In the vast world of cyberspace, there’s nothing more important to a business than keeping it local.

When you advertise on any digital medium, you’re looking for customers near you. That also holds true when customers are searching for you—you want your business to be visible when customers are searching for your services.

To do that, you’ll have to play the proverbial Knowledge Card and ensure your business is in Google’s Local Pack.

The Local Pack is their term for the top three businesses that appear in the Search Engine Results Page after any Google search. They are, in theory, the results most relevant to the search query. These Local Packs appear in at least 93 percent of Google search results, according to Google, and that’s important considering that more than 50 percent of mobile consumers visit the business after they search for it—and the further down your business is on the list, the less likely you’ll earn a new customer.

The Local Pack helps your business stay competitive in Internet Searches; the information includes your hours of operation, contact information, a link to a map, your website and more.

How do they get there? Every search engine, app, map, voice assistant and other AI services store these answers from a Knowledge Graph, which is a database that contains all the information intelligent services like Google, Bing, Alexa or Siri know about the world and your business.

Google rates them on these factors:

  • Distance, depending on whether you input a zip code or allow Google to calculate it based on their default ‘near me’ which depends on whether web searchers have their location activated
  • Relevance, which includes how well your meta data matches up with search questions, as well as the consistency of information across your social media and business sites. The more accurate and consistent it is, the more favorable your search ranking will be.
  • Prominence, which refers to recent positive rankings and reviews.

The good news is that this information is entirely in your control. Facts like your address, hours of operation, and services you provide make up your digital knowledge, and they are crucial both to search engines and to potential customers.

Makes sure that the public facts about your business are accurate, up to date, and consistent across the many search engines, voice services, maps, apps, and other discovery services people are using to help them find you. Be as specific as you can so you’ll be sure to ‘run’ with the local pack.