I’m betting you’ve already seen — and hopefully had time to digest — this year’s edition of the Local Search Ranking Factors survey . As always, it’s a must-read for anyone interested in local search rankings.

For the most part, I think the survey participants got it right this year. But there’s one particular item I think they got wrong.

One of the highest-scoring factors in the survey is Manually Owner-verified Place Page. It was ranked as the number two overall factor and the number three factor affecting “pure” listings.

In my opinion, claiming/verifying your Place Page has almost no impact on your Google local search ranking.

To be clear, let me clarify:

I don’t believe that the simple act of claiming a Place Page makes you rank higher — and that’s what the survey suggests. I do believe that claiming a Place Page opens the door that lets you do other things that do very heavily influence local rankings, such as list your business in correct categories, update/fix the business name, address, and/or phone number, and so forth. But the act of claiming a Place Page itself doesn’t make you rank better.

Google has very specifically explained that local rankings are based on location, relevance and prominence. Aside from the confirmation of a business address or phone number , I don’t believe that the act of claiming tells Google anything that helps your rankings.

It was just about a year ago that I examined the pure results for the search phrase “san francisco bakery.” Only one of the seven businesses listed had a claimed Place Page, and that business ranked in the “C” spot.

My suggestion: This will be obvious to many readers, I hope, but the point here is to say that you can’t expect a huge boost in local search rankings just because you claimed your Place Page. You should definitely claim it, but don’t stop there: Build it out as much as possible with proper categorization, accurate business information, extra content like photos/videos and, if possible, reviews/ratings from happy customers.

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Tags: Factor, Ranking Factor, Search Ranking, Search Ranking Factor