important for SEO. It's only important now because if someone's looking up your business on an industry-specific site and it has the wrong phone number and they call the wrong phone number, then you don't get that lead. Or they have the wrong address and they go to the wrong place, and that's annoying. So you're only doing that consistency cleanup for humans, not for the algorithm.
That's a huge change that has shifted.
Citations Don't Move the Needle Like They Used To
The other thing that has changed is in the early days of local SEO, citations really were this amazing thing that was a competitive difference maker. You could go and build 200 citations, and you would really shoot up to the top of the rankings. It would have such a huge impact.
These days, it doesn't. There are multiple reasons for that, but the biggest reason is that the directories themselves have less value from Google's perspective, especially some of these more obscure directories. Google's not leaning on them so much for ranking purposes anymore.
But also because they're no longer the competitive difference maker they once were. Almost everybody's got them. If you're in a competitive space, then everybody's done it because it's an easy once-and-done checklist activity. You've got a brand new business, what do you got to do? Well, you've got to start getting reviews, you've got to build out all the citations, you've got to create your Google Business Profile, you've got to optimize it.
It's just one of these things that everybody does. Now because local SEO has been identified as being so valuable for local businesses getting in that local pack, it just doesn't shoot you to the top anymore. It just says, okay, now you are on an even playing field with the rest of these 200 businesses that you're competing with.
That has changed. Darren's approach now is a real simple cleanup on the most important sites in the local search ecosystem. The top 13 kind of sites, including the aggregators and sites like Bing and Apple. You want to be correct on sites where people are going to see you.
Then you're going to build out about the top 50, and then as many industry-specific sites and city-specific sites as you can find. Then check, your citations are done. You don't have to worry about them ever again. If you move, you only have to update the core sites. You don't have to update the whole internet.
How Important Is Bing?
I asked Darren about Bing. I'm actually curious about that. He probably knows better than most people. How important is Bing, and should you be updating your Bing listing as well?
Pretty unimportant because it doesn't get a lot of traffic. It's like, oh, should I go and update my listing on MapQuest? It's almost similar. Bing has a little bit more traffic, but because it's low volume, it's definitely a low priority activity.
But it also is a once-and-done. Just get it done. It's so easy. It can be a competitive difference maker on that site itself if you do take the time. They have a very good Bing Places management tool. They have an excellent Bing Webmaster Tools. Darren thinks it's better than Google Search Console.
Most people sleep on that and never look at it, but it's really great. You get a lot of interesting insights out of the Bing Webmaster Tools. Create your listing, optimize your listing, call it a day.
Taking Over the Local Search Ranking Factors Survey
In 2018, David handed over the Local Search Ranking Factors Survey. I asked Darren what led up to that and how he initially established that relationship with David.
As Darren mentioned, he got to know David quite early. His career really was built on the relationships he was fortunate enough to establish. He had some initial calls with David Mihm. He used to go to MozCon every year, and then David's company Get Listed got bought by Moz, so he was at MozCon.
They would meet up in person there. David was just starting this thing called Local University with him, Mike Blumenthal, and a number of local search people. They were like, hey, you should run an event in Edmonton. It'll be our first international event. Darren's in Canada.
He did it. He put together a Local University, and David, Mike Blumenthal, Matt McGee, Mary Bowling, Aaron Weiche, all came up for this awesome event. Darren got to know everybody personally. He was part of that Local U crew.
When it came time for David, who was getting into a consulting world and didn't have time for the Local Search Ranking Factors, it's a big job, it's a huge undertaking to go and do it. David put out a message to various local search people that were actively highly engaged in the local SEO community.
Darren was the only one that put up his hand. He was like, I would love to take over the Local Search Ranking Factors. Everyone got behind him and said, yep, Darren, do it. It's great.
He said yeah, he's going to take it over. He built a new survey, updated it. He's gotten pretty nice accolades from David every year when he publishes it. David's pleased that he thinks he's put it in good hands.
Darren's always trying to meet David's approval. He feels like it's a sacred piece of content in the local search community, so he tries to do his best with it.
What It Takes to Put Together the Survey
I asked Darren to tell me about what it takes to put it together. He told me it takes like months and months, and you have to get all these people and all of their opinions on different things.
Every year, the pre-work is reviewing all the questions. Are there new questions? Are there new factors? This year coming up, he's going to be working on it in early fall, kind of preparing the new survey, and then it goes out to contributors.
Preparing the new survey means going through all the questions. Are there new things that are happening in local search? Does he want to now bring in questions related to generative search engine optimization, ranking your business on all the AI engines? He does. So he's going to have to conceptualize some new questions to ask the participants about that.
Any new local search ranking factors? Well, there are. They have services now that wasn't actually in the previous version. They have opening hours, they have menu highlights, they have menu items. These things are new local search ranking factors. They have to get added to the list.
It's really important for Darren in this position to make sure he's highly engaged in the local SEO community and knowing what's happening and being on top of things. When it comes to writing the new survey, he's not missing anything.
What's new? Because he now needs to ask all the participants if they're seeing changes. What is the impact of this? Where would you rank this as a ranking factor in terms of importance?
