Mike,

“Do they not owe the SEO, design and advertising communities both more timely and more thorough answers to these sorts of questions?”

No, and if anything, they are more hesitant to reveal info to the SEO community. With some reason, in my opinion. There are a lot of spammers out there who aren’t among the core group that hangs out on your blog.

That said, their answer about “not having local intent” is just BS. The real answer is that the business titles for SEO / web design Maps results look too spammy for their taste because by now most SEO companies who read your blog know to register their company’s DBA with a couple keywords. I certainly did.

As I commented in your last post about this topic, though, I think that by-and-large the organic results for this group tend to be better-ranked by relevance…at least in Portland, the web design results tend to be more established companies whose business practices I would trust.

My short response: Google is not being truthful about the reason in this case (at least when it comes to results shown for KW’s with geo’s in them) but the end result is the right decision.

At the risk of getting pots and pans thrown at me, I have no problem with these results. Others have pointed out if you put a “in” or “near” the local pack will show up. To me this seems like more of a natural query. When looking at analytics on a couple sites people do in fact use these words… although I only checked a couple sites.

I do kind of have the “search online, buy offline” mentality. If that’s Google’s approach, (who knows what their approach is) I don’t see people typing in “web marketing yourcity” and then driving to a location to get some marketing. For a hotel, lawyer, restaurant, etc. I suppose that’s a different story.

Anyway, my 2 cents. Thanks for the post, Mike!

The not having local intent is rubbish, many of my new customers & leads came from keyword phrases like “SEO Toronto” where they would find me in Google Maps. Local Business want to deal with local companies. I know I do it too. Yes, you can get these services anywhere, but there is something to community and be loyal locally that people can’t resist. Do they owe it to us “no.”, but there does seem to be a double standard here.

I think the seo’s and web designers can and have already answered the question. If they are getting business queries from potential customers based on searches such as web designer Kansas City, St Louis SEO, etc. than clearly there is plenty of local intent.

The businessses at the end of the searches are seeing the traffic and they are getting emails, web forms or calls based on how they are ranked either in organic results or via a 7pack. It appears some above have already answered the question. On top of that web designers in Hong Kong, Moscow, and elsewhere are seeing the 7pack.

Something is going on. Google isn’t telling us. The rest of us can come up with ideas and theories. I think the response citing the engineers reasoning is a bunch of bunk.

btw: Happy New Year 😀

Just my two cents – I think Google prefers to answer questions with it’s web index rather than it’s business listing index, one of the reasons that Google has to rely on a business listing index is that “all” businesses do not have a web site. Maybe Google finds that it’s fair to assume that enough or all of the

Web Designers, Graphic Design, SEOs or Advertising Agents

Have a website and Google wants to rely on their ability to accurately rank those websites.

I think David has a point about the purity of the business listings for those types of businesses as well. As the ability to attract traffic in a 7 and 10 pack first appeared SEO’s and such were the first to alter their business listings to maximize their exposure and by doing so have unintentionally created a bit of a listing reputation / fragmentation problem for their listings, by stuffing keywords into the business name title, utilizing tracking numbers and creating PO BOX addressing out of market or just butchering the sanctity of their NAP.

Just to be clear, I don’t think anyone made these changes maliciously, they just made them to figure out how to gain the traffic that they thought they deserved,( typical early adopter) now Google may be saying that they think their version of “spam” detecting is stronger on websites and want to rely on those, and their own user data tells them that they won’t hurt the “user experience” by doing so allowing them to devalue the business listing index for this specific category…

But hey we all know how I look at the world, I’ve been accused of being the guy who carries a hammer so everything must be fixed with a hammer…… Happy new year, thanks for all your work on this blog, Mike. It’s a tremendous resource for our community.

and just let me add a Canuck thank you too along with Gib and David, Mike for keeping on top of this and maintaining the overview of G! well and muchly appreciated it is!

🙂

Jim

@David & Gib

While I agree that SEOs may have peed in their own bed, a cursory glance at advertising agents shows them not to have done so thus not explaining the action particularly well.

It would be interesting to look at web penetration amongst the affected industries to attempt to verify Gib’s thesis.

And to all, it has been a pleasure this past year learning with you and from you.

May your listings always be shown in (next year’s) 5 pack.

I agree with those of you that feel the local intent answer from Google is BS. I am, however, in complete disagreement that their decision is the right one as David suggests above.

Did Google take this drastic and punitive action when infamous locksmiths were running around stealing each others listings and spamming the Google Map world with fake listings? Nope. They took forever to address it and when they did they certainly didn’t remove their listings for most reasonable searches.

Google doesn’t owe small businesses anything and they do have the right to run their search engine however they want. That said, a little honesty and an explanation from someone in Google who has been there more than a year would go a lot further towards building goodwill with small business owners than these half baked explanations dribbled out in the forums.

@David

I am with you that Google should hold to a standard of honest communication. These explanations weren’t just dribbled out, they were dragged as well. It is the height of PR madness and/or puerile behavior to think that they can build trust by acting in an untrustworthy way.

It is conceivable to me that they find themselves in situations when they might not be able to communicate certain issues completely but if they, for tactical or strategic reasons, have made that decision then they should just say: “It is what it is and we will let you know when it is otherwise”.

BS never sits well and most folks can detect at 10 paces with little effort.

Your point on the Locksmith issue is very well taken.

Super post and comments on this issue. The point being made, above, by James Stratford, is one that has struck me as well. Because SEOs/Web Designers so often act as the intro to Local for local businesses, giving these businesses a pain in the neck is perhaps not in the best interests of Google. Because of the on-going experiences of randomness and oddities with Google’s index and historical accountability, I make sure to give new Local clients the most accurate picture I can of what to expect with Google.

You may be #1 today and nowhere tomorrow with no explanation because this is how Google does business in Local. I have no malicious intent in painting this picture for new clients…I’m doing it to set their expectations correctly, based upon what I have observed in this field. This latest change further cements my sense of Google as having a somewhat irresponsible and freewheeling way of ‘handling’ public good. I’ve never attributed their actions to anything sinister…rather, their decisions sometimes appear to me to be undisciplined and poorly-thought-out. Very evidently from the collective experience being reported here, declaring that people searching for web design/SEO have no local intent is incorrect. So, what are the ramifications of this latest Google choice?

1. A further erosion of trust, comfort and goodwill between Google and the very business people who are most likely to act as liaisons between Google and local businesses.

2. Frustrated user intent for searchers who very much do want to work with a local designer or SEO.

3. A lessening of opportunities for SEOs to become intimately acquainted with how Google Maps work by being able to experiment with their own business listings.

4. A less accurate index of real businesses in these fields on a city-by-city basis.

That’s how I’m seeing this.

Mike, Time after time we hear one thing from Google and know the opposite. You can only pull the wool over so many times.

I am not sure that I disagree. I don’t have access to the information that Google has to know what is the appropriate search answer. I do however find fault with their illogical answers.

As a late-ish followup to this issue – I’ve been checking this from a local seo POV and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in my market (Ontario, Canada) the missing 7 pack allows a lot more space for Google’s own adwords promotion.
This has also coincided with almost 80% of my clients receiving $200 of adwords/lbc coupons in the mail. I’m not a tinfoil hat kinda guy but that’s a fairly clear pattern to me.