What is a Centroid when it comes to local business listings and maps?

Centroid, or central point of relevance, is a central reference point of an area as determined by a search engine.

Today the centroid for Google searches is most heavily based on the location of the searcher.

In the past it was based on the geographic centre of the city. That meant businesses closer to the city centre had a competitive advantage. Then the centroid moved more towards the largest cluster of a business category in an area.  Most recently, there’s been a weighting towards the physical location of the user.

This evolution has significantly reduced their importance for local search.

Centroid, or central points of relevance, is the civic centre of a neighbourhood or metropolitan area as determined by a local search engine. Typically, it’s located close to the centre of a neighbourhood or city.

It used to be that the centroid was chosen based on a central location in the city, such as town hall. That type of search was the cause of many local search-ranking variations with businesses closer to the central location having a ranking advantage. Recently, there’s been a shift towards the physical location of the user. Google looks at the user location and uses those closest businesses in the results instead. This means that hyperlocal locations, streets and neighbourhoods, have become a much more powerful component to your business data.

Besides your business address commanding when you come up for specific areas, there are some specific things you can do to market your business and make it more relevant to the hyperlocal geography.

If you want to find the centroid of your city, type in the name of your city in the search box and observe where the pushpin shows up on the map.