Joy Hawkins and friends re-did a study they did years ago to discover that now the services you add to your Google Business Profiles now have an impact on your local rankings – at least way more than it did in 2019.

Just by going to your Google Business Profile, clicking on the “services,” and adding more services, even custom services that are not given to you in a pre-defined list, may impact your local rankings.

Joy wrote, “services impact ranking,” adding “they seem to impact both explicit and implicit keywords.” “We have been able to recreate this with various clients in various industries. However, the ranking impact seems to vary based on the industry and market,” she added.

Here are the rankings charts from before and after for two local businesses a day or so after adding these services to their business profiles:

And it is super easy to add these services:

(1) Go to your Business Profile (i.e. search for your business name while logged in to your business profile account in Google)
(2) Select Edit Profile and then Services (or just click “Services”.
(3) Select the service you want to edit.
(4) To add a new service, click Add more services.
(5) Select Save.

This is too easy to last too long – so don’t get your hopes up…

This is huge. Bring on the services spam.

— Darren Shaw (@DarrenShaw_) February 21, 2023

Ugh.

Seems like a big over correction on GBP’s side of things.

— Zachary Wilson (@zwilson) February 21, 2023

⚠️ Services impact ranking #localseo
1️⃣ They seem to impact both explicit and implicit keywords
2️⃣ Explicit keyword ranking impact is more dramatic.
3️⃣ The ranking impact seems to vary based on the industry and market.
4️⃣ Read more for four…
🔗https://t.co/hDMgXw6gPu #localbiz https://t.co/HF0ZGsjtKT pic.twitter.com/NwqDstkYPV

— Andy Simpson 🇬🇧 (@ndyjsimpson) February 21, 2023

Forum discussion at Twitter.