Services is going to be quite high up there. Different things change. Are we seeing less importance in citations? He's always just trying to finesse it each year and be like, what's been happening over the past year that I definitely want to make sure I'm talking about and asking questions about in the survey?
Then he rebuilds the survey. He has it in Survey Monkey. He makes a clone of it, tweaks it, updates it, adds all his new questions. Then it goes out to the contributors, and the contributors get about two to three weeks to do it.
At the end of the three weeks, then he has to chase at least 10 people. Are you going to submit it? Are you going to submit it? Then he's got to keep giving them a deadline, and then he's got to extend that deadline a few more days because he's like, Mike Blumenthal, please, I really need your responses.
There's a chasing period, and then once he gets all the responses, then it's digesting the information, reviewing it, calculating it, running all the percentages, building the charts, creating the new web page that he publishes it on.
It takes a few weeks of finessing the survey and getting it ready, a month for people to contribute, and then another month for him to process all the information. It's not a solid month of work, but he runs a whole company. He's busy. He's only putting in like a couple hours per week just trying to get this thing done and published.
How Many Ranking Factors Actually Matter?
In the most recent one, which is the 2023 one, for at least the GMB ranking factors and the organic search, which is the website ranking factors, there are 149 different ranking factors for each one. I asked Darren which ones are actually important because I think that geotagging images and maybe some other smaller things are in there. Do we only have to pay attention to the top 30 or top 50 or top 100?
Darren did a really fun video shortly after launching this. He's like, there's like five underrated local ranking factors. He has personal beliefs about this.
First, we should clarify this is not Google telling us what these are. We are guessing. We are based on what we see. We're doing stuff, we're testing things, we're identifying the impact. We're like, wow, I did this thing, it seemed to have a positive impact on ranking.
One person doing that is just one person's opinion. This is where that survey becomes valuable because you aggregate the opinions of notable smart people that are really actively working local SEO, like 40 different people that are the top of their game. Now you get a powerful resource because it's the aggregation of all those ideas and all those opinions.
The factors are speculative. We are speculating on what the factories are. But Darren would say the top 20 for sure.
He was scrolling through, and some of them are kind of questionable. Factor number 23: HTML NAP matching GBP NAP. He's like, really 23? He'd put that lower. But enough people put it higher that it floats to the top of the list because it's important to other people.
He's not the one who has a final say in this. It's the aggregate. But there are some other ones in the 60s that are interesting. Keywords in titles across entire website, that's number 52. That's an important factor, man. You've got to optimize your title tags across your whole website.
He would say you can't just stop somewhere. You kind of have to pick through the whole list and build a checklist, a to-do list, off of the Local Search Ranking Factors.
I told Darren I just think it's so valuable because you watch local SEOs on YouTube or maybe you see them on Twitter or LinkedIn. Everyone is saying kind of the same thing, but it's all variations of the same thing. Some people are saying you have to add geotags or that you have to change your title tags.
Having that landmark to know that this is kind of what everyone's saying, this is what we're pretty sure is right based on a ton of people saying it instead of one person. It's not just the Darren Shaw blog or the David Mihm blog.
"One opinion is just an opinion 50 opinions you might be getting somewhere might you might be you know the the the group think right the hive mind get that together and then then you really have something special where you're like I think I think we're we got something here," Darren said.
The factors that are at the very top, they're at the very top because we see an outsized impact and everybody sees it. You change your primary category to be a better fit for the keyword you want to rank for, and it's like almost overnight. You put keywords in your business name, kaboom, you go from 30 to number two.
He's not the only one seeing this. Everyone sees this. That's why that factor floats to the very top in high importance.
The $1 Per Month Tool That Can Save Your Rankings
I wanted Darren to tell me more about Whitespark. Where has it been at in the past few years now, and what are you doing?
They're up to 40 employees now. The revenue streams are divided up, almost a little heavier on the services side. Listing service and SEO services are driving maybe 60% of the revenue. The other part of the revenue is their software.
They have their rank tracker, which is probably their highest earner on the software side. It's really fantastic local rank tracking software. Obviously, Darren thinks it's the best in the industry because he built it.
They have that local rank tracking software, which is excellent. In production right now is their grid ranking thing like the Local Falcon. That's coming in the next couple months.
They have their local citation finder software, which is useful. It's the original Whitespark software. But as they talked about, citations are less valuable. If you look at the stats, the growth of their other software is always up and to the right, and the growth of local citation finder is like a real slow trickle down in terms of usage.
They have a great reputation software called Reputation Builder that's for managing your reviews, tracking your reviews across all different review platforms, responding to reviews, sending review requests via email, SMS, review reporting. It's really an excellent platform for that.
Then their newest software is what they call Local Platform, and Darren feels like every business in the world and every agency needs to use this software. It's a dollar per month per location. It's so cheap.
What it does is it monitors your Google Business Profile, and anytime something changes on it, it sends you an alert and lets you know, and you can reject that.
That is huge because Google doesn't alert for so many things. One of the things that's been happening lately, and this is actually probably a big deal in pest control, is competitors are dragging the map pin of your business into a lake or 200 miles away or over to another city. Your rankings shift with that map pin.
