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The Whitespark Local Update is the go-to podcast for Local SEOs and Marketers who want to stay ahead of the curve in local search and the local visibility space.
Join industry experts Claire Carlile and Darren Shaw for a lively, insightful roundup of their carefully curated selection of top “must-read” and “must-watch” links, including news, trends, and can't-miss resources.
Darren (00:00.088)
Hello, friends. Welcome to another episode of the White Spark Local Update. It's me, Darren Shaw.
And it is me, Claire Carlile. And you will see that Darren is back with us, or you will hear that Darren is back with us. And do you know what? Today, something very, very exciting is about to happen. So we're going to do a short podcast.
huge day. only have one article to talk about because today is the day that we are pressing the launch button on the 2026 local search ranking factor fireworks. What's happening? I'm excited. I'm only going to talk about that. Claire, you probably got a couple articles that you want to talk about. And so we will talk about those things.
You might have seen that I saw this on LinkedIn. It is Rose Yao, VP of product, who is talking about agentic capabilities in AI mode. And we've sort of all been waiting for this or expecting this at some point when we were talking about maps and what was missing from maps in terms of an iteration is something that was agentic that allowed you to
rather than just go find me somewhere open now that serves sushi that is good for vegetarians. Also tell me if they have availability in the next hour and book it for me please. Thank you very much because you already have access to everything that I've ever booked in the world using the Google infrastructure. Anyway, so that has arrived in some sort of format in search labs in the US, which is so great if you're in the UK. So if you have access to that,
Claire (01:49.714)
check it out because I'm sure that it will be quite interesting. So we need to start thinking about what that's going to look like and how that will affect the way that our potential customers do their searches and make their bookings.
When I shared that, I shared it with the line, if you're curious about the future of local search, here's a glimpse. I really think that this is kind of where we're going, where you got the robots doing the local search for you. As a user, you just get the robots to do your research about which businesses. so I really think it's very interesting. You've got to be paying attention to this.
thing on my little listy list is something that I love which is long form content. Now it doesn't get much longer than a 11 hour course, amazing, from Exposion Ninja on YouTube. I love it!
it because I've loved Exposure Ninja for ages because their content is awesome and they're a really great agency. They're doing content really well. They're doing really good diversification of channels. And wow, that is an absolute corker. 11 hours and it includes, it's not just AI bros, it's like positioning, all of the important things to do with being good at marketing. So I'm going to do that 11 hours and I can't wait.
Wow, that's real committed. I'm like the opposite. I'm like, can you condense this into five sentences for me? Because I don't have time to read, to listen to your 11 hour course. No, can't wait for it.
Claire (03:34.914)
is if you work in hospitality, like restaurants, bars, all of those things, you will remember that Darren will have at some point talked about Claudia Tamina and LinkedIn like he does every single week at least 6,000 times. Every episode. Every episode at least. So this has rolled out to the UK as well. So I've seen this on a couple of multi-location restaurants. It is nice.
doesn't seem to be difficult to use. You can use Google posts, but you can just make sure that your social is, you know, Google is seeing your social accounts also by adding them, you know, in the Google business profile. Look out for it. Try it. You'll like it. Tell me if you're using it. Yeah, looks good. Cool.
We love you, Claudia. Thanks for doing all the cool research and publishing on LinkedIn. Okay, well, I got something to talk about. It's called the White Spark 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors. And I cannot tell you how many emails, Slack messages, LinkedIn messages I've been receiving over the course of the last year and a half saying, when are you going to launch this damn thing? Well, today's the day it's happening. I'm launching the
I'm launching it today. I've been working on it for a long, long time. The survey got big and complicated. Claire could attest to this. She did the survey. It takes like two and a half hours or something to do the damn thing. It's very annoying.
Years, two years, that's why it's so long.
Darren (05:12.204)
Two years to do it?
Yeah, yeah.
And what I'm going to do for the podcast is, know, if you haven't had a chance to read it, you're going to want to do that. I'm publishing an entire video about it on YouTube. That'll be out before the podcast comes out. So you might want to watch my video, but I'm going to give you, since you're here listening to the podcast or watching it on YouTube, I'm going to give you some of the real highlights right now. Just my short favorite little observations. Here they are. Observation number one.
Review signals have increased in importance this year. Observation number two, link signals continue a very steady decline, links being less important for ranking in local results according to the 47 experts that were surveyed. I added 47 new factors. That's a lot of factors. So I worked with the marketing team, we were going back and forth, like, oh, what about this, what about that? We spent a long time revising these factors.
