Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Is Google Reducing the Local Search Result Footprint?
I first noticed this yesterday where every search for “storage + city” returned a 3-pack result regardless of the city that was searched (ie storage Toronto, storage Detroit, storage Miami etc etc etc ). This was true even on international searches like storage Paris, Fr.This change apparently occurred about two weeks ago and despite doing a range of searches both logged in and not, the “storage + city” never returned a Blended Result nor a Pack other than the 3-Pack.
While this search result was strange enough, today at least, many search results that were returning 7 Blended results or the 7-Pack are now returning many fewer pinned results.
So my questions for you:
1)Are any of you in the storage business and how long have you been seeing this 3-pack only result?
2)For all of you, are your local searches now returning fewer pinned results in the main SERPS?
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Comments
131 Comments
@Aubrey
It is a blended result. The fact that no other listing is showing the pin is fortuitous and it happens from time to time. Essentially Google has no other high quality local listing/website to show within the constraints of the geography that is showing.
We do local search for about 100 HVAC companies around the country and have seen the smaller Local results for about a month. To Aubrey’s comment above the lone listing, I believe it is more a testimony to the competition not engaging in Places adequately or consistently. We started seeing it a month and 1/2 ago in smaller markets where competitor’s claimed Places listings started falling away.
Another change to note that just happened in the last few days is that the website preview from the map pack no longer gives you the link to the web page’s cached copy like it used to–yet the organic listing still does.
We are finding the the SERPs to be totally, completely, utterly RANDOM. 3, 4, 5, 7, packs, non-blended, to no local listings at all. There are no obvious clues to reveal any methodology. It just seems random like a few fore-shocks to a major quake that we don’t see coming. Uh oh.
I see the same thing happening in the Los Angeles searches.
[…] a blog post yesterday, Mike Blumenthal pointed out that Google has reduced the presence of Google Places […]
Hey Mike,
Based on what you showed in this post, our team’s been working on pulling together some initial observations of the new SERP based on a wide variety of searches. We’re planning some tests, but if you’re interested, you can check out our initial observations here: http://www.simpartners.com/observations-on-google%E2%80%99s-new-serp/
Thanks for drawing attention to this Mike.
If I may be so bold, I think I may have the winner for “Most Outrageous 3-Pack of the Year” …
“plastic surgeon albany ny”
http://www.google.com/search?q=plastic+surgeon+albany+ny&pws=0
After almost 2 years of doing everything under the local-seo sun to make it into the Albany map-packs for plastic surgery, I’m ready to call it a day and put the money allocated each month for local seo towards PPC instead (n.b. – not all SEO, just local).
::Did you hear that Google! I give up! Your Kafkanian ways have won the day. I’ll never pay anyone other than you again. Happy now??::
Cries in the dark aside, I do seriously wonder if wearing down SMBs until they roll over and go all in on PPC isn’t the underlying end-game here. Think about all the time and money being spent-on/’invested’-into local seo by SMBs. How much more frustrating/opaque/amorphous/indiscriminate do the local SERPs need to become before a majority of the businesses in any given search market give up trying to ‘go around google’s gate’?
Mike,
I saw 3 pacs, 4 pacs, 5 pacs, 7 pacs. and even a 2 pac. I show images here http://www.milkmen.com/blog/2-pac-4-pac-5-pac-what-the-faq/
I’m excited to go find the 9 pac as well. Woah! Crazy results.
[…] I found this one after reading Mike Blumenthals post today. Nice find Joseph […]
@Michal,
I don’t understand any of it. When you search in Google for a local business, lets say a plumber, it’s nice to see Google present the user with 10 local plumbers to choose from. What could possibly be not user friendly with that? Instead you suggest Google should present what?- links to local “niche” plumber directories where the user must now choose from yet another list of 10 local plumbers?
@Will DeLuca
UGH! Hear what you’re saying. I wouldn’t get discouraged though. Google search results are like the weather – if you don’t like it, wait a day. I don’t think this will all stick.
