{"id":4835,"date":"2023-02-09T12:28:28","date_gmt":"2023-02-09T12:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpmudev.whitespark.ca\/geotagging-photos-is-a-local-seo-myth\/"},"modified":"2024-10-28T16:03:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T22:03:13","slug":"geotagging-photos-is-a-local-seo-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/blog\/geotagging-photos-is-a-local-seo-myth\/","title":{"rendered":"Geotagging Photos is a Local SEO Myth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s infuriating that many local SEOs are still telling people to geotag their Google Business Profile photos, when research has shown time and time again that IT DOES NOT WORK.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this video, I explain why it doesn&#8217;t work, bust some myths and present a couple studies that have concluded that geotagging is a waste of time.<\/span><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/POj7DrBojy8\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Video Transcript<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I&#8217;ve been getting into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@darrenshawseo\">TikTok<\/a> a little bit lately, and I am ANNOYED.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, I keep seeing all these local SEO people on TikTok shilling this advice, like \u201c#1 local SEO hack is to geotag your images.\u201d It&#8217;s pretty embarrassing. I see this all over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@WhitesparkCa\">YouTube<\/a> as well.<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/BROLL-2023-02-07-Geotagging-photos-does-NOT-work-for-local-seo.mp4.00_00_45_02.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/BROLL-2023-02-07-Geotagging-photos-does-NOT-work-for-local-seo.mp4.00_00_52_04.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/>Let the real experts take care of your local SEO with the <a href=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/listings-service\/\">Whitespark Listings Service<\/a>.<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then what ends up happening is people go on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.localseocommunity.com\/c\/questions-and-answers\/\">forums<\/a> and they keep asking questions like: \u201cHey, how do I geotag all the photos that are already uploaded?\u201d<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Screenshot-2023-02-09-at-14.24.18.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s frustrating to see how often this bad advice is being given out. We really need to set the record straight on this.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Geotagging Images is a local SEO myth<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It actually comes in as the #1 Local Search Myth in the most recent <a href=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/whats-working-in-local-seo\/\">Local Search Ranking Factors<\/a> survey, and it&#8217;s been shown multiple times that Google strips the metadata in photos that have been uploaded to Google.<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Local-Ranking-Factor-Graph_Nov-23_Top-20-SEO-Myths.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can test this yourself. If you download any of these photos from a Google Business Profile, you&#8217;ll see that the metadata has been completely stripped.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Studies show that geotagging has no impact on rankings<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, some people argue that Google takes the data, uses it, and then strips it off to protect the public.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And to this I say, you should check out these two studies. One is from Joy Hawkins, who did this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sterlingsky.ca\/geotagging-photos-impact-ranking\/\">case study<\/a> where they tested the influence of geotagged images on rankings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then there&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/hypetrix.com\/blog\/geotagging-images-google-business-profile\/\">another great study<\/a> from Tim Kahlert, where he tested this as well. And both of them found that <\/span><b>there was absolutely no impact on rankings<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Screenshot-2023-02-09-at-14.16.27.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Screenshot-2023-02-09-at-14.15.33.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, please, local search community, let&#8217;s band together. Whenever you see this out on the forums or on a TikTok, or on a YouTube video, leave a comment. Let them know that this actually doesn&#8217;t impact rankings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The problem is that this myth keeps getting propagated by more and more people trying to teach others how to do local SEO. We\u2019ve got to teach <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">them<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that this has no impact on local SEO, so that we can finally kill this myth.<\/span>Let the real experts take care of your local SEO with the <a href=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/listings-service\/\">Whitespark Listings Service<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s infuriating that many local SEOs are still telling people to geotag their Google Business Profile photos, when research has shown time and time again that IT DOES NOT WORK. In this video, I explain why it doesn&#8217;t work, bust some myths and present a couple studies that have concluded that geotagging is a waste [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4836,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Many SEOs keep recommending that you geotag your images on your Google Business Profile, but research shows that they are WRONG. Here are the facts.","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"classification":[],"class_list":["post-4835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4842,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835\/revisions\/4842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4835"},{"taxonomy":"classification","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/classification?post=4835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}