Who los angeles Google maps ranking factors 2018

I'm going to interpret your question as asking about the Google Maps ranking factors that were relevant in 2018 for Los Angeles businesses, since the phrasing seems to have a typo.

In 2018, Google Maps rankings were primarily influenced by a combination of on-page business factors and off-page citation signals. The most important on-page factor was your Google My Business profile completeness and accuracy. This meant having a fully filled-out business name, address, phone number, website URL, business category, hours of operation, photos, and service area information. Google also heavily weighted recent and consistent business information—if your NAP (name, address, phone) was inconsistent across your GMB listing and website, it would hurt your local rankings. The quality and quantity of photos you uploaded to GMB mattered too, as did customer reviews. Review velocity (how frequently you were receiving new reviews) and review recency were more important ranking factors than the raw number of reviews, though star rating obviously affected click-through rates from the search results.

The second major ranking factor was citation authority and consistency. Citations are online mentions of your business name, address, and phone number on directories like Yelp, Yellow Pages, Moz Local, and industry-specific directories. In 2018, agencies needed to ensure their clients had consistent NAP citations across high-authority local directories specific to their industry and location. The accuracy and consistency mattered more than volume. Google was already using machine learning to understand which citations were authoritative versus spam, so building citations on random low-quality directories provided minimal benefit.

On-page website signals also fed into Maps rankings in 2018. Your website's relevance to local search queries, the presence of location-specific content, schema markup (particularly local business schema), and the site's overall domain authority all influenced where you appeared in Google Maps. Additionally, proximity to the search location remained a ranking factor, though less dominant than people assumed. A business could rank highly in Maps even if it wasn't the closest option if it had stronger review signals, better citation consistency, and more relevant website content. For agencies managing multiple client locations, understanding this meant you could prioritize citation cleanup and GMB optimization over constantly worrying about proximity—the quality of your online presence mattered more than raw geography.