Why isnt Google intelligent enough to do this for my keywords

[mikem1986]

I have my local community site up and running and in the top search keywords i have

<city> news
<city> sport
<city> reviews
<city> photos

and so on for about 30 different categories under <city><criteria>

etc etc

but what i dont understand is that if you just put in my <city> into Google my page is knowhere to be found despite the common denominator of all my top search queries being the city name?

[tedster]

But what does it take to rank on the top pages for just a city name? Those sites probably have at least a dedicated directory full of information about the city - government, history, politics, geography, economy, and so on. And then there's all the backlinks, too.

I'd say Google is more intelligent in this area of local search at least than you are giving them credit for. After all, what is the user intention behind a search on just a city name?

[mikem1986]

the intention of my site is to provide information for tourists and local residents and i do have lots more information besides what i wrote, for example i do have average house prices, town history, local events etc

[tedster]

My point is that Google's criteria for ranking a site on the query for a location name (on its own) is quite different from the criteria for ranking on the two or three word phrases. The algo doesn't just look at who is ranking well on those other searches and say "hmmm, must be good for the location name itself, then" as you were hoping - nor would that necessarily be the best thing for the end user. Instead, location name searches get special, dedicated treatment.

If ranking for the location name on its own is important, then I'd say study those particular SERPs intensively. Especially look at backlink profiles and their anchor text, plus whether the top ranking sites have data in the local search resources, what "Searches related to..." Google might show, and so on.

[mikem1986]

thanks tedster