You used to rank great in the city. Your rankings have fallen off a cliff. Why? Because some jerk took your map pin and dragged it.
Anyone can do it. You go to Google Maps and you say suggest an edit, and then you move the map pin. Google in all their wisdom is like, oh, somebody on the internet said that this business is actually now in the middle of this lake, so I guess we trust them.
Google accepts all these edits, and it has a very negative impact. You need a system that will alert you when anything changes on your profile so that you can deal with it. Otherwise, people can go months and not even know that their rankings have fallen off a cliff because somebody messed with their profile.
They have this great software. It'll also tell you when Google adds categories to your profile, updates your services. Google's making changes to your profile all the time.
The changes are not like Google makes them and says, hey, business owner, do you want this change, yes or no? Google has already done it and then just alerts you and is like, we did it, and you can reject it if you want. But the changes are live immediately as soon as Google makes a change.
Google can change your primary category. They talked about that as a huge local ranking factor. Your primary category might be pest control company, but for some reason, Google decided to change it to service business. Now your rankings have plummeted.
That stuff is happening all the time. Their system will alert you. It's only a dollar per month per location, and it keeps getting better. They keep adding stuff to it. It's awesome, and it keeps your Google Business Profile safe.
Why Google Posts Aren't Social Media Posts
I asked Darren what are the things that people need to be doing on a recurring basis for their Google Business Profile?
"Weekly Google posts please please please please and let me just tell you do not treat your Google posts like social media posts it's a very different thing so this is a mistake that most people use like oh well we're already posting once a week to our Instagram so we'll just take that post and put it on Google post no don't do that," Darren said.
The reason is you have very different audiences on the two different platforms. If someone is seeing your content on Instagram, they are your customer already. They're your follower. They have gone to the trouble of saying I like this company, I want to follow it.
Everyone looking at your Google Post on your Google Business Profile has no idea who you are. They don't follow you. They are new prospects, new potential customers.
Every Google Post shouldn't be, hey, yeah, look, our company did a holiday party and here's some pictures from it. That's a waste on your Google Business Profile.
Your Google Business Profile posts should be sales. They should be focusing on why someone should hire you. What is special you have running right now? What are some testimonials? What are some case studies? What are some before and afters?
Getting those things on your Google Business Profile post, so every post should be used to either directly sell or convince a person that you are the company to hire. You're running all of your posts almost like ads. Every Google Post should be like an ad.
Weekly Google Posts is an ongoing task that every business should be doing.
Review management: responding to your reviews as they come in.
At least monthly overview of the profile. Looking at the services, looking at the categories. Google adds new categories every single month.
Darren just got a post about it. They shared this on their channel just today. New Google categories added this month: physical rehabilitation center, psychosocial therapist, rental car return location, wire and cable supplier.
What does this mean? If Google makes a brand new category, almost nobody is using it. Let's say you were a physical therapist. You add as an additional category physical rehabilitation center, which is a category that just came out. Now you are going to absolutely increase your rankings for that specific term while your competition has no idea that even happened.
It's good to know what's happening. New categories are coming out. New services that Google has added. Regularly updating your services section.
They like to drip feed photos up to the profile. They want new photos every week. Photos directly impact rankings, but they also really have an impact on conversions.
They like to optimize their photos with text on the photo. They know that Google reads that text. They also know that humans read that text, and that can really help be compelling. It makes your photo stand out from the competition.
Videos are really powerful when you can get them from clients. Obviously, it's hard to get videos from clients, but they will make their own videos for clients in Canva. They'll go in and make a photo slideshow with words. They'll take content they've been using for Google Posts and from the Q&A section.
Sometimes you'll make a video based on a Q&A. You just get some nice photos to put in the background, and you answer the question in a video.
The reason why videos are so powerful is because they autoplay. If you're scrolling Google Maps, then videos autoplay. It's very similar to having a website. Your Google Business Profile is a website. It's on Google.
You could have a website and create it and never touch it, but it is smart to continually update it because Google likes fresh content. The same thing's happening in your Google Business Profile. You're constantly updating it with fresh content.
It can be such a powerful rankings mover because of the engagement that you're getting. You're showing Google that you are an active business owner managing the profile. You're regularly adding stuff. But then all the new content you're adding is also getting engagement from customers, and that is a huge signal that really helps things.
My Main Takeaway
The biggest thing I learned from Darren is that citation consistency stopped mattering in 2018 when Google changed from a static database to an entity-based knowledge graph. For years, everyone was obsessed with making sure every single citation had matching NAP information down to the period and comma. Now? Partial matches are fine. Google's smart enough to figure it out. You're only doing consistency cleanup for humans who might call the wrong number or go to the wrong address, not for the algorithm. This completely changes the citation game. Focus on the top 13 sites including aggregators, build out the top 50, get industry-specific and city-specific citations, and you're done. Don't waste time and money on citation audits and cleanup like it's 2015.
