Question on Search Tracker

Analytics
1

Hi Team,

Could you tell me at what location the each search is made at ST?
Is it AT the location’s coordinates or near that location’s coordinates or something else?

Please let me know as much in the detail.
Thanks,
Kotoko

2

Hi Kotoko,

Thank you for your question!

Search Tracker localizes searches at the city-level for each location. So this isn’t precisely the location’s coordinates.

I’m unsure how the exact coordinates are determined, as I believe this depends more on how Google localizes searches at the city-level. But I imagine Google uses roughly the center of the city - for example, the Google search restaurants in nyc you can see returns restaurants roughly around the center of Manhattan.

A final important note is that Yahoo and Bing do not offer the ability to localize searches. As such, query templates that do not contain an explicit location in the query - including “[keyword]” and “[keyword] near me” - are not placed on those search engines. (These searches are currently being placed on Bing, but this is a bug that we are aware of and working to fix).

Best,
Alex

3

Thanks Alex,
So what about “[keyword]” and “[keyword] near me” searches at Google?
Does it looks at KG’s ‘city’ and uses roughly the center of the city?

Can you also explain the relationship as to ‘CITY long/lat’ when exporting the entity data.

Thanks,
Kotoko

4

Hi Kotoko,

“[keyword]” and “[keyword] near me” searches are placed on Google, and they are localized using the entity’s city, yes. I believe this is generally the center of the city, but as I mentioned before, this depends on how Google localizes at the city-level.

The City Lat / Long field in Entity Export does also represent the center of that location’s city. E.g., a location entity in Philadelphia has a City Lat / Long of 39.9516390,-75.1638080.

This is probably very similar to the Lat / Long that Google uses for queries localized to “Philadelphia, PA”, but we unfortunately don’t have a good way to know for sure.

Best,
Alex

5

Thanks Alex, one last thing.
What about ‘[[keyword]] near me’ searches?
‘near me’ is totally random and depends on Google’s IP on the day/time etc…?
Thanks,
Kotoko

6

Hi Kotoko,

Both “[[keyword]]” and “[[keyword]] near me” get localized by Google in the same way; using the center of the entity’s city. These aren’t random and don’t depend on day/time, but they are specific to what Google defines as the “center” of each city.

Best,
Alex