The Number of US Phone Numbers factor counts how many strings in a page’s rendered body match RankGear’s supported United States phone-number format. It reports a raw count of format matches — not a judgment about whether any number is valid, reachable, or actually owned by the business.
| Factor ID | RG-TRS-010 |
|---|---|
| Family | Trust and Contact Signals |
| Measurement | Count |
| Measured zone | Rendered body HTML with scripts removed |
What it measures
This factor counts strings that match RankGear’s supported United States phone-number pattern within the rendered body. It is a simple tally of how many times a recognizable phone-number shape appears once the page has been rendered and scripts have been stripped out.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear searches case-insensitively for three digits, followed by one or two supported separators, then three more digits, another one or two separators, and finally four digits. Supported separators include spaces, periods, and hyphens, plus a closing parenthesis in the first separator position. Every string that fits this shape adds one to the count.
| Example on the page | Counted? |
|---|---|
| 555-123-4567 | Yes — hyphen separators |
| 555.123.4567 | Yes — period separators |
| 555 123 4567 | Yes — space separators |
| (555) 123-4567 | Yes — closing parenthesis then a space, then a hyphen |
| +1 555-123-4567 | Not reliably — leading country code |
| 1-800-CALL-NOW | No — contains letters |
| 555/123/4567 | Not reliably — unsupported punctuation |
How to optimize it
Treat this as an observation, not a target to inflate. Publish a current, monitored phone number when calls are a genuine contact option, label it clearly, keep it consistent with your other business information, and make it usable on mobile devices. Because repeated appearances each add to the tally, resist padding the page with extra copies to push the number up — more occurrences are not inherently better.
Important considerations
- The detector checks formatting only. It does not confirm that a number is valid, reachable, owned by the business, or specifically based in the United States.
- Formats with a leading country code, letters, extensions, or unsupported punctuation may not match the supported pattern.
- Repeated appearances of the same number are counted separately.
- More phone-number occurrences are not inherently better; a higher count is not a goal in itself.
- This is a prioritization signal that relates to position within a measured result set. It does not make a page rank or guarantee a ranking — correlation is not causation.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.