The second takeaway is that Google Posts are not social media posts, and treating them the same is a massive mistake. Your Instagram followers already like you. They're your customers. People looking at your Google Posts have no idea who you are. They're new prospects. So stop posting about your company holiday party or team-building events. Every Google Post should be sales-focused like an ad. Why should someone hire you? What's special about you right now? What are some testimonials or case studies or before-and-afters? That's what converts strangers into customers. Weekly Google Posts treated like ads, not like social media fluff, is one of the most underrated ranking and conversion factors.
The third insight is that competitors are actively sabotaging your Google Business Profile, and most business owners have no idea it's happening. Darren told me about competitors dragging map pins into lakes or 200 miles away, changing business names to remove keywords, marking businesses as closed, and Google just accepts these edits from random people on the internet. Your rankings can fall off a cliff, and you won't even know for months. That's why Whitespark's Local Platform for a dollar per month per location is such a game-changer. It monitors your profile and alerts you to any changes so you can reject them immediately. Without this kind of monitoring, you're vulnerable to attacks you don't even know are happening.
The fourth thing that struck me is the power of aggregating opinions from 40+ top local SEO experts instead of relying on one person's opinion. The Local Search Ranking Factors Survey isn't Google telling us the factors. It's speculation based on what smart people are testing and seeing work. But one person's opinion is just an opinion. Fifty opinions? Now you might be getting somewhere. The hive mind, the group think, that's where you really have something special. The factors at the very top like primary category and keywords in business name aren't there because Darren thinks they matter. They're there because everybody sees the outsized impact. You change your primary category, and boom, almost overnight you rank higher. That consensus is incredibly valuable.
The fifth lesson is about the evolution of local search beyond just Google. For the last decade, we've all been laser-focused on Google. Bing? Yeah, whatever. It doesn't get any search volume, so who cares? But Darren sees an evolution over the coming years where search is happening everywhere: TikTok, YouTube, ChatGPT, Perplexity. Being a little bit more aware of all the places you want your business to show up, then focusing on those things, actually looking at them, reporting on them, thinking about them, optimizing for them, changing your strategies per platform. It actually makes SEO a lot more complicated because now you're optimizing for seven different surfaces rather than just one. But that is the future of SEO. Social media optimization, video production, helping your clients become TikTok stars. That's the work we're getting into because that's how business discovery is shifting.
If you want to learn more from Darren, check out Whitespark.ca for their software and services. Sign up for their free Local SEO email course under the Resources section. There's a beginner stream with 20 emails, one per day, and an advanced stream with 20 emails, one per day. Darren put together this labor of love, and people are saying it's the greatest course they've ever taken. It's free. You can find Darren on LinkedIn primarily, then YouTube, then TikTok. He's all over the socials. The 2025 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey will be published in early January, so stay tuned for that. Darren's journey from failing university courses because he was too busy building websites to running a 40-person company and being the figurehead of local SEO is proof that obsession and relationship-building can take you to the absolute top of your industry.
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Darren Shaw on Why Citation Consistency Stopped Mattering in 2018 | Local Marketing Secrets with Dan Leibrandt
Aug 19, 2024
I had Darren Shaw on the podcast, and this conversation was absolutely incredible. Darren is arguably the number one guy in local SEO. Everyone references him. He's the goat of local SEO. He runs Whitespark, which is a company that helps with local SEO software and services. He's been running that since 2005, almost 20 years. He's been in local SEO for over 16 years and in SEO for almost 30 years.
He also runs the Local Search Ranking Factors blog, and he's been doing that for six years now. This is a huge honor. It got passed over by David Mihm, and everyone basically refers to this thing. I refer to it all the time with clients. It's basically a consensus of the top 30 to 50 local SEO experts to decide on what the local ranking factors are.
We talked about everything from why citation consistency stopped being important in 2018, to why you should treat Google Posts like ads instead of social media posts, to how competitors are dragging map pins into lakes to tank your rankings. If you're running a local business or doing local SEO, this episode is packed with insights you absolutely need to know.
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From Web Development to Local SEO
I asked Darren to jump to the very beginning of SEO. I think he said he was helping his sister with a website in the late 90s. What was going on there?
He went through computer science in university. He actually failed a lot of courses because he was busy in the lab building websites with HTML and JavaScript. He was just obsessed with web development. That's actually how he got started into SEO.
He started making websites in the late 90s and built a website for his sister's company. She had an educational teaching supply store where she would sell teaching supplies to teachers. They built an e-commerce website, and then Darren was like, oh, how do I get this ranking in AltaVista, which was the hot search engine at the time?
He started researching that, and then when Google came out, he was working on that a little bit. But this was a side hobby at the time. It wasn't his dedicated job.
In 2005, he went full-time with Whitespark. He created the brand, created his first website, Whitespark.ca, and started doing web development for local businesses. That's sort of where Whitespark got started.
The First Few Years of Whitespark
The first few years, years one and two, it was just Darren, freelance web developer, making websites for local businesses, trying to pay the bills, chasing people to pay their invoices.
He did that from 2005, 2006, into 2007. By 2007, he had enough client base to hire somebody, so he hired his first co-developer. They were both building websites.
By the time they reached 2009, they had grown to a team of four, all really web development. In 2010, they launched their first SaaS software for local SEO.
