Dropped from Universal Result: Local
-
For quite some time our Google Places listing has been in the Universal Results...(for this keyword there is a 7-pack result). Which was great, we had a PPC ad at the top of the page, we were 3rd in the Universal Results (there was 3 places listings before the natural results)...and we were 6th in the natural results - meaning we were on the first page 3 times...which means a happy boss....and lots of traffic.
The old places listing was linked to our new Google+ Page pending the eventual demise of places and the merge.
The merge has happened, all information from the places listing has migrated (apart from reviews and photos??) and the places listing has been deleted (URL returns 404 error).
Problem is now my Google + Page is not even within the first 2 or 3 pages of places results never mind in the Universal results. So it would appear the rank / authority that the places listing had...hasn't been transferred to the Google+ page.
My competitors...who were in 1 + 2 in the universal results above the natural results and who have Google+ Pages with NOTHING on...bar their name, are still there!
Why would I be dropped when my Google+ Page, has more info, more followers, more photos, more relevant content (they don't have any content ) than my 2 competitors. It seems I've been penalised....somebody suggested that I had the keyword twice in my "About" and twice in my "Introduction" info and that could be it. I thought the loss of the review might be it too...but neither of the businesses now occupying the first 3 spots..have any reviews at all.
Anybody else suffered from this? Anybody any other suggestions to why I might have been dropped so dramatically in the places listings? (My SERP listing is unaffected for this keyword)
Keyword being mentioned twice hardly seems like "stuffing"!
I'm actually not too concerned about the places ranking....not a great driver of traffic...but appearing in the Universal Results did obviously drive traffic...and to appear in the Universal Results...I've now got about 30 positions to climb......
The whole Google+ Local / Google Places thing has been a nightmare from start to finish....
Thanks in advance for any help or advice!
-
Just curious,Do you know of a way to include universal results in rank report exports? I have been unable to figure out how to do this.
-
Just a thought after further digging...the keyword in question is "Marbella Property" hence there being places results. I know that "In the past, owing to wording in the guidelines, it was not considered a best practice to put any type of geographic data in the description"...that makes sense for a places listing. But my Google Page has far more info on and of course I'm going to say we sell Marbella Property in our description on the Google Page!
The one review we did have....was from the bad old days before I took over...not real in other words. But as this hasn't been carried over to the Google+ page I cant see that I'd be penalised for it.
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
-
Bounce rate seems to decrease as site climbs the SERP but SERP ranking always drops down after a few days - WHY ?
Like quite a few sites recently we've seen some large fluctuations for our domain the SERPs over the past 6 or so weeks. One thing ive noticed, is that when the site seems to rank higher in the SERPs we get a lower bounce rate. If the sites average across all of its main keywords in #5 the bounce rate is c. 40% (this site is a creative portfolio site, so i guess the niche has a slightly higher bounce rate than normal as you will get some people who click through an notice straight away that the style of the portfolio isnt what they where looking for) But when the sites ranking averages #2-3 the bounce rate tends to be about 25%. (The thing is that we tend to always drop back down after a fews days or so) Has any one else noticed this ?
Algorithm Updates | | jpeg801 -
Google traffic drops (October 24th 2014) - Penguin 3.0?
Hi All My client's site http://www.carismaautodesign.com took a bit of a knock around 24th October 2014. Google organic traffic down by ~32%. I am trying to understand if site has been hit by a Penguin refresh (3.0) - and if so why?
Algorithm Updates | | seowoody
If it was, it would appear to be a false negative as the site and backlink profile is clean. The content is perhaps the only area in question... as it's more of a brochure site, therefore content is relatively thin and promotional rather than in-depth/editorial. For example, the gallery pages are very similar in structure, with the images and specification text being the only variation, click on any of the vehicle interiors to see what I mean - http://www.carismaautodesign.com/gallery/mercedes/viano/ You will see the specification text is unique per vehicle interior, but not hugely; Then how could it be? The interiors all contain the same elements just a variation in seating, leather colour, stiching, wood finish etc. Question: Do you think... a.) This IS NOT a Penguin issue but something else (please ellaborate)
b.) This IS a Penguin issue but a false-negative, so do nothing, this will bounce back with next Penguin refresh
c.) This IS a Penguin issue related to content. Merge all gallery pages into one page per vehicle (i.e. one Mercedes Viano Interior page, with all 19 interior galleries as part of the page - thus building one stronger page with more intro text and simple bulleted specification per gallery)
d.) This IS a Penguin issue related to something else (please ellaborate) Thanks,0 -
Time lag between algorithm changes and results?