Think about the repercussions… IF the user tests show that the majority of eyeballs and clicks go to the Maps listings, then Google is essentially giving 3 businesses the bulk of the clicks and business in uber competitive niches.
Lets say 8% of users click on PPC according to most stats leaving 92% to click on organic. Let’s say ~70% (rough rough ballpark) of those users click on maps listings because they are “Prominent” and eye catching, meaning roughly 64% of users are clicking on those THREE listings, hypothetically. That doesn’t seem like they’re serving the “best” or most ‘relevant’ results, at all.
I just can’t see those results sticking over time. Too many negative repercussions.
@ Jacob Puhl: i believe you’re bit dewy-eyed regarding Google is handling repercussions on changes they made.
Exception: maybe not in case they made “changes” accidentally.
Unfortunately we dont know yet.
@ehg lol yes, maybe I have too much ‘trust’. I am actually a believer their goal is to provide the ‘best’ results while juggling the whole ‘profit maximization’ idea as they go hand in hand. Otherwise you’d see a page completely full or PPC (which we are approaching. ugh. so maybe I should reconsider).
Long term profit max = proving best results for the user over the long term. I just can’t believe these results will prove to be the best for the user, at all. Time will tell I suppose.
In Canada, we’re seeing decreases too. Our real estate related terms used to be a 7 pack and now it’s down to 4. We’re ok with that for now as we are number 1. 🙂
Hadn’t noticed until you brought it up, but yeah a LOT of my clients niches (DDS, BK Attorney, Photo) are not too excited about this 3-Pack phenom going on.
Hi Mike thanks for your more than interesting bog on this article.
I can confirm that your right about less GP’s results showing.
Personally I believe that Google are separating mobile and non mobile results.
The SEO’s jobs will very soon involve a lot of walking around searching via a smart phone.
We are not very far off most Google local search’s being made via mobile devices instead of home / office based static computers.
In the end there will me non mobile results and totally different mobile based results.
e.g.
Home computer search for my line of business shows me results like im used to searching via a static computer.
Now I go out and about with my Iphone and I see very similar results but if I search for “service + location”.
BUT if I just search the very shorthand version “plumber” e.g. I see a totally different set of results.
I have also noticed new web button “use my location”
So I click on “use my location” then the phone warns me that I’m going to share my location so I agreed.
Now the results are ordered by closest first seemingly regardless of ranking e.g. reviews ect.
I think that Google want places to gain reviews and then use “Google Adwords Express” to promote their reviews, therefore earn more revenue.
I’m starting to advise some of my customers to spend more time learning selling via Ebay than relying on their Google places ranking.
Very sad to see Google going the way it’s heading.
The reason I’m saying this is because Ebay is a very stable system where’s Google is totally NOT.
To the original question from Mike… yes we are seeing those changes in So Cal now for some pretty competitive searches. The annoying thing is that one of the three packs we are seeing has 3 listings and all of them are complete spam (same phone for 5 different listings throughout the region, all PMB, and all have domains with the keyword and city). It is like Google is flashing back to 2009 when they dropped us down to 3-5 packs for about 8 months before giving up and heading back out to the 7-10 pack.
On a personal note I actually took a significant step this last week… I switched all of my personal computers/ smart-phones to default to Bing as their home page.
I noticed similar results locally here in the Vancouver area a couple of weeks ago too. In fact I’m quite certain I noticed this trend in December on occasion and as the unpredictability continued I have been slowly adapting by services to rely less on Google Places Pages as a source of management fee based income.
Google is making changes at such a rapid rate to many things but for GPP’s I believe that this rather ‘volatile’ behavior on serp’s will continue for some time.
Although I’ve been no stranger to Google (hence my nickname) and how it functions over the years as a sales and marketing employee in other fields, my newly created business began with a plan that relied heavily on this great new product in Google Places.
