Did Google Just Punish Organic For Showing Up In Local?
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Google pushed the local search results in a prominent spot on a ton of search results. That means (for me) that all first page rankings (including a lot of 1st place rankings) have completely disappeared.
Subfolders still rank and homepage still ranks where local search is not included. This is weird. Is this a glitch or is there something we can do about this?
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Hi Peter,
Like Pashmina, I'm wondering if what you are seeing relates to the Venice update. Did you catch Mike Ramsey's YouMoz post on this?
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understand-and-rock-the-google-venice-update
Some changes have definitely happened.
Miriam
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Isn't this just a reflection of Google Venice affecting the algorithm? Now, search queries without geo modifiers will also return local results if Google believes it is relevant.
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I dont know for sure what it is. That was just a guestimate.
BTW I did say "probably" and I was implying that Google updates are scrambling results.. Regardless of location.
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What do you mean by that, Donnie? It is fairly clearly linked to the presence of local results on the query. Results without a local character are not affected (from what I see at least).
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Probably preparing/ adjusting the new algorithms for over optimized SEO sites.
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I'm having a similar experience at the moment.
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I am seeing (as of this morning) that lots of the SERPs that I watch are completely scrambled. The rankings of sites are shuffling like the Google dances of 2003.
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