2008 is when a lot of his web development clients were saying, hey, how do I get ranked in Google? There's this new local pack thing. How do I get in there? How do I rank my website?
So then he started offering SEO as a service. He's like, I don't know, but fake it till you make it. He started researching, figuring out how all this worked, giving people a retainer, and they were paying him for it.
He started doing SEO and optimizing their websites and getting results. It was kind of a golden era of SEO. It was much easier then because the competition was so much less. He'd pull a few levers, get them ranking, they would happily continue paying him.
He really started to fall in love with SEO then.
The Citation Finder That Got David Mihm's Attention
In 2010, they launched their local citation finder software. Darren had read a cool blog post and was like, I bet we can automate that process. They built a real basic version of the software and gave it out for free.
The first version was this free little thing, and that triggered David Mihm's attention. David was like, oh, this is really cool. Darren got on a call with David Mihm, and he was like, oh my God, I'm talking to David Mihm. It was really exciting.
That brought him into the local search community. He got to know people. Over the course of the next two years, they totally dumped web development. They stopped making websites for clients and focused completely on SEO services.
He met Yaz Laabzov, they launched their listing service, and they just turned into a local SEO company. Since then, they've continued to add local rank tracking software, software for managing reviews, excellent Google Business Profile management software, the listing service, and a full SEO agency service.
That's how they got to where they are today.
The Biggest Citation Shift: Consistency Stopped Mattering
I asked Darren how citations have changed and particularly his service back then versus now, because I'm sure it's changed a lot. Are there different platforms that you need to be on? Are they more or less important?
Definitely. One of the hugest shifts that's happened from the early days to now is that they started with an audit and cleanup service. That was what they provided. You've changed your address, whatever, now you've got an NAP consistency issue. We've got to go out and clean all that, clean up the internet.
That was actually a pretty significant service. A lot of people wanted it because back then, this concept of citation consistency was such a hallmark of local SEO. You still see people talking about it, but today it actually doesn't matter.
"I think it's that I want to communicate that citation consistency stopped being an issue around 2018 even earlier 2015 when Google changed to uh an entity-based Knowledge Graph from a static database of local businesses so when it was a static database you needed to have everything match up now that it's entity-based partial matches are fine," Darren explained.
The actual concept of consistency isn't important for SEO. It's only important now because if someone's looking up your business on an industry-specific site and it has the wrong phone number and they call the wrong phone number, then you don't get that lead. Or they have the wrong address and they go to the wrong place, and that's annoying. So you're only doing that consistency cleanup for humans, not for the algorithm.
That's a huge change that has shifted.
Citations Don't Move the Needle Like They Used To
The other thing that has changed is in the early days of local SEO, citations really were this amazing thing that was a competitive difference maker. You could go and build 200 citations, and you would really shoot up to the top of the rankings. It would have such a huge impact.
These days, it doesn't. There are multiple reasons for that, but the biggest reason is that the directories themselves have less value from Google's perspective, especially some of these more obscure directories. Google's not leaning on them so much for ranking purposes anymore.
But also because they're no longer the competitive difference maker they once were. Almost everybody's got them. If you're in a competitive space, then everybody's done it because it's an easy once-and-done checklist activity. You've got a brand new business, what do you got to do? Well, you've got to start getting reviews, you've got to build out all the citations, you've got to create your Google Business Profile, you've got to optimize it.
It's just one of these things that everybody does. Now because local SEO has been identified as being so valuable for local businesses getting in that local pack, it just doesn't shoot you to the top anymore. It just says, okay, now you are on an even playing field with the rest of these 200 businesses that you're competing with.
That has changed. Darren's approach now is a real simple cleanup on the most important sites in the local search ecosystem. The top 13 kind of sites, including the aggregators and sites like Bing and Apple. You want to be correct on sites where people are going to see you.
Then you're going to build out about the top 50, and then as many industry-specific sites and city-specific sites as you can find. Then check, your citations are done. You don't have to worry about them ever again. If you move, you only have to update the core sites. You don't have to update the whole internet.
How Important Is Bing?
I asked Darren about Bing. I'm actually curious about that. He probably knows better than most people. How important is Bing, and should you be updating your Bing listing as well?
Pretty unimportant because it doesn't get a lot of traffic. It's like, oh, should I go and update my listing on MapQuest? It's almost similar. Bing has a little bit more traffic, but because it's low volume, it's definitely a low priority activity.
But it also is a once-and-done. Just get it done. It's so easy. It can be a competitive difference maker on that site itself if you do take the time. They have a very good Bing Places management tool. They have an excellent Bing Webmaster Tools. Darren thinks it's better than Google Search Console.
Most people sleep on that and never look at it, but it's really great. You get a lot of interesting insights out of the Bing Webmaster Tools. Create your listing, optimize your listing, call it a day.
Taking Over the Local Search Ranking Factors Survey
In 2018, David handed over the Local Search Ranking Factors Survey. I asked Darren what led up to that and how he initially established that relationship with David.
