28 keywords x 26 industries x 20 cities = 14,560 keywords (560 per industry)
Local RankFlux plots the ranking position of each business in the top 20 search results and compares that ranking to the previous day’s position to determine the daily change.
Local RankFlux applies a weighting to different ranking positions to match the perceived importance and ranking value of positions in Google’s local search results.
Higher rankings (i.e. #1-2) have greater significance and ranking value than lower rankings (i.e. #19-20) and are therefore given a higher weighting in the Local RankFlux score calculation.
Thus, if a business moves from position #2 to #4, this represents a bigger fluctuation than a business that moves from #19 to #17, and the Local RankFlux calculation takes this into account∞.
Local RankFlux then multiplies the change in position between today’s and yesterday’s rankings by the weighting to create a total daily fluctuation. This total is then converted into an average based on the number of keywords that returned meaningful results^ and a score produced for All Industries and for each individual industry.
- (For all keywords) Change in position x weighting = Total Daily Fluctuation
- Total Daily Fluctuation / Number of Keywords = Average Fluctuation score
Daily fluctuation scores are then plotted on the Local RankFlux chart.
*We ignore paid-for positions in results and only consider the non-paid results.
∞Any new businesses that appear in the top 20 results but weren’t there the day before are presumed to have been in #21 the day before (it’s not an exact science but it’s the only way we can treat these).
^Each day a small percentage (circa 5%) of keywords returns results that we suspect are inaccurate (i.e. they show less than 20 results whereas the day before they do show 20). We strip these results out so they don’t skew the accuracy of the Local RankFlux score.
Atlanta, GA | Aurora, IL |
Austin, TX | Boston, MA |
Buffalo, NY | Charlotte, NC |
Chicago, IL | Columbus, OH |
Dallas, TX | Denver, CO |
Eugene, OR | Fresno, CA |
Huntsville, AL | McKinney, TX |
Memphis, TN | Milwaukee, WI |
Orlando, FL | Pittsburgh, PI |
Portland, OR | San Diego, CA |