As a result and for my own financial health and for the sake of my reputation, my GPP’s services are merely a ‘value added’ support service to my own (and much evolved) business plan now, and the continuing education resulting from the latest marketing trends that we have little control over such as these.
There have been a great many people selling Google Places Pages services really hard and making all sorts of promises about page one ranking and I am finding that some of them are scrambling right now as a result of money back guarantees for Google Places Page results.
I’m glad I had the insight to know that we, as marketing people, have no control over what Google (or any engine) will do at any given time and control the urge to make such claims for a fast buck.
The evolution of Google Places Pages have a long way to go and I’m certain they are here to stay, but because it is such a unique product and so different than conventional websites (being a unified identical template with strict parameters), we need to be very careful not to put too many eggs in one basket.
Simon Scott
Mike: in our category–home energy efficiency contractors, energy auditors–almost everything has gone to 3 or 5, even in locations with the most players. I think @Stever is on to something with the comment about directories. Anecdotal so far, but it does seems to coincide with the return of better rankings for Service Magic in particular and to a lesser extent Angies List and some others.
To help out, I thought I would throw these results in. I was going through some of our clients and found that every keyword + the city we target now generate blended results.
For example, in a sample of 100 keywords myriad of nitches all of them produce blended boxes ranging 1-9. If you were to plot them out on a graph they would create a very nice bell curve. 🙂 The most predominant being a Blended 4 followed by 3 and 5 with the outliers being 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, and 9.
Two weeks ago these same 100 keywords were generating Pure 7 boxes or Blended 7 organic results – with only 12 terms generating some other version of a map.
If you don’t have your places SEO and Off Page optimization strategy in place – then apparently – it’s time to get one. 🙂
Mercedes,
Thanks for those results! What tracking software are you using that shows you the “box” size? I have software that tells me if it’s a pack, blended or organic. But I don’t know of anything that tells you how many are in the pack and would LOVE to find one that does.
Thanks in advance for sharing!
@Linda –
I work with David Sprague the creator of Maps Marketing Blueprint. The software I use is our proprietary Google Places Analyzer called Maps Marketing Analyzer. We developed it for our members so they can do competitive research in their nitch. It also gives you the map results and how the boxes breakdown. If your interested in taking a look at it I would be happy to send you a copy. 🙂
While all this is happening, my sense is that Goog is pushing Maps more than Places…Or at least equally. Could this be a two directory strategy. Kind of like having two products in the same category with different brands from the same manufacturer (Chevrolet and Pontiac). Adding Google+ adds even more intrigue.
All of this may make our jobs harder, but it also makes it harder for the clients. Bad news, good news.
I see it happen at my realestate site.
I have only been doing SEO for about 3 months, And right as I think I am making some headway, a 2 by 4 has found its way to my head. I started on my brothers website in Lake Havasu City Az, (Stonetrix.com) which is a smaller market. Then moved to my companies website (Pawn1st.net), where I am targeting 3 competitive markets simultaneously with 7 locations in 5 separate cities. Needless to say I am on the internet or my phone extensively studying similarities and differences. I search many keyword variations for each target niche and have seen a variety of changes for the last three weeks. Still today I see craziness. Pawn shops phoenix is a stack of three and title loans phoenix is 7. I think that title loans will be decreased as well. I think on some level they are trying to condense keyword variations so there isn’t as many placement variations while at the same time setting a higher standard for placement. There is also intricacies of Google plus to consider as well as the many levels of advertising, from new Google products to other companies like phone book directories. It, on some level, will work as a scare tactic. This will narrow the window and make us play the game harder with a major focus on quality. I also think this will bring more jobs to the SEO industry. I can be way off and have a lot more theories in my head I can’t put into words, as I am sure everyone does. I don’t think they are done thou. I am still very green in this new industry and still have many dots to connect but very addicted and truly set on figuring much of it out. Take care
Yeah, saw this happening and punched the air. SEO wins out!