As Darren mentioned, he got to know David quite early. His career really was built on the relationships he was fortunate enough to establish. He had some initial calls with David Mihm. He used to go to MozCon every year, and then David's company Get Listed got bought by Moz, so he was at MozCon.
They would meet up in person there. David was just starting this thing called Local University with him, Mike Blumenthal, and a number of local search people. They were like, hey, you should run an event in Edmonton. It'll be our first international event. Darren's in Canada.
He did it. He put together a Local University, and David, Mike Blumenthal, Matt McGee, Mary Bowling, Aaron Weiche, all came up for this awesome event. Darren got to know everybody personally. He was part of that Local U crew.
When it came time for David, who was getting into a consulting world and didn't have time for the Local Search Ranking Factors, it's a big job, it's a huge undertaking to go and do it. David put out a message to various local search people that were actively highly engaged in the local SEO community.
Darren was the only one that put up his hand. He was like, I would love to take over the Local Search Ranking Factors. Everyone got behind him and said, yep, Darren, do it. It's great.
He said yeah, he's going to take it over. He built a new survey, updated it. He's gotten pretty nice accolades from David every year when he publishes it. David's pleased that he thinks he's put it in good hands.
Darren's always trying to meet David's approval. He feels like it's a sacred piece of content in the local search community, so he tries to do his best with it.
What It Takes to Put Together the Survey
I asked Darren to tell me about what it takes to put it together. He told me it takes like months and months, and you have to get all these people and all of their opinions on different things.
Every year, the pre-work is reviewing all the questions. Are there new questions? Are there new factors? This year coming up, he's going to be working on it in early fall, kind of preparing the new survey, and then it goes out to contributors.
Preparing the new survey means going through all the questions. Are there new things that are happening in local search? Does he want to now bring in questions related to generative search engine optimization, ranking your business on all the AI engines? He does. So he's going to have to conceptualize some new questions to ask the participants about that.
Any new local search ranking factors? Well, there are. They have services now that wasn't actually in the previous version. They have opening hours, they have menu highlights, they have menu items. These things are new local search ranking factors. They have to get added to the list.
It's really important for Darren in this position to make sure he's highly engaged in the local SEO community and knowing what's happening and being on top of things. When it comes to writing the new survey, he's not missing anything.
What's new? Because he now needs to ask all the participants if they're seeing changes. What is the impact of this? Where would you rank this as a ranking factor in terms of importance?
Services is going to be quite high up there. Different things change. Are we seeing less importance in citations? He's always just trying to finesse it each year and be like, what's been happening over the past year that I definitely want to make sure I'm talking about and asking questions about in the survey?
Then he rebuilds the survey. He has it in Survey Monkey. He makes a clone of it, tweaks it, updates it, adds all his new questions. Then it goes out to the contributors, and the contributors get about two to three weeks to do it.
At the end of the three weeks, then he has to chase at least 10 people. Are you going to submit it? Are you going to submit it? Then he's got to keep giving them a deadline, and then he's got to extend that deadline a few more days because he's like, Mike Blumenthal, please, I really need your responses.
There's a chasing period, and then once he gets all the responses, then it's digesting the information, reviewing it, calculating it, running all the percentages, building the charts, creating the new web page that he publishes it on.
It takes a few weeks of finessing the survey and getting it ready, a month for people to contribute, and then another month for him to process all the information. It's not a solid month of work, but he runs a whole company. He's busy. He's only putting in like a couple hours per week just trying to get this thing done and published.
How Many Ranking Factors Actually Matter?
In the most recent one, which is the 2023 one, for at least the GMB ranking factors and the organic search, which is the website ranking factors, there are 149 different ranking factors for each one. I asked Darren which ones are actually important because I think that geotagging images and maybe some other smaller things are in there. Do we only have to pay attention to the top 30 or top 50 or top 100?
Darren did a really fun video shortly after launching this. He's like, there's like five underrated local ranking factors. He has personal beliefs about this.
First, we should clarify this is not Google telling us what these are. We are guessing. We are based on what we see. We're doing stuff, we're testing things, we're identifying the impact. We're like, wow, I did this thing, it seemed to have a positive impact on ranking.
One person doing that is just one person's opinion. This is where that survey becomes valuable because you aggregate the opinions of notable smart people that are really actively working local SEO, like 40 different people that are the top of their game. Now you get a powerful resource because it's the aggregation of all those ideas and all those opinions.
The factors are speculative. We are speculating on what the factories are. But Darren would say the top 20 for sure.
He was scrolling through, and some of them are kind of questionable. Factor number 23: HTML NAP matching GBP NAP. He's like, really 23? He'd put that lower. But enough people put it higher that it floats to the top of the list because it's important to other people.
He's not the one who has a final say in this. It's the aggregate. But there are some other ones in the 60s that are interesting. Keywords in titles across entire website, that's number 52. That's an important factor, man. You've got to optimize your title tags across your whole website.
He would say you can't just stop somewhere. You kind of have to pick through the whole list and build a checklist, a to-do list, off of the Local Search Ranking Factors.
I told Darren I just think it's so valuable because you watch local SEOs on YouTube or maybe you see them on Twitter or LinkedIn. Everyone is saying kind of the same thing, but it's all variations of the same thing. Some people are saying you have to add geotags or that you have to change your title tags.
