Has anyone else seen a Google Plus Local listing displace a regular search listing?
-
I have a particular site that I have been working on for about eight months and had the site on Page 1 of Google search results for eight keywords (they are fairly small local-based keywords, so I'm really not trying to boast). Perhaps six weeks ago for two of the keywords we popped into the #2 position for Google Plus Local results. When this happened the site completely disappeared from the regular search results. A couple weeks later, the Google Plus Local listing was gone, and the site was back on Page 1 in the regular listings. This has gone back and forth several times, with either a very high Local result or a very high regular search result, but only one at a time.
I suppose it would make sense for the same site to only be able to have one position on the front page at any given time, but my searches for info on this have been entirely fruitless.
Has anyone else seen anything like this or have any thoughts?
Cheers.
-
Hi Ian,
Yes, what you are experiencing is well-documented. What is happening is that your previous organic rank has been subsumed into your new blended local rank, which takes your on-page/off-page SEO factors into account in addition to other factors like your Google+ profile, citations, reviews etc. So, you haven't 'lost' your organic ranking exactly...it's gone into the mix in creating your local ranking.
In the past, it was very common for powerful businesses to dominate the first page of the SERPs with multiple listings. For example, as single business might be able to achieve a local listing, one or more organic listings, plus directory listings of his business and even image and video listings all on page 1 of the results.
Around the time of the Venice Update (see: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understand-and-rock-the-google-venice-update), this type of dominance changed. Google began showing a greater variety of businesses in the results, and the instance of multiple listings for a single business became quite rare.
Now, some months ago, some articles were published by some excellent Local SEOs who had managed to achieve double listing for clients by using a tactic of optimizing a second page on their site in certain ways. Here are some examples of this:
http://www.nightlitemedia.com/2012/05/organic-and-google-places-ranking-on-page-1/
However, there has been some talk that this tactic isn't working the way it was a couple of months ago.
Also on this topic, past heatmap studies have shown that it's better to have the blended local listing than the organic one:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps
However, recently, I have bumped into conversations in which people are stating that their businesses' CTR rate went down after they were transition from an organic listing to a blended local one, opening discussion as to whether it's really better to achieve high local inclusion if it means losing your previous organic listing.. I don't have a source to quote on that. It's just rumblings I've heard.
So, as you can see, there is a lot of discussion going on about this, and you are not alone in what you're experiencing with your listing. Hope these thoughts and resources help!
-
This has happened to me as well so I am eagerly awaiting a response from someone with knowledge of this.
Currently I have been bumped off Google Plus Local and back on the organic listings. Two weeks ago it was the opposite. At one point a few months back I had them both ranked well in Plus and Organic.
Drives me crazy
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
-
Old brand name being suffixed on Google SERP listings
At the end of some of our listings in Google search results pages, our old brand name is being suffixed even though it is not in our title tags. For context, we re-branded several months ago, and at that time also migrated to a new domain name. Our title tags have our current brand name suffixed, like "Shop Example Category | Example©". In the Google search results, but not in Bing nor Yahoo, about half of our pages have titles whcih instead look like this: "Shop Example Category | Example© - oldBrandName". The "dash" and the old brand name are not in our title tags, but they are being appended, even when our title tags are fairly long. For example, even with titles at 54 characters (421 pixels), the suffix is being appended. BUT, not with our longer title tags. We are actually OK with the brand name being appended if our title tags are on the shorter side, but would prefer that our current brand name be appended instead of the older one. I realize we could increase the length of all our title tags, and perhaps we may go that route. But, does anyone know where Google would be getting the old brand name to append onto the URLs? We've checked and it is not in our page source (the old brand name is used in our page source in some areas of text and some url paths, but not in any kind of meta tag). Per Google's guidance (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-do-not-put-organization-schema-markup-on-every-page/289981/) we only have schema for the "Organization" on our home page, and not on every page. So, assuming this advice is correct to not add schema to every page, how can we inform Google of our current brand name so that it stops appending our old brand name on pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoelevated0 -
Google Search Console indexes website for www but images for non www.
On the google search console, the website data is all showing for the www.promierproducts.com. The images however are indexed on the non www version. I'm not sure why.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeSab1 -
Does anyone know of a Google update in the past few days?
Have seen a fairly substantial drop in Google search console, I'm still looking into it comparing things, but does anyone know if there's been a Google updates within the past few days? Or has anyone else noticed anything? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Is anyone else noticing way longer than usual caching delays in Chrome?
I typically see browsers refresh at 48 hours the longest. We pushed some changes through production about a week ago and Chrome still has the old version cached. I'm seeing some similar posts and wonder if Google is up to something and we are starting to "cache" on (pun intended)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emilydavidson0 -
How to know if your site has been penalized by Google
Hello, One of my clients ranking drop dramatically.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ogdcorp
We believe it was due to an upgrade to his site. While the site was live www.clientdomain.com
Work was being done on the new site www.clientdomain.com/new (1 month) I think google crawled the /new link and took as a content duplication since both sites had the same content. Is there a MOZ tool to see if a site has been penalized or any online tool? Thanks0 -
Fixing A Page Google Omits In Search
Hi, I have two pages ranking for the same keyword phrase. Unfortunately, the wrong page is ranking higher, and the other page, only ranks when you include the omitted results. When you have a page that only shows when its omitted, is that because the content is too similar in google's eyes? Could there be any other possible reason? The content really shouldn't be flagged as duplicate, but if this is the only reason, I can change it around some more. I'm just trying to figure out the root cause before I start messing with anything. Here are the two links, if that's necessary. http://www.kempruge.com/personal-injury/ http://www.kempruge.com/location/tampa/tampa-personal-injury-legal-attorneys/ Best, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
How to get your company on the Google +, Right Hand side box of search results?
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-plus-content-replaces-ads/41452/ We have a Google plus page, but the results aren't coming up there Do you need a certain amount of people in your circles, what is the criteria to get your brand here? Any links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0 -
Google omitting some entries
Hi, I used this tool to test some domains. The tool can be found at http://www.virante.com/seo-tools/duplicate-content I have no questions about the other checks but with the similarity check. My question is how do i get Google not to omit some entries very similar to the top 1000 pages on my site? Will appreciate your answers, thanks. Suleman
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | esuleman0