The interesting thing here is not that Google change things, but that people are still surprised when they make those changes. 🙄
At the moment Google search is a MESS. Something has to change and I commented on Matt Cutts blog about this recently. Down the local pub for the last few months, people have been saying things like “What’s the matter with Google now? I can’t find anything any more.”
Once upon a time I used Alta Vista for all my search, then the new guy Google showed up. It was beautiful. It was clean and uncluttered. I switched.
A decade+ later and what do we have?
A cluttered, confusing and unfriendly 3-column horror. It looks ugly, there’s too much clutter, and to a new user (BIG gov push in the UK now to get more people on the internet in 2012 – currently only 19m out of 60m population) there’s no clarity of what they should be clicking on.
When I first saw Places I thought “Uho, how long will this last?” and to my surprise it’s lasted much longer than I thought it would, but I don’t see any longevity in it at all. So to all the non-SEO Johhny-come-lately businesses that have sprung up and are ticked off because they’ve promised something they had no chance of delivering…
You’d better start learning SEO. 😉
You’ll find it takes more work (which you can outsource), but it’s far more lucrative than charging a one-off couple of hundred dollars for a “guaranteed” *cough* page 1 listing.
What I’m trying to say here is you shouldn’t rely on the occasional gimmicks like getting a client into Google Places. Yeah it’s a nice little sideline but that’s all it should be. Don’t take it seriously, it could be relegated to a menu of its own at any time.
As someone has hinted at in a previous comment, this could all just be a marketing ploy by Google and I wouldn’t put it past them to do this, their marketing people are SMART.
Here’s the marketing plan that seems most likely to me.
Step 1 – Make it easy for local businesses to get on page 1.
Step 2 – Wait while the word gets round and a whole new “Places” industry starts up selling local businesses on the importance of being on page 1. (Free marketing and education for Google.)
Step 3 – When enough local businesses are happy and getting the benefits of being on page 1… Pull the plug on places and relegate it to a menu item.
All those businesses that were relying on Places for their coverage will instantly disappear from search. Where a couple of years ago a business might not be that bothered to be on page 1, well now they’re really going to miss it and want it back.
And HOW do they get back on page 1?
Why, Google to the rescue… For a price… 😉
AdWords!
The learning point?
You can’t beat good SEO and you can’t avoid the work that comes with it. It’s a fools errand to do so, and especially dangerous if you’re making promises to local businesses you can’t keep…
-Frank Haywood
P.S. I’ve started using DuckDuckGo.com for my own search, it’s lovely. Just like Google used to be when it started only better.
Prediction: Word will spread. DDG will replace Google search over the next 5 years…
I have noticed that major categories seem to be showing a blended 5 in our area, and 3 or 4 for searches with typically less volume. In fact, I’ve even seen searches in a relatively large city show ZERO local results for terms like “carpet cleaning” etc. IMHO, I think Google is going to tighten the reigns a bit, and that the old 7 will be the new 5. I wonder what percentage of people actually click on Places listings in spots 6 and 7? Where does Google make more money? On a site with Adsense or on a Places listing…. Which is better from a users perspective?
My other thought is also this:
How many businesses across the country got SOME traffic being in the lower spots and are now not showing on page 1?
And how many of those said businesses now realize the power of being on page 1 and decide to either A) hire a local marketing expert/seo company or B) get phone calls from Google inquiring about Adwords Express?
@Mike
What are your thoughts on this? Also, lol…. how many comments does it take to make them DF?
Ok – wanted to take a look at the distribution of the 3 pack vs. the rest of the packs based on the discussion and the comments of @Mercedes, by hand. I took 3 separate cities – on large, medium and small and took roughly the top 50 local search categories based on advertising spend from some old data we have.
See the results here (natural caveat – small sample size)
https://docs.google.com/a/firegang.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At6KHegDOmFEdFRQNHhGWXFkdWZYMllCTDNvSzhkTlE#gid=1
Conclusions –
The distribution did NOT seem to matter based on the cities.