Hi everyone, We had pretty good organic traffic growth for the past 3 years. Some people in our organization think that we were probably affected positively by the algorithm changes (Panda, Penguin,...). When I plot the dates on a chart I think Panda had no effect, but we had big gains starting five months after Penguin 1. Do you think the effect could have come that much later ? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | jfmonfette0 -
Best approach to ranking locally
Hello, What are the best approaches to ranking locally. Ie a user in Dallas googles "mechanics" and local results return. I understand Google+ local pages to be an important factor for the location based listings on maps. What about about location specific pages on the site? Meaning if we have a page on the site talking about areas we serve in Dallas. Other suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | CallRingTalk0 -
“Service Location” in Lieu of Separate NAP to Avoid Merge on Google+Local?
A client has two businesses out of the same address, same phone: an eat-in restaurant and a catering service. He has a separate website for each. He’s dying to optimize the catering, although long-term wants to optimize both. For the moment, Google only knows this restaurant and his only social media presence is set up as the restaurant as well -- thus the links to his social media even off of the catering site link to his restaurant accounts. I think he has two options: 1. Really do separate them. Get a different address (suite # or use his home address?) and phone. Set up new, separate social media. Register both, separately, at all the directories, etc. 2. Merge them both into the restaurant site and have the restaurant offer both eat-in and catering. Have some pages on the site optimized for lunch and others for catering, with the home page saying both. Register the one domain with all the directories, social media under the restaurant, but with a description that includes both lunch and catering as services offered. Variation on #2: Continue to have Google show the address, since it’s a restaurant, but add the “service location” area to show as well, for the catering part. My questions are: 1. If he kept the two websites separate, would hiding the address and just using a “service location” area for the catering one keep Google happy? I mean, could he keep the same address -- although I suppose he’d still have to get a new phone -- and set up the catering entry to show only the service area? And if he did that, would Google not merge them then? In directories, though, he’d still be listing both the restaurant and the catering separately but under the same address, so maybe this is a silly scenario anyway. What do you think? 2. Which option would you choose? 3. Are there any other better options? 4. In the #2 scenario, if a directory allows registry under one category, would you choose “restaurant” or “catering” -- or sometimes one and sometimes the other? Thank you for your insight!
Algorithm Updates | | rayvensoft0 -
Google Dropped 3,000+ Pages due to 301 Moved !! Freaking Out !!
We may be the only people stupid enough to accidentally prevent the google bot from indexing our site. In our htaccess file someone recently wrote the following statement RewriteEngine On
Algorithm Updates | | David_C
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [L,R=301] Its almost funny because it was a rewrite that rewrites back to itself... We found in webmaster tools that the site was not able to be indexed by the google bot due to not detecting the robots.txt file. We didn't have one before as we didn't really have much that needed to be excluded. However we have added one now for kicks really. The robots.txt file though was never the problem with regard to the bot accessing the site. Rather it was the rewrite statement above that was blocking it. We tested the site not knowing what the deal was so we went under webmaster tools then health and then selected "Fetch as Google" to have the website. This was our way of manually requesting the site be re-indexed so we could see what was happening. After doing so we clicked on status and it provided the following: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Content-Length: 250
Content-Type: text/html
Location: http://www.mystie.com/
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
MS-Author-Via: MS-FP/4.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 02:27:49 GMT
Connection: close <title>301 Moved Permanently</title> Moved Permanently The document has moved here. We changed the screwed up rewrite mistake in the htaccess file that found its way in there but now our issue is that all of our pages have been severely penalized with regard to where they are now ranking compared to just before the indecent. We are essentially freaking out because we don't know the real time consequences of this and if or how long it will take for the certain pages to regain their prior ranks. Typical pages when down anywhere between 9-40 positions on high volume search terms. So to say the least our company is already discussing the possibilities of fairly large layoffs based on what we anticipate with regard to the drop in traffic. This sucks because this is peoples lives but then again a business must make money and if you sell less you have to cut the overhead and the easiest one is payroll. I'm on a team with three other people that I work with to keep the SEO side up to snuff as much as we can and we sell high ticket items so the potential effects if Google doesn't restore matters could be significant. My question is what would you guys do? Is there any way we can contact Google about such a matter? If you can I've never seen such a thing. I'm sure the pages that are missing from the index now might make their way back in but what will there rank look like next time and with that type of rewrite has it permanently effected every page site wide, including those that are still in the index but severely effected by the index. Would love to see things bounce back quick but I don't know what to expect and neither do my counterparts. Thanks for any speculation, suggestions or insights of any kind!!!0 -
Why is there no compiled list of the different types of search results on Google, and what the content qualifications are to generate those results?
Seems to me that this list should exist out there somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. Am I just not as good of a Googler as I thought I was?
Algorithm Updates | | Draftfcb0 -
Ranking factors for national and local
What SEO impact factors am I missing if I am ranked 1st on Google for a keyword, but not ranked local search? The keyword being setup like {"company industry" "location" }. Its ranked 4th when searched on google and the location is specific to the location in the keyword. I've tried to varify that all of my citations are correct and identical. When I compare my sites Domain Authority and links to its competitors, I should be dominating that search. If you guys have any incite it would be greatly appreciated. MADD DOGG
Algorithm Updates | | MaddDogg0
