Local signals are valuable for a genuinely local business — but for a product or service meant to serve any market, the same signals create confusion instead of relevance.
Heavy local signals (city names, "near me" language, local schema) tell search engines this is a local business — which actively works against a product or service genuinely meant to serve any market, regardless of location.
A homepage built around local-search patterns often ends up narrower and more geographically specific in its messaging than the actual business, undermining how the brand is positioned to a wider audience.
For most businesses in this situation, the fix isn't removing genuinely relevant local pages — it's making sure the primary, global-facing pages aren't accidentally written with local-only framing that limits how broadly they read and rank.
Find out if local signals are working against your own site.
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