Appearing in Universal Results drops us from Organic Results
-
Hi all,
Has anyone noticed that achieving an appearance in the Universal Results (7 box) forced their previous organic ranking to drop out completely for that keyword? I thought Google would still show us in Universal AND Organic. Is this typical?
Here's what happened:
Last Week: Ranked no. 6 in standard organic results for specific keyword (but 7 box universal results appear ahead of us between position 3 and 4 and we're not listed)
This Week: We added ourselves to Google Places a few weeks ago and this week we suddenly appear in the desirable 7 box Universal result, which is much higher and better ranking - great! But interestingly we notice at the same time our normal organic ranking at no.6 has dropped out completely (-50 in moztool).
Is it an either/or for Organic vs. Universal or can you ever keep ranking in both?
-
Thanks for your answers! So our local universal 7 box result links to our homepage, rather than Place page - great, but sometimes I see Google decides to link to a companies Place page instead. Why?
And how can we ensure it stays linking to our homepage rather than Place page? Do we lnow what factors influence this? And Is it ok to get Place reviews or might this cause it toshore Place page instead ?
Thanks!
-
Hi Emerald,
Michael is correct. The phenomenon which have experienced is one that has become common since the Venice update in 2012. The best way I can describe this is that your previous organic rank (typically for your homepage) has been subsumed into your new local rank. It is very uncommon these days for any business to have both an organic and local ranking on page one of Google's results, pointing to their homepage. However, also as Michael says, it is sometimes possible to get an interior page to rank organically for a second spot in the SERPs, but this really depends upon how competitive the keyword phrase you are going after is.
-
Hi,
We have experienced similar and in my experience if the 7 locals slot in between say 3 and 4, these effectively become 3-{4,5,6,7,8,9,10}-11 so the natural rank 4 is really 11th.
The reason I say this is I have noticed results moving up out of the local listings, into the top few and then back down into the local. This has been across several companies in the past 6 months, mind you just for one industry.
In my experience the only additional pages which you can rank in addition to having a local listing, is a sub-page. Although we have seen a local listing and also organic homepage listing ranking as high as middle of the second page.
I hope this has been of some assistance, just my observations from our listings.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why rich snippets have disappeared in Google search results ?
Hello, Few weeks ago, we have implemented a snippets strategy in order to increase our ranking for our blog posts. That was successful and our results were showing up in Google. But today, every single snippet has disappeared. We go back to a simple search result, without snippets for us or for our competitors. It seems that Google has delete rich snippet for specific keywords because for the generic keywords (for exemple "inbound marketing definition" in our case), there is still a snippet result. Do you know if Google has changed snippets parameters for keywords with low search volume ? Thank you !
SERP Trends | | Laure-Nile0 -
Search results vary in chrome vs other browsers even in Incognito mode: Google's stand?
Hi all, We use incognito mode or private browsing to check the Actual results which are not impacted by previous history, location (sometimes), etc. Even we browse this way, we can see the different search results. Why would this happen? What's Google's stand on this? What is the actual way to browse to get the unbiased results for certain search queries? I have experienced that Chrome will rank our own websites bit higher compared to the other browsers even in incognito mode. Thanks
SERP Trends | | vtmoz1 -
Google News results ...can it be SEOed?
Hello Everyone. I simply wanted to know if anyone had some useful insight on what it takes for a legitimate website to appear within the Google News results. I have rarely, or ever, had to dabble in this kind of SEO, but after coming across a situation with a perfectly legitimate website, I'm now scratching my head. The site in question is a very well established website, with 0 "seo" done to it. All links organic, all traffic legit and they have VERY strong social media presence. The site's current DA is 50. Its a 3 letter domain. Some of the points I believe are important quantity and quality of content (% of aggregated vs actually original content) overall % of "news" content vs rest of the site content authors/writers credentials (how would Google evaluate the authority of a writer, so his/her content is newsworthy?) overall site authority rich snippet and code needed to be indexed? I think rel publisher or rel author tags have something to do with it? making sure to have basic SEO in place: canonical tag, unique headers, etc. What am I missing? They have one particular competitor that seem to be ranking for almost everything news related, while being a similar site in content and authority, however they are nowhere. They have submitted to Google News before (not even sure what that means) but have failed to be included -- does this put a "stain" on them for any reason or impede the possibility of being indexed in the Google News results in the future? ANY input is appreciated.
SERP Trends | | 1stOTLJK0 -
Looking at acquiring a competitor with a high organic ranking (WordPress Plugin)
I'm looking at acquiring a competitor who operates a WordPress plugin with the same function as mine (although ours is much better - they used this plugin to acquire leads for other software). We're trying to determine the best way to execute it. They are the number 1 result on a very high value search, and the number 3 on another (which appears to the source of all their customer acquisition, they are simply a very well named, long existing WordPress plugin, and so haven't had to fight much to keep their ranking). Ideally, we'd be able to take over that ranking, but I'm not sure if that is possible. For one thing, they don't have a website beyond the WordPress plugin, so even if we wanted to, we couldn't 301 redirect it (as far as I know). Second, wouldn't a 301 redirect likely result in entirely losing the ranking? We are actually highly relevant to anyone who ends up at this plugin (the owner has actually been recommending us and contacted us because his customers who have left have had a good experience), and wouldn't be redirecting it to piggyback on the link juice, we'd be trying to acquire the customers that have been discovering this plugin organically. I understand why Google defaults to policies making purchasing high ranking domains not very valuable. However, it seems like if you've built a company that derives a high volume of its leads (and thus acquisition value) from organic search, that there would be a way for a company in the same space to acquire at least the rankings, if not the link juice. Hopefully that was clear, if not, let me know where I lost you, and I'll attempt to clarify. Thanks!
SERP Trends | | alecfwilson0 -
Why would so many links be appearing in the source code of this page - but not on the page itself?
Hi everyone, Have a look at the source code of this page: http://www.daleproaudio.com/c-332-mixers.aspx Notice the numerous links in the source code that do not appear on the page. Is this cloaking? Or is it a by-product of their use of Nextopia? Bonus points if anyone knows what platform this site is running on 🙂 Thanks!
SERP Trends | | danatanseo0 -
What are realistic goals for local serch results?
I have a brand new domain, 2 months old, and am just finishing design. What are realistic goals for the 1rst year in local search results? My competition appears to be the local directories. Manta, yellowpages, angieslist, BBB and so on. Is it realistic to expect to eventually outrank them for the local search terms? (City Service Keyword) If so, what is a realistic time frame for someone putting in 10 to 15 hours a week on SEO, Including content creation. This was the humbling report I just ran. Looks like my choices are to beat them or pay them excessive amounts of money. http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty/results.html?commit=Run+Report&date=2013-02-19&engine_id=96&keywords=Lakeville+snow+plowing&utf8=✓
SERP Trends | | dwallner0 -
Does PPC Help your Organic Placement?
I need to settle this debate with fact not opinions. Does keeping a steady flow of PPC generate ANY organic benefit within google, applying only to the increased ranking of organic keywords. To put it bluntly by paying google money does my organic SEO get better?
SERP Trends | | entourage2120 -
Site search in Google results
If you Google 'Rightmove', you'll see they have a site search bar in the Google search results - please see image link. Anybody have any idea how they have managed to achieve this? jRz8l
SERP Trends | | RiceMedia0