3 pack is most popular (~1/3) followed by 4 then 5 (confirming Mercedes 🙂 )
Some “0” packs/no packs are being shown, even for competitive local searches
Local Category didn’t seem to show any consistency. In other words, the search for “accountant + city” seems to show different # pack in different cities (consistent with previous searches). Seems to be no pattern based on competitiveness and radius shown.
We’d need to spread this out over more cities, but there doesn’t seem to be any consistencies across categories or city population.
I also plan on doing this at different points in time to see if the results are changing by week or month. Any other thoughts are welcomed.
There is no doubt that ranking in GP will continue to be difficult to attain if the current pack system remains. Some of my current clients have been pushed out of the new “3 or 4-packs” by listings with non-optimized pages, fewer citations, etc.
Now to beging the process of how to overcome this new challenge.
Thanks
James
@Eric
My thoughts haven’t changed a great deal. A business needs an integrated approach to online marketing in general and search in particular. With Google that means you need 1)To do well and Local and 2)Do well on your website 3)be sure to use their other products and is likely to mean 4) that you need to do well Search Plus Your World with a truly local footprint.
@Jacob
Did you distinguish between the Blended and Pack results?
On some searches like insurance agent + ANY City and “ahref=”http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=storeage+Birmingham&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8”>storage + ANY city Google is ONLY showing traditional 3 packs and no blended results regardless of the city.
@Jacob Puhl – I was hopeful too… and still am to some degree. That said, given all the effort we’ve put into Google Maps Optimization, to have 1 plastic surgery practice own ALL 3 listings in the 3-Pack… well, I can’t help but feel a bit jaded and foolish for having invested so heavily into local (re: google displays the practice and 2 of it’s surgeons).
How could any algorithm ever consider that result ‘helpful’ to end-users?
It can’t, which is why I’m beginning to think that the slow yet steady metamorphosis of Google Local/Maps into a kafkafian absurdity and/or fools errand is part of some larger strategy whose objective is simply to wear down the 95% of SMBs that don’t presently show up in whatever map-pack is being displayed on page 1 for searches of their services. After concluding that their attempts to play by google’s “rules” are hopeless, I suspect most small business will gladly buy into whatever PPC/pay-to-play “solution” Google offers them…
n.b – And that only covers half of it … for the past 8 months, my primary listing “DeLuca Plastic Surgery” has had to deal with being merged and unmerged with the listing of another plastic surgeon with an office in the same building. Check out the 2nd map pack: http://www.google.com/search?q=deluca+plastic+surgery+albany&pws=0
We’ve tried everything to separate his listing from ours and yet it still keeps merging together. 4 weeks ago the listing showed our phone number [(518) 724-2444] and address (Suite #123) but his business name. Now it’s his phone number and address, but our reviews and photos.
At this point, I’m not even sure if the great Mike Blumenthal can untangle this mess.
@Mike,
For those purposed, “pack” is any maps listings. We’re seeing extreme variations in how the results are coming up blended vs traditional and in between. Sometimes, plural is triggering a switch and sometimes not.
Exs:
roofer dallas: BLENDED
roofers dallas – TRADITIONAL
accountant dallas: BLENDED
accountants dallas: BLENDED
Insurance Agent Rochester – BLENDED
Insurance Agents Rochester – TRADITIONAL
Its interesting to pluralize the agents in Albany above brings up blended vs traditional, so Albany looks like:
Insurance Agent Albany – BLENDED
Insurance Agents Albany – TRADITIONAL
Would need to do some more searches to see if there is any form of consistency… #scratchinghead
@Dr Deluca
I was just looking at your listing again today. Within the last 4 to 6 weeks Google tightened down their dupe removal routine…. what once was usually acceptable in the eyes of the algo appears to no longer be so… that is the use of a single phone number for both the practice and the practitioner. So besides your historical merging issues you will have that to contend with.
