GEO Results – Local Back Link Questions

So I was actually having this dicussion with a SEO guy yesterday about Google bridging the gap between linking websites and GEO regions.  Granted, and IP located in Russia is easy to spy. But what about on a local level.  Does Google now consider local IPs a factor? Seems harsh for all the websites hosted on Godaddy.

The other question we discussed was how websites linking to each other will affect local rankings. He stated that this was too large of a gap to say that this website is relevant to Charlotte, NC so the sites he links to may have Charlotte ties. He believed it was too large of a gap.  I argue, “if they can tag a website with a location or metro city then why not ear mark outbound links with that location?”

Finally is the question of Google Analytics.  Google Analytics already provides regional/GEO data.  You can already see where your visitors are coming from in a location sense.  Now… We all know that Google doesn’t use anayltics to influence search rankings, but who’s to say they have not developed another indicator to determine a websites GEO influence based on a website’s visitors?  Further, it’s not hard to imagine that Bulwark Exterminating is going to have more searches and hire visits from the regions that we service. So does your visitor’s location play into Google’s GEO results? And if so, how are SEOs going to work with ranking factor?

BTW… Bing is also implementing GEO filters, just not blending the results quit like Google…. yet. So these questions would apply to them as well.