Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google Places Search – 8, 9 or More Local Results to a Page – This is not a test, I repeat, this is not a test…
It appears that Google is willing to fill the results page with local Places Search results if they are in fact the most relevant results on a given search.
Mike Ramsey, our intrepid Idaho local marketer, alerted me to the occurence of 9 local results showing on the search: Boston Personal Injury Lawyer. I ran the search against Safari Mac, Firefox Mac, IE 8, Chrome PC and all are showing 9 local search results.
All of the results had reasonably optimized websites and claimed Places pages. The fact that the results are showing in Idaho and NY and are visible across major browsers on different platforms indicates that this is unlikely to be a test. It seems clear that Google is now not arbitrarily limiting local results to a specific number on the page if there are relevant blended Places results for the query. For the Boston lawyer search, a directory site was not visible in the first two pages of results with Superpages and Avvo respectively showing results at positions 5 and 6 on page 3.
As recently as the end of October, Andrew Shotland was seeing strong IYP traffic on sites he was monitoring and wrote the post Maybe Local Directories Aren’t Dead After All?. He noted that “rumors of the Yellow Pages death have been greatly exaggerated”.
Clearly, there are opportunities still for IYPs but they also seem to be becoming smaller as time moves on.
Here is a screen shot….
(Click to view larger)
A similar result, although with only 8 local listings, shows for the search submitted by Plamen yesterday for Bail Bond Service Sacramento Ca. with the first directory result showing on page 2.
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Comments
25 Comments
Hi Mike,
Do you think we could see local results blended on page 2 at some stage?
@Ewan
Yes, I do. Here is another interesting test result showing just that- blended results on Page 2 of the serps that Mike Wilter at Nevermoresearch found.
Wow. Things really are in flux right now. Makes user testing difficult! 🙂
Wow, Carter’s presentation at Kelsey Group next week might have just gotten a lot more uncomfortable… :/
Funny that the first “organic” result on your first screen shot is with Google Tag – highlighting their website (obviously it’s old… since the website tagging is no longer available). Now I understand why Goog decided to remove the website tagging option… with the mixed reults the website is pretty much promoted without the tagging… 🙂
@David
Cool.. 🙂
Maybe you could ask some good ones for me
Mike,
Just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy reading your site. I found some comments you had made through the whole Google missing review nightmare. Keep up the good work….
What are the odds that this whole thing is one huge horrific horrible Corporate screwup that the folks from 29 different dysfunctional departments within the Google complex are scrambling to unscramble! Just a thought…..
Hi Mike (or anyone for that matter :),
What are your thoughts on the floating map in the right hand column of the SERPS? I find it strange that Google would purposely cover the Paid Search ads, a significant portion of their advertising revenue as well as aggravate businesses participating in the Paid Search programme by covering the ad space they are paying for. Personally I never click on the paid ads anyway but I still find it strange.
@Brian
That they are and it not only makes testing hard, it make planning and executing hard as well….
@Abby
Yes, the website tag becomes pretty redundant in this situation.
@Jason
Thank you and welcome to the blog.
@Dan
50- 50?
@Gmanicvs
I don’t think about it that much. I assume that Google tested it for user experience and we don’t have access to that info to know their reaction…. I presume that they were happy and in the end with all of the many changes, Google is profiting as well. From the stats I have looked at the change doesn’t negatively affect most clients…. so all that being said, I just relate to it as what is…
@Mike…..lol…that was my Exact odds, just needed some comforting confirmation to this continuing conundrum
@dan
It is not clear yet that this is more than a test yet but I am thinking of writing a self-help book for google Maps watchers. 🙂
@Mike….ahhh I see a best seller in your future! 🙂
I have to admit that I like the look of these pages way more than mixed results. I can’t stand a broken up place pack with mixed in purely-organic results. My opinion is that this (and the 10 places result page) is the most relevant for searchers using geo terms in their query. Just keep it consistent or I seriously might use bing. seriously.
@ Mike (Ramsey),
I’m with you!
It seems as though G is testing several things in regards to local – all the time. I saw this for a local query on google.dk:
http://twitpic.com/39guld
1 organic
3 local results
besides the paid results – that’s it??
@Rasmus
That’s an unusual one….
There are more variations of old and new style that it is almost impossible to catalog them all… sometimes they still show an old style 2 or 3 pack, sometimes even an old style 7 pack… on blended they have a range … and then they are obviously testing within and between results styles… all the while integrating changes and tweaks…. I hope they are taking good notes. 🙂
Interesting. I wonder if Google will get rid of their Maps as a separate search altogether. Why have them independent of each other at this point?
@Rasmus – I get similar results when my browser go nuts. So I try the same search in a new tab. These results are not stable. It’s strange that Google is so buggy and still is the best search engine around.
Seems like “reasonably optimized websites” along with “Place pages” are one of the regular factors here, amazing to still see industries where Place pages are not accounted for and sites not optimized. But then again, businesses operated for years without ever being in the phone book.
@Jenn
My sense is that Maps still has “classic value” in directions and has a lot of forward facing value as an interface for the future (think earth, checkins, buzz etc ).
@Michael
Yes the range of preparedness is amazing. What has always intriued me is the ability of Local/Maps/Places algo to scale simultaneous across that range of signal.
same up here, ie 9-Pack and all local on google.ca for same keyword phrase…here —
http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&source=hp&biw=1607&bih=911&q=boston+personal+injury+lawyer&rlz=1R2GGIE_en&aq=f&aqi=g1g-v2&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=145a373b65299f42
BUT…when I change the phrase to “toronto personal injury lawyer” I would have thought that we canucks are behind the US…taint so, tho as yup same 9-Pack local too…
I wonder, if any of our .uk or .au SEO types see the same in their own googles???
sigh…this is like very much more learning than I wanted to do, eh…
sigh…guess I’ve gotta look at our roster again….
sigh…oh, well, least I’ve got the weekend to spend on this…
🙁
Jim
Hi Mike,
Just had the chance to see some “local-merged” 3-packs & 4-packs without any organic results here in Germany – see my blog entry: http://bit.ly/gfGg8D
They have been doing this for the past few weeks, the detect location and show results near to us..
Now localization seems to be a main agenda for search optimization..
Has anyone else noticed that you will get two completely different results when instant search is turned on and off using the same search inquiry? Give it a try and see what happens. I know they’ve said it doesn’t affect ranking results but is sure gives two different results every time.
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