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For smaller cities, the top ten are often full of hotel and service directories. Official city government sites are buried on page 3 or 4 of the results or even lower.
Some people have speculated that Google is keeping a list of city names and has implemented special algorithms for larger cities, and that smaller cities will follow later.
First I was inclined to believe this; however, now it occured to me that what we're seeing could be a strong evidence of theming.
"Theming" involves finding relevant words around a search term. Synonyms, related subjects etc.
With larger cities, theming is relatively easy. A "Washington, DC" theme blueprint could include "white house, government, president, capital, smithsonian, vietnam memorial, washington mall, capitol," and many other words and phrases. These are mentioned on hundreds of Washington, DC websites.
Google can figure out the "Washington, DC" theme and therefore, it is able to throw out all pages that just mention "Washington, DC" in passing, and put comprehensive websites into the top 10.
With smaller cities, it's more difficult. Part of the "Anywhereville, KS" theme would be: Anywhereville, KS, Kansas, and not much more because not many comprehensive websites exist about Anywhereville. Chances, 99% of sites that mention Anywhereville will be nationwide directory sites that mention nothing specific about Anywhereville. How can Google deduct any theme from that?!
So, the search results for Anywhereville will be rather random.
Directory sites that lists hundreds of towns, with little Anywhereville-specific content, actually have an advantage! Because so many other directories follow that pattern, Google might identify the theme of Anywhereville, KS as: "Anywhereville, KS, Kansas, Kansas City, Wichita, Topeka, Emporia, Dodge City, Garden City" (etc.)
In the process, if my theory is correct, Google actually punishes sites that deal exclusively with Anywhereville because they don't mention Wichita, Topeka, Garden City, etc. etc.
That's why a nationwide directory of web designers might rank higher for "Anywhereville KS web design" than the website of an actual Anywhereville web designer.
All that is just speculation of course, but I would like to hear other theories, and suggestions how Google could fix the "city, state" searches for smaller cities.
P.S.: Right now, if my theory is correct, it would help an Anywhereville web designer to turn his website into a directory about web design in Topeka, Garden City, Salina, Hutchinson etc. etc. Needless to say, that's not pretty and on the long run, would only cement the Anywhereville theme, and bury relevant sites (such as a site about the history of Anywhereville) even more deeply.
I know of webmasters that are already adding their zip codes to URL and page for regional services.
pretty smart...
maybe the next big search revolution?
It was on page one before Austin (search returned 208,000 pages); in the early days of Austin, it disappeared, but it was #1 for the keywords "city country +a" (without quotes).
Possible explanations which came to my mind: effects of LSI (lack of theming words, as you described above); OOP (most of the text links are, naturally, "City, Country", or contain those words); some kind of filter.
Since them, I got a few more good links (high PR), and rumours say that the Google directory was internally updated (I am listed in dmoz, but not in G directory). I didn't change on-page factors, and all the new links contain the keywords.
I am back to page one, better than ever.
In my case, as Brett used to say, more PR cured all.
We are getting beat by a weak directory with a lot of links. We have better content and keywords, but the links are what's doing it for this hack.
One of our web sites is a suburb of metro area that ranks in the middle of the top 100 in population. The metro area listings are especially interesting to watch on Y and G. Y is doing a much better job of getting government basics to the user, G is offering hotels and too many weak sisters. Both have ignored the newspaper site, which is not being optimized aggressively.
johannamck, that's a noble effort you've made but I think you're out into the grass. But, I also think you're right in that this is going to change a lot in the next few months.
I am saying nothing more about this to anyone until I see what Superpages rolls out with in March. From what I hear, this could be very interesting. But, then, just about everything I hear about anything to do with local search is said breathlessly. <insert rolling eyes icon here>
