DOES GBP POSTING WITH NON-AI CONTENT & IMAGES IMPACT LOCAL RANKINGS?

GBP rankings showed notable gains across multiple metrics. Geo Grid Performance improved significantly on the 2 mile 13×13 grid, with “Wrecker service” increasing from 8% to 12% SoLV, “Flatbed towing” rising from 61% to 66%, and “Jump start service” experiencing an 8% increase, moving from 22% to 30%.

The most significant growth occurred in “Towing services,” which jumped from 71% to 82%, marking an 11% improvement. Many other terms saw similar movement, which you can see in the grids below.

Keyword performance also saw measurable gains. The search volume for primary terms, as well as additional terms that previously had no impressions, are now showing an increase of 15 impressions or more compared to the previous time period.

Beyond rankings, Business Listing Metrics also reflected positive movement. Business impressions on Google Maps increased from 330 to 404 (+22%), while search impressions grew from 2.4k to 2.8k (+14%). Call clicks rose from 656 to 724, indicating a 10% increase in engagement. These metrics demonstrate that posting activity may contribute to greater user interactions with the GBP listing.

• 22% increase in business impressions
• 14% increase in search impressions
• 10% in call clicks

The Post Content Variation in this test was significantly different from previous AI-generated posts. The new human-written posts included storytelling, discussions of local landmarks, and humor, making them more engaging than traditional AI-generated service descriptions. This variation in content style may have played a role in ranking increases, prompting further investigation into whether human authorship itself or the diversity in content styles was the key factor in these improvements.

Current Conclusions and Beliefs

While previous hypotheses suggested GBP posts have little impact, this test suggests that real human-written content and unique photos may have a measurable positive effect on local rankings. The increase in SoLV and keyword rankings aligns with the content posting timeframe, suggesting a possible correlation between consistent GBP posting and ranking improvements. The overall visibility gains indicate that GBP engagement may be a worthwhile factor in local SEO, especially when paired with other optimization efforts.

Another key takeaway is the role that the content type may have played. The human-written posts in this test were very different from previous AI-generated ones, featuring more engaging storytelling and local relevance. This suggests that it may not just be the act of posting, but the content style and variation itself that influences GBP rankings. To validate this, a future test should use AI-generated posts but with varied styles, similar to the human-written posts, to determine if content variation alone drives ranking changes.

The increase in impressions and engagement correlates with a higher presence in local map packs and organic search results. Keyword trends for terms such as “towing services,” “towing near me,” and “flatbed towing” suggest that the posts and images contributed to enhanced search relevance. Additionally, Geo Grid Data showed a consistent upward trend, with higher SoLV scores across all tracked terms.

We will continue monitoring whether the ranking gains persist or decline after stopping the daily posting schedule. Additional long-term testing will be required to determine if human-written GBP posting alone is responsible for the ranking improvements, or if there were bigger factors at play such as post content and types. The next phase of testing will focus on implementing AI-generated content but with varied styles similar to the human-written posts to determine whether content variation, rather than human authorship, is the ranking factor.

With the final GBP post published on March 9th, we are now in the observation phase to determine how rankings react post-posting. How long will we continue to see these upward trends?

Most keywords have maintained or improved in ranking since the start of the test, with a few minor declines. Its important to keep in mind, these could be regular fluctuations rather than direct results of posting cessation.

Flatbed and heavy-duty towing terms are the only keywords where we saw drops, which were minimal losses in ranking. When looking at our post content, there were only 2 posts that referenced heavy-duty towing, but there were 22 posts the referenced flatbed towing. So if the post content was a significant relevance signal, its odd to see a drop in flatbed towing key terms.

Our expectation is that if human-written posts were a major contributor to the ranking gains and we may see a gradual decline in the coming weeks. However, if the increases were primarily driven by the volume and variation of posts, rankings may hold steady, reinforcing the idea that content diversity matters more than human authorship.

In the next phase, we will resume daily posting with the same content strategy, tone, and frequency, but this time using AI-generated text and images. This will allow us to directly compare the impact of AI-generated posts versus human-written ones to determine whether content quality, variation, or authorship plays the most significant role in influencing GBP rankings.

We will continue monitoring ranking trends over the next month before resuming posting to gain a clearer picture of how GBP activity correlates with local SEO performance.

We’re back with our final update on the real GBB posting test. Right after our last update we noticed a drop-in rankings even though GBP posts had only stopped a day before hand. This lead us to believe that the posting may have not been the single reason for the geo grid ranking movement.

Now over a month has passed, so lets take a look at what has happened since the last update and dig into the details of the test conclusions.

When we look at the current geo grid results compared to before we started the test, we can see slight rankings drops in some areas, but overall the listing is ranking about where we were when we started. The timing of some drops is supported by when posting stopped. When looking at “jump start service” we see the rankings peek the day after posting stopped on March 10th, with the major drop off occurring a week after, on March 17th. (at least that we can see) We can see the same trend with “towing company” and “car towing”, which maintained rankings then dropped soon after the posting had stopped.

However, not all keywords supported this. When looking at “flatbed towing”, we can see the drops started while posting was still going on as of March 3rd. These scenarios were limited though.

With a majority of the geo grids showing minor improvements while posting, and a slight drop 1 to 4 weeks after posting stopped, the overall GBP performance metrics don’t seem to have much a positive impact over all. This is especially visible during the month of February when the majority of the posting took place.

We do believe posting has had some influence on the rankings, but we’re still of the belief that the impact was more due to the type of content posted, rather than the content being human written. In regards to the “real images” used, these were all scenic shots that did not include any tow trucks or relevant images to the company itself. Therefore, we believe these images had little to no impact, but this is purely based on speculation.

With all that said we will continue to test and begin posting to the listing again in a future test. Stay tuned to the SEO Mad Scientist and join us on the next test.