Having that landmark to know that this is kind of what everyone's saying, this is what we're pretty sure is right based on a ton of people saying it instead of one person. It's not just the Darren Shaw blog or the David Mihm blog.
"One opinion is just an opinion 50 opinions you might be getting somewhere might you might be you know the the the group think right the hive mind get that together and then then you really have something special where you're like I think I think we're we got something here," Darren said.
The factors that are at the very top, they're at the very top because we see an outsized impact and everybody sees it. You change your primary category to be a better fit for the keyword you want to rank for, and it's like almost overnight. You put keywords in your business name, kaboom, you go from 30 to number two.
He's not the only one seeing this. Everyone sees this. That's why that factor floats to the very top in high importance.
The $1 Per Month Tool That Can Save Your Rankings
I wanted Darren to tell me more about Whitespark. Where has it been at in the past few years now, and what are you doing?
They're up to 40 employees now. The revenue streams are divided up, almost a little heavier on the services side. Listing service and SEO services are driving maybe 60% of the revenue. The other part of the revenue is their software.
They have their rank tracker, which is probably their highest earner on the software side. It's really fantastic local rank tracking software. Obviously, Darren thinks it's the best in the industry because he built it.
They have that local rank tracking software, which is excellent. In production right now is their grid ranking thing like the Local Falcon. That's coming in the next couple months.
They have their local citation finder software, which is useful. It's the original Whitespark software. But as they talked about, citations are less valuable. If you look at the stats, the growth of their other software is always up and to the right, and the growth of local citation finder is like a real slow trickle down in terms of usage.
They have a great reputation software called Reputation Builder that's for managing your reviews, tracking your reviews across all different review platforms, responding to reviews, sending review requests via email, SMS, review reporting. It's really an excellent platform for that.
Then their newest software is what they call Local Platform, and Darren feels like every business in the world and every agency needs to use this software. It's a dollar per month per location. It's so cheap.
What it does is it monitors your Google Business Profile, and anytime something changes on it, it sends you an alert and lets you know, and you can reject that.
That is huge because Google doesn't alert for so many things. One of the things that's been happening lately, and this is actually probably a big deal in pest control, is competitors are dragging the map pin of your business into a lake or 200 miles away or over to another city. Your rankings shift with that map pin.
You used to rank great in the city. Your rankings have fallen off a cliff. Why? Because some jerk took your map pin and dragged it.
Anyone can do it. You go to Google Maps and you say suggest an edit, and then you move the map pin. Google in all their wisdom is like, oh, somebody on the internet said that this business is actually now in the middle of this lake, so I guess we trust them.
Google accepts all these edits, and it has a very negative impact. You need a system that will alert you when anything changes on your profile so that you can deal with it. Otherwise, people can go months and not even know that their rankings have fallen off a cliff because somebody messed with their profile.
They have this great software. It'll also tell you when Google adds categories to your profile, updates your services. Google's making changes to your profile all the time.
The changes are not like Google makes them and says, hey, business owner, do you want this change, yes or no? Google has already done it and then just alerts you and is like, we did it, and you can reject it if you want. But the changes are live immediately as soon as Google makes a change.
Google can change your primary category. They talked about that as a huge local ranking factor. Your primary category might be pest control company, but for some reason, Google decided to change it to service business. Now your rankings have plummeted.
That stuff is happening all the time. Their system will alert you. It's only a dollar per month per location, and it keeps getting better. They keep adding stuff to it. It's awesome, and it keeps your Google Business Profile safe.
Why Google Posts Aren't Social Media Posts
I asked Darren what are the things that people need to be doing on a recurring basis for their Google Business Profile?
"Weekly Google posts please please please please and let me just tell you do not treat your Google posts like social media posts it's a very different thing so this is a mistake that most people use like oh well we're already posting once a week to our Instagram so we'll just take that post and put it on Google post no don't do that," Darren said.
The reason is you have very different audiences on the two different platforms. If someone is seeing your content on Instagram, they are your customer already. They're your follower. They have gone to the trouble of saying I like this company, I want to follow it.
Everyone looking at your Google Post on your Google Business Profile has no idea who you are. They don't follow you. They are new prospects, new potential customers.
Every Google Post shouldn't be, hey, yeah, look, our company did a holiday party and here's some pictures from it. That's a waste on your Google Business Profile.
Your Google Business Profile posts should be sales. They should be focusing on why someone should hire you. What is special you have running right now? What are some testimonials? What are some case studies? What are some before and afters?
Getting those things on your Google Business Profile post, so every post should be used to either directly sell or convince a person that you are the company to hire. You're running all of your posts almost like ads. Every Google Post should be like an ad.
Weekly Google Posts is an ongoing task that every business should be doing.
Review management: responding to your reviews as they come in.
At least monthly overview of the profile. Looking at the services, looking at the categories. Google adds new categories every single month.
Darren just got a post about it. They shared this on their channel just today. New Google categories added this month: physical rehabilitation center, psychosocial therapist, rental car return location, wire and cable supplier.
