No, the Google My Business description does not impact ranking

After a lot of testing by many since the help center update, we can safely say the description has no impact in the 3-pack.

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Yesterday, there was a ton of discussion on Twitter about an update in the help center that suggested the description field in Google My Business will help you rank better.

We’ve done testing on this, along with many others, and can safely say that we have found that the description field has no impact on ranking in the 3-pack. This is what I would expect to see. If Google made it that easy to rank, the results would be full of garbage that would be both bad for users and Google.

I spoke to Google yesterday and asked them to update the document as it was misleading.  As of this morning, some of it has already been removed.

Yesterday, the document said this:

Screen Shot 2020 02 12 At 8.22.24 AM 768x374 1

Today, the part at the top has been removed. The part that was removed was:

“Think about the words customers would type to find your business, and make sure that your listing actually includes those keywords within it.”

The new text reads as-of today:

Image1 6

I think it still looks misleading so hopefully, Google will continue to edit it and make it more clear that shoving tons of keywords into your business description is not the key to ranking high on Google.

Big thanks to Stefan Somborac for catching this.  


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Joy Hawkins
Contributor
Joy is the owner of the Local Search Forum, LocalU, and Sterling Sky, a Local SEO agency in Canada & the USA. She has been working in the industry since 2006 and enjoys speaking regularly at marketing conferences such as MozCon, LocalU, Pubcon, SearchLove, and State of Search. You can find her on Twitter or volunteering as a Product Expert on the Google My Business Forum.

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