@Jacob
What I found so odd about insurance agents AND storage was the complete consistency across markets in the use of the traditional 3-pack
@Mike
Thanks for following up! Very much appreciated.
Question… is the algo only tightening on new (or relatively new) businesses? All of the practitioners at The Plastic Surgery Group list the same phone number as the practice (see: http://www.google.com/search?q=plastic+surgeon+albany+ny&pws=0).
@Dr DeLuca
Unfortunately it is not a hard and fast thing. It depends on Google’s sources, the quantity of their souces, their trust in the sources, how much they tighten down the merge/purge routine etc etc. I have observed and been advised by Google that two listings with the same address and same phone number are more likely to be merged.
I just typed in attorneys in Paris, France, Berlin, Germany, New York City, New York, and in San Diego, California ranging from 3 to 5 the only one where I got 5 was in San Diego. Is google starting to limit how many businesses are published?
@jake
We don’t know what logic google is using but the results are that many fewer location pins are showing.
@Mike Talk about making it harder on the people trying to be published for the locals to see huh?
@jake
Not necessarily. Like all of these types of changes there are opportunities and not just difficulties.
For example, It now makes searches that were once out of reach for a suburban location due to the vagaries of local search now within reach.
I think businesses need to take a balanced approach. If they pay attention to both web and local and
Social they will do ok regardless
The competition in our area which occupy the new packs are all non optimized pages. No photos, videos, description filled with keywords and no reviews but yet they are in the pack and our fully optimized listings are gone…..what is going on? Now we only have 3 packs and they put these crappy pages ahead of ours?
@Mike. Being balanced make sense but it’s extremely difficult and time consuming for a small business to have to watch all 3 fronts…local, web and social. Sure we can hire someone to do it but it may not be affordable to do all three. I got help with our local google pages and was satisfied with the work by a local SEO company but having someone cover all 3 areas seems a bit costly…of course, we could always do PPC but I personally don’t care for it.
@Jack
That’s very true. But it can be done over time and in small, affordable increments IF 1)you build a good website with appropriate SEO structure 2)leverage your customers for social and reviews, 3)have an ongoing, slow & steady plan for obtaining citations and links through your normal business contacts and 4)use email to drive all of the above on a regular basis.
It is difficult, it can be expensive so you need to educate yourself and develop a manageable plan that you can afford both in time and money.
@Jack,
The future of search is going to involve much more social elements so small businesses will have to employ all 3. But like Mike said this can be achieved with an ongoing, slow and steady plan and leveraging your customers for portions of social.
Mike, thank you for calling attention to this issue. I spent some time looking into the matter and many local search results relating to the real estate industry in San Diego have gone from 7 packs to 4 packs.
Google seems to have lost enough revenue on adwords because of maps. They might have definitely increased their revenues. Another form of increasing the revenue would be to push the maps further down and Goog has already started paid advertising for google places.. so the listings will fight for the top 3 positions and Google will start minting money!!
This just started happening and is effecting all verticals like auto repair (geo modifier) and deep tissue massage Tampa. In my opinion this is google making searcher utilize the tabs: everything, image, video, maps, news, blogs and places.
Hi Mike,
Several days ago I agreed with the majority after seeing more and more 7-packs convert to 3, 4, 5 and 6 packs but recently started finding 8-packs. In Plamen’s comment a 10 pack is listed. This is making me doubt that the change was caused by Google losing revenue on adwords because of maps.
Search: PR Firms San Diego CA
I run a driving school in Brighton England and over the years have become obsessed by the 7 pack. To my horror my key search “driving lessons Brighton” now produces a 4-pack. I don’t mind the competition by my well optimized, well reviewed page with plenty of citations (as recommended by Google) has been surpassed by place pages that are very “ordinary”
We are seeing the same thing for queries like “seattle wedding photographer”. This used to return a 7 pack, and now we are seeing a 3 pack.
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