What does this mean? If Google makes a brand new category, almost nobody is using it. Let's say you were a physical therapist. You add as an additional category physical rehabilitation center, which is a category that just came out. Now you are going to absolutely increase your rankings for that specific term while your competition has no idea that even happened.
It's good to know what's happening. New categories are coming out. New services that Google has added. Regularly updating your services section.
They like to drip feed photos up to the profile. They want new photos every week. Photos directly impact rankings, but they also really have an impact on conversions.
They like to optimize their photos with text on the photo. They know that Google reads that text. They also know that humans read that text, and that can really help be compelling. It makes your photo stand out from the competition.
Videos are really powerful when you can get them from clients. Obviously, it's hard to get videos from clients, but they will make their own videos for clients in Canva. They'll go in and make a photo slideshow with words. They'll take content they've been using for Google Posts and from the Q&A section.
Sometimes you'll make a video based on a Q&A. You just get some nice photos to put in the background, and you answer the question in a video.
The reason why videos are so powerful is because they autoplay. If you're scrolling Google Maps, then videos autoplay. It's very similar to having a website. Your Google Business Profile is a website. It's on Google.
You could have a website and create it and never touch it, but it is smart to continually update it because Google likes fresh content. The same thing's happening in your Google Business Profile. You're constantly updating it with fresh content.
It can be such a powerful rankings mover because of the engagement that you're getting. You're showing Google that you are an active business owner managing the profile. You're regularly adding stuff. But then all the new content you're adding is also getting engagement from customers, and that is a huge signal that really helps things.
My Main Takeaway
The biggest thing I learned from Darren is that citation consistency stopped mattering in 2018 when Google changed from a static database to an entity-based knowledge graph. For years, everyone was obsessed with making sure every single citation had matching NAP information down to the period and comma. Now? Partial matches are fine. Google's smart enough to figure it out. You're only doing consistency cleanup for humans who might call the wrong number or go to the wrong address, not for the algorithm. This completely changes the citation game. Focus on the top 13 sites including aggregators, build out the top 50, get industry-specific and city-specific citations, and you're done. Don't waste time and money on citation audits and cleanup like it's 2015.
The second takeaway is that Google Posts are not social media posts, and treating them the same is a massive mistake. Your Instagram followers already like you. They're your customers. People looking at your Google Posts have no idea who you are. They're new prospects. So stop posting about your company holiday party or team-building events. Every Google Post should be sales-focused like an ad. Why should someone hire you? What's special about you right now? What are some testimonials or case studies or before-and-afters? That's what converts strangers into customers. Weekly Google Posts treated like ads, not like social media fluff, is one of the most underrated ranking and conversion factors.
The third insight is that competitors are actively sabotaging your Google Business Profile, and most business owners have no idea it's happening. Darren told me about competitors dragging map pins into lakes or 200 miles away, changing business names to remove keywords, marking businesses as closed, and Google just accepts these edits from random people on the internet. Your rankings can fall off a cliff, and you won't even know for months. That's why Whitespark's Local Platform for a dollar per month per location is such a game-changer. It monitors your profile and alerts you to any changes so you can reject them immediately. Without this kind of monitoring, you're vulnerable to attacks you don't even know are happening.
The fourth thing that struck me is the power of aggregating opinions from 40+ top local SEO experts instead of relying on one person's opinion. The Local Search Ranking Factors Survey isn't Google telling us the factors. It's speculation based on what smart people are testing and seeing work. But one person's opinion is just an opinion. Fifty opinions? Now you might be getting somewhere. The hive mind, the group think, that's where you really have something special. The factors at the very top like primary category and keywords in business name aren't there because Darren thinks they matter. They're there because everybody sees the outsized impact. You change your primary category, and boom, almost overnight you rank higher. That consensus is incredibly valuable.
The fifth lesson is about the evolution of local search beyond just Google. For the last decade, we've all been laser-focused on Google. Bing? Yeah, whatever. It doesn't get any search volume, so who cares? But Darren sees an evolution over the coming years where search is happening everywhere: TikTok, YouTube, ChatGPT, Perplexity. Being a little bit more aware of all the places you want your business to show up, then focusing on those things, actually looking at them, reporting on them, thinking about them, optimizing for them, changing your strategies per platform. It actually makes SEO a lot more complicated because now you're optimizing for seven different surfaces rather than just one. But that is the future of SEO. Social media optimization, video production, helping your clients become TikTok stars. That's the work we're getting into because that's how business discovery is shifting.
If you want to learn more from Darren, check out Whitespark.ca for their software and services. Sign up for their free Local SEO email course under the Resources section. There's a beginner stream with 20 emails, one per day, and an advanced stream with 20 emails, one per day. Darren put together this labor of love, and people are saying it's the greatest course they've ever taken. It's free. You can find Darren on LinkedIn primarily, then YouTube, then TikTok. He's all over the socials. The 2025 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey will be published in early January, so stay tuned for that. Darren's journey from failing university courses because he was too busy building websites to running a 40-person company and being the figurehead of local SEO is proof that obsession and relationship-building can take you to the absolute top of your industry.
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