Do Billboards Improve Google Rankings?

While in the Phoenix, AZ area for Thanksgiving, I noticed an insane amount of personal injury attorney billboards on the freeways; So insane my family had a contest where we each picked a law firm and counted which one had the most. My wife picked Rafi Law Group and won with something like 12 billboards within a 10 mile stretch.

It reminded me of the post I did a few weeks ago on how in-market advertising may affect Google rankings: Does Prominence Trump Proximity?

I have no idea how long Rafi has been blitzing Phoenix, it seems like he’s been a big player since at least 2022. But when I checked his site out on Semrush for “accident” queries, look what it shows:

Rafi lost all his top 3 rankings at the end of last year, when a number of tricky Google updates rolled out. They came back in August. But why?

Let’s look at Google Trends for queries for his firm:

It looks like around June searches for them increased by about 30%, which coincides with the start of the summer travel season and most likely a seasonal increase in car accidents. I wouldn’t be surprised if an increase in advertising drove this search trend. Could this have helped get them back on the board? Probably.

Of course, it also looks like they did a major backlink cleanup, which could have just as easily been the reason for the recovery:

Or perhaps they just lucked out by Google whacking some of their competitors.

Welcome back to page one Rafi!