Triggering Maps

[KempRugeLawGroup]

This morning, I did a non-personalized search for a keyword phrase with "attorney" in the phrase. No maps were triggered, and we had a good ranking. But, when I substituted "attorney" for "lawyer," a bunