Has anyone else seen a Google Plus Local listing displace a regular search listing?

[IanKietzman27]

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.

[MiriamEllis]

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/

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/local-search-general-discussions/719-lqqk-incredible-shrinking-local-serps-traffic-drops.html

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!

[TheAcupuncturist]

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