Prominence
How well-known and trusted your business is across the web, the third of Google's three main local ranking factors.
Prominence is how well known and well referenced your business is across the rest of the web, and it is the ranking factor you have the most room to improve. Reviews, mentions, links and coverage all feed it. Most of the ongoing work Local Owl does for clients is prominence work.
What it actually means.
Prominence is Google's catch-all term for everything that makes your business look real and respected on the open web. It includes review count and rating, mention count across the web, link signals to your website, citation completeness and consistency, and indirect signals like Wikipedia presence or news coverage.
Of the three pillars (Relevance, Proximity, Prominence), prominence is the one you can most consistently improve over time. Review programs, link-earning content, PR, and citation cleanup all stack into a higher prominence score.
Prominence is the reason new businesses struggle. A two-week-old GBP can have perfect category selection and an ideal address, but if nobody on the web has ever mentioned it, Google has nothing to weigh against the 10-year-old competitor with 400 reviews. The first 90 days of any local SEO engagement is mostly about building prominence faster than the calendar.
Related terms.
Relevance
How well your business profile and website match what the searcher is asking for, the first of Google's three main local ranking factors.
Read definitionProximity
How close the searcher is physically to your business location, which is one of Google's three main local ranking factors.
Read definitionCitation
Any mention of your business name, address, and phone on a third-party website, even without a link.
Read definitionWant this explained on a screenshare?
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