The Hotels Winning 'Near Me' Searches Share These Three Local SEO Traits

Google uses three core factors to rank local results: proximity, relevance, and prominence. For hotels, understanding each one changes how you prioritize your time.

Proximity

This is the one factor you cannot control — it's the physical distance between the searcher and your property. A traveler searching 'hotels near downtown Chicago' will see properties closest to that area. What you can control is making sure your address data is precise and consistent everywhere it appears online.

Relevance

Google matches your profile to a search query based on how well your Business Profile and website describe what you offer. A boutique hotel that hasn't filled out its GBP categories, services, or attributes is invisible to searches like 'pet-friendly hotel near airport' — even if it accepts pets and sits two miles from the runway.

Relevance is improved by: completing every GBP field, using descriptive business categories (primary and secondary), adding amenity attributes, and aligning your website's on-page copy with the terms travelers actually search.

Prominence

Prominence is Google's measure of how well-known and trusted your property is online. It's built from three signals:

• Review volume and rating — properties with more recent, higher-rated reviews rank better
• Citation consistency — your hotel's name, address, and phone number appearing correctly across directories, OTAs, and travel sites
• Backlinks and organic authority — links from local tourism boards, event venues, and travel publications signal that your property is a recognized part of the local area

Most hotels underinvest in prominence relative to the competition. OTAs dominate organic results partly because they have massive link profiles. In the Map Pack, however, prominence is more localized — which gives individual properties a genuine path to visibility that doesn't require competing head-to-head with Expedia's domain authority.

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is what populates the Map Pack, Knowledge Panel, and Google Maps. For hotels, an incomplete or inconsistent GBP is the most common reason a property doesn't appear where it should.

Getting the Basics Right

Start with the fundamentals before anything else. Your business name should match your signage and booking engine exactly — no keyword stuffing, no taglines appended. Your address must be formatted consistently with how it appears on your website, in your booking system, and across all citation sources.

Categories Matter More Than Most Hotels Realize

Your primary category should be specific: 'Hotel', 'Boutique Hotel', 'Resort', or 'Extended Stay Hotel' — whichever best describes your property type. Secondary categories allow you to capture adjacent searches. A resort with a spa, for example, can add 'Day Spa' as a secondary category and begin appearing for spa-related searches in the area.

Attributes Are Untapped Ranking Real Estate

GBP allows hotels to specify amenities: free Wi-Fi, pool, parking, pet-friendly, airport shuttle, EV charging. These attributes directly influence relevance matching. In our experience working with hotel properties, filling out the full attributes section moves properties into searches they were previously invisible to — without any change to the website.

Photos Drive Engagement, Engagement Drives Ranking

Google measures how often users interact with your profile — clicking for directions, visiting your site, calling. High-quality photos of rooms, common areas, and amenities improve click-through rates from the Map Pack, which feeds the engagement signal. Upload new photos consistently rather than doing one large upload and stopping.

GBP Posts Keep Your Profile Active

Weekly or bi-weekly Google Posts signal an active, managed property. Use them to promote packages, local events, or seasonal offers. They also give travelers a reason to engage with your profile before they even reach your website.

For a full breakdown of profile setup and ongoing management, see our GBP Optimization for Hotels guide.

A citation is any online mention of your hotel's Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP). Google cross-references your NAP data across the web to verify that your business is legitimate and located where you say it is. Inconsistencies — an old phone number on TripAdvisor, a slightly different address format on Yelp — create conflicting signals that suppress local rankings.

Priority Citation Sources for Hotels

Not all citations are equal. For hotels, the highest-impact citation sources fall into three tiers:

• Tier 1 — Core directories: Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook
• Tier 2 — Travel-specific platforms: Hotels.com, Expedia, Booking.com, Travelocity, Priceline, Kayak (even if you're not taking bookings through them, the citation value is real)
• Tier 3 — Local and niche sources: Local chamber of commerce, destination marketing organization (DMO) listings, state tourism boards, convention and visitors bureau (CVB) directories

OTA Listings as Citations

Many hoteliers view OTA listings purely as a cost center. They are also citation sources. Even if you're working to reduce OTA dependency, maintaining accurate NAP data on Expedia and Booking.com supports your Map Pack ranking. The citation signal and the commission are separate issues.

