A big city that never behaved like one
San Jose grew outward rather than upward, absorbing orchards and small towns into a low, wide grid of neighborhoods. The result is a very large population with a very small sense of a single centre.
For a local business that means the useful unit of planning is a neighborhood or a drive time, never the city as a whole. Almaden and Berryessa are the same city on paper and entirely different markets in practice.
One of the most multilingual markets in the country
The valley is home to large Vietnamese, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, and South Asian speaking communities, and a substantial share of local searching happens in those languages.
Very few local advertisers compete there. A translated landing page and a small language-specific campaign often produce the lowest cost per lead in the whole account.
Demand rises and falls with the employers
Discretionary spending in the South Bay tracks hiring at a handful of very large companies. Good quarters bring remodels, elective work, and upgrades. Slow quarters take them away quickly.
Planning for that cycle is the difference between a business that rides it and one that cuts marketing at the exact moment attention gets cheap.