[Mike Halliday]

I thought Google was changing its algorithm to stop companies manipulating results by using city name domains eg londoncarpetcleaners.co.uk instead of their actual company name.

A new company  has  just  jumped to the second position for my local town by using this technique, I have a full site optimised for My town but just having a town domain names makes it jump to the top

I'm not that bothered but for any new companies starting it just shows its worth buying your local town name

[Mike Gwilliam]

The domain is at least a few years old Mike. Sometimes there can be a shuffle round where a site can move up position quite a lot suddenly then a few weeks later return to it's original position. I doubt that the domain name will affect it's position.

Anyway it looks rather dull.........yours is much better 

[Mike Halliday]

It must make a difference , look at the 2 top sites both with town names In the domain  and the top site is very  amateurish  they might be old domains  but I bet they are not as old as my site. 

As for seo I bet my site is better but they out rank me purely because the use ' Beverley' in the domain name.

To be honest this is why I don't like internet marketing you are handing control over to google

[Stoots]

there must be other factors, the problem is no one really knows even seo experts are guessing to an extent on googles algorithms.

I have a domain the same but its only page 4 and optimised well so having an exact match domain name isnt everything but it cant hurt, or can it?

[Mike Gwilliam]

Mike your site has the H1 tag  ''Carpet cleaners Hull and Beverley'' the other site has the the H1 as ''Carpet cleaning Beverley''. That could well be a reason to be above yours. The H1 is the first thing Google sees.

Make your mind up,,,,,,,,do you want Beverley or Hull? 

[Ian Harper]

agree with Mr Gwilliam carpet cleaner is a thing carpet cleaning is something thats done. plus because your town has person name google will be confused on if its you as a person or a town. your best with local listing given this. use a second url dont use same one as they will remove or de rank you because you would have two slots. this is hit of mis as sometimes they allow it other times not. as you say you dont have control

I would take it a step more, another third url just for adwords. whats great about this you dont need any seo at all. just dont use same copy or images as google will think you have copied it from another site, it does not know that site is yours.

BTW you are signed out from Google when doing these searches?

i did a search and his words are next to each other your are split up in a sentence, his is a phrase  which google likes, there is your problem