Big thanks to Gabby and Nadia who it was fun to brainstorm this with a team this year. Like I usually I just do it all by myself. This year I had some friends to help out and work on this which was wonderful in terms of like determining what are the new factors. And so we added 47 new factors this year. And there's some really interesting new factories that were added. I also added a few negative.
Darren (06:40.056)
potential things that can harm your rankings and things that could potentially get your business suspended. So always good to look at those. But I would say that the factors that really are worth noting is, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably know these things already because you're interested in local search. But the factor that we added this year that went straight to the top was
Business is open at time of search, of course. You probably know this, that if your business is closed, you're not going to rank. And so Google has done this thing where it really preferences ranking businesses that are currently open. So in that window of time before you close, like even the first hour, you start to drop off. And then once you're closed, you kind of fall to the bottom of the list. Google's like, well.
These ones are open, so we're going to rank these ones. So that's a true thing, definitely happening. I was very skeptical when Joy told me this, but yeah, no, it's true. So that factor has gone straight to the top of position number five as the fifth most important ranking factor. Another one is really interesting to me. It's addresses showing on your Google Business profile is a ranking factor. So whether or not you show your address or you don't show your address,
that has come in very strong as the seventh most important ranking factor. And I'm kinda like, what? Based on the fact that this came in so high, I feel like I'm the only person on the planet who doesn't believe it. So I have a very, I have very interesting theories about this. And I'm just, I kinda wanna direct you to watch my YouTube video where I really explain this or go to the resource where I explain it in writing.
I'll give you the highlights. think it's either one of two things. One, your business was originally verified somewhere else, then it got moved, then you hid your address and your rankings shift back to your old address. I've seen that happen multiple times. And the other case I think is happening is that when you remove your address, there's a bug in Google where they don't know where to put you. And so yes, 100 % your rankings plummet because you're like, no longer rank in Chicago. And that's because Google moved you 200 miles north.
Darren (08:58.198)
Why? don't know. I think it's a bug. so the cool thing is that, so everyone thinks that if you hide your address, you lose your rankings. And they're not really wrong. But I would argue that when you hide your address, you don't really lose them. They just go somewhere else. Where did they go? Rankings? Google moves your map pin to some other place. And so that factor is very interesting in this report. And you know.
I talk a little bit about what you can do to find where did my rankings go. You can use grid ranking software. You probably should use the white spark one because it's friggin awesome. The white spark global ranking grid software. You can set up a massive grid and then you'd be like, aha, I see a bit of green up in the top right corner. And then you kind of zoom in and you're like, why did Google put me there? So anyway, that's really interesting to me. And then another factor that's new that has gone
really high is presence of GBP predefined services. Joy Hawkins again, did some research and she was like, hey everyone, new ranking factor services impact rankings now. So that one's coming in strong too. I'm really pleased about this. I added a new factor for length of title tag. Is that a factor how long your title tag is? And I deliberately added this so that everyone would say, no, it's not a factor.
plan worked. Right to the bottom of the list of people who are like now, length of title tag is a myth. And so it's great to have a resource like this, educating the SEO population that length of title tag does not matter. So plan worked. Beautiful. I'm gonna leave it there. I'm just like, go and read their resource. I'll tell you this much I am doing on
on Monday. So I would have already done it by the time you listen to the podcast on Monday. I am doing an ask me anything on Reddit. Ask me anything about the local search ranking factors. I got a Reddit post on the white spark sub Reddit. And if you are listening to this on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or 10 months from now, you can still go to that Reddit thread and ask me anything. I mean, I think that's all I'm going to say right now. Resources live.
Darren (11:25.13)
Super thrilled that we finally got this published and it's the best edition yet. So go check it out.
So yeah, that's going to be, that's, you know, you'll be listening to this podcast whenever that is. And then you'll be going, of course I've already seen it. But if you haven't, obviously everything is going to be in the show notes here. The link to the Reddit, the link to this, the link to the video Q and A, the link to Darren's life story and his new biography and everything will be in the resources.
Great to see you on the camera again. Sorry I missed you last week when you brought in special guest, Dana DiSimaso. I was also sorry to miss that because she's delightful.
Yeah, she said she'll come back, so.
Okay. Bye everybody. We'll see you next week. Ciao for now
Claire (12:18.69)
We will, thank you, like, subscribe, share with your friends, goodbye!
Bye.