The hospitality industry has the most ‘near me’ searches every month, more than any other type of business on engines such as Google or Bing.
Increase over the past 11 years for the search “Restaurants near me” on Google
This alone should be a big enough reason for optimizing a restaurant´s online presence and ensuring they are in front of the eyes of as many potential customers as possible. Yet, restaurants are among the least optimised for ‘near me searches.
After studying 73,000 locations across Google, Bing and Yelp – three of the most important restaurant listing sites for ‘restaurant near me’ searches – Uberall found that only 4% of locations within the hospitality industry were perfectly optimised.
‘Near me’ searches are making it easier than ever to put in contact with guests with an intent to purchase, whether is a reservation, a takeaway or a dine-in with a restaurant. This provides a great opportunity to optimise a restaurant´s online presence and reach this ever-growing type of consumer.
What Does Optimisation Mean?
When we talk about optimisation, we are talking about ranking, to be found on the search results of a search engine. When users type in ‘restaurants near me’ into Google, they are presented with three results…
Research suggests that if you are not ranking in the first three results, your chances of even being seen falls to under 8%, which means that if you are not showing up in the top three results, you will have far fewer guests finding their way to your restaurant. So, what do you need to do?
Optimise for ‘Near Me’ Searches
You may already know that listing your restaurant in directories, map services, and review sites is the number one way to rank for local search. Here is also a list of 6 websites, search engines and directories you should be listed on:
- Bing
- Yelp
- Apple Maps
- Trip Advisor
List your restaurant on each directory, and your restaurant will show up on the most important search engines, directories, and review sites.
Sounds simple right? Well, here is what most restaurants do not understand about restaurant listings…
Just being listed alone is not enough. The key to ranking for near-me queries is in the accuracy and consistency of your restaurant information. Quality listings are more important than quantity.
So what does this means? I’ll give you an example…
‘What The Cluck’ is a Thai restaurant in San Francisco randomly selected. When we ran them through Mozrest´s online presence check tool – which shows the online presence, consistency, and accuracy of a restaurant location – it was very easy to see how inaccurate location information online was…
- What The Cluck isn’t listed on Facebook
- The name of the restaurant is different on Yelp and Bing
- The website is missing on Bing and Foursquare
- There are no photos or opening hours on Foursquare
What The Cluck is a great example because they have accurate Google My Business listings. However, the accuracy and consistency across the most important directories are the real problems for What The Cluck and most restaurant brands – a study found that 96% of restaurant locations had inconsistencies across Google, Bing and Yelp.
Inconsistencies may not look too important, after all, it looks good on Google, but these signals represent a major factor for search engine algorithms looking to decide whether to show your restaurant in the next related search from dinners looking for a meal in your area.
What information do you need to get right?
Google uses the accuracy and consistency of your restaurant address, opening hours, phone number, restaurant name, website, and postcode as trust factors to see whether they should send a user to your location. The more accurate your information is, the more likely Google will rank you in one of the top three spots.
When optimising for ‘near me’ searches, it is important to understand that restaurant listings, local restaurant ads and restaurant reputation management go hand-in-hand-in-hand.
While having accurate and consistent restaurant listings is a trust factor for search engines, a restaurant’s review score, review volume and the frequency with which a restaurant replies to its customers. Search engines want to know that when dinners interact with you, you engage right back.
A restaurant location that follows the steps above will not only be optimised for the trust factors that Google feels are most important and gain visibility and new customers from online visits. Replying to reviews and engaging with your customers online will help to encourage brand trust from new users.
