Nobody knows this about Google. These businesses are ranking right at the top of the local pack for the keyword plumber near me because they have that exact match keyword in their business name. This makes it really easy to gain Google search results.
All you gotta do is stuff keywords in business name.
But nobody understands why Google does this. It's because they have to. Because let's say someone is searching for the keyword plumber near me.
Well, Google is going to return businesses that are close to them.
They also don't know if you might be looking for that very specific business called plumber near me. So they have to put them in the search results because you might be looking for that and would be a bad user experience. And I'm like, I'm trying to find a specific business, Google, why aren't you returning it?
So this is why it becomes a super powerful factor.
Of course, it makes it very easy to spam Google's results. But Google's in a pretty tough place with this one. If you want to see how you rank across the whole city, you should use White Sparks local ranking grid.