Menu Items & Popular Times Are Google Local Ranking Signal Says Report

There is a new report out that says menu items and how busy you are during Google Maps popular times are both ranking factors and signals for Google’s local ranking system. Claudia Tomina posted the details on her blog and told me she tested this across numerous businesses. Claudia also sent me a few examples privately of her being able to replicate this over and over again.

Claudia Tomina found that when she added a menu item to that Google Business Profile, that business began to rank better for when someone searched for that item. In the example provided, she wrote, she replaced Caesar Kitchen to Caesar salad in the menu and on June 7th the rankings were 71 and then by the 8th the business profile was in the first ranking position.

She told me she repeated this for other businesses and saw similar results.

On the popular times side, she said she noticed from the data that locations that are busier during the popular times window, would also rank higher than businesses that are less busy during those times.

She wrote, “My research shows that if a business is busier at a specific time of day then they outrank their competitors.” She shared some ranking charts in her post.

“Just discovered 2 new ranking factors! Check out my latest blog post where I present compelling evidence that Google considers menu items and visit data as ranking factors,” Claudia Tomina posted on X.

Here are those posts on X:

Just discovered 2 new ranking factors! Check out my latest blog post where I present compelling evidence that Google considers menu items and visit data as ranking factors. Let me know what you think! #localseo pic.twitter.com/N5uqA5uuW0

— ClaudiaT (@ClaudiaTomina) June 27, 2024

The details are in her blog post.

Forum discussion at X.