Auditing for Inconsistencies

Before building new citations, audit what exists. Tools like Moz Local, BrightLocal, or Semrush's Listing Management feature can surface inconsistent or duplicate listings. Duplicates are particularly damaging — if Google finds two GBP profiles for the same property, it may suppress both.

Multi-Property Considerations

Hotel groups managing multiple properties need a separate, complete GBP and citation profile for each location. Never merge locations or use a single corporate address for properties at different addresses. Each property competes independently in its local market, and its citations need to reflect that.

Reviews are a local ranking signal, not just a reputation metric. Google's Map Pack algorithm weighs review quantity, recency, and rating when determining which hotels to surface. A property with 40 reviews from three years ago will generally rank below a competitor with 200 reviews spread across the past 12 months — even if the older property has a higher average rating.

What Google Looks for in Hotel Reviews

Google measures three dimensions of your review profile:

• Velocity: How frequently new reviews arrive. A steady trickle beats an occasional burst.
• Rating: Average star rating influences both ranking and click-through rate. Industry benchmarks suggest properties below 4.0 stars see meaningfully lower engagement from the Map Pack.
• Review content: Reviews that mention specific services, amenities, or location terms (e.g., 'great location near the convention center') reinforce your relevance for related searches.

Generating More Reviews Without Violating Policy

Google prohibits incentivizing reviews (offering discounts, gifts, or loyalty points in exchange for a review). What you can do:

• Ask at checkout — a direct, sincere ask from front desk staff or a checkout email is the highest-converting approach in our experience
• Include a GBP review link in post-stay email sequences
• Place QR codes linking to your review page in guest rooms and at checkout points
• Train staff to identify satisfied guests and ask them specifically

Responding to Reviews Is Also a Ranking Signal

Google has confirmed that responding to reviews signals active management and influences local prominence. Respond to every review — positive and negative. Keep responses specific rather than templated. For negative reviews, acknowledge the issue, avoid defensiveness, and offer to resolve offline. A well-handled negative review can increase booking confidence more than a row of unchallenged five-star ratings.

Review management connects directly to your broader reputation strategy. Handling it well creates a compounding advantage: more reviews generate more ranking signals, which generate more visibility, which generates more guests — and more reviews.

'Hotels near me', 'hotels near [landmark]', and 'where to stay in [city]' are among the highest-intent searches a traveler makes. These queries trigger the Map Pack almost universally — which means your GBP is often the first thing a potential guest sees, before your website, before any OTA listing.

On-Page Signals That Support Local Rankings

Your website's on-page content works alongside your GBP. To support near-me visibility:

• Include your city and neighborhood in your homepage title tag, H1, and meta description
• Create a dedicated 'Location' or 'About Our Hotel' page that names nearby landmarks, neighborhoods, and points of interest your guests actually search for
• Embed a Google Map on your contact or location page
• Use structured data (Schema.org Hotel markup) to help Google understand your property type, address, and amenities

Landmark and Neighborhood Proximity Content

Travelers often search around specific venues: 'hotel near [convention center]', 'hotel walking distance from [stadium]'. If your property is genuinely close to these landmarks, say so explicitly on your website. A page or section titled 'Staying Near [Convention Center Name]' that describes your proximity, walking time, and shuttle availability is both useful to guests and a relevance signal to Google.

Service Area Considerations for Hotels

Unlike service businesses, hotels don't typically need to set a GBP service area — your property has a fixed address. However, if your hotel provides shuttle service, event catering, or off-site services, you can use service area settings to capture searches from those locations. Use this carefully: hotels that incorrectly configure service areas can confuse Google about their actual location.

Voice Search and Mobile Intent

A significant share of near-me hotel searches happen on mobile, often voice-driven. Voice queries tend to be more conversational: 'find me a pet-friendly hotel near downtown'. Ensuring your GBP attributes are complete — pet-friendly, parking availability, accessibility features — directly feeds into how well your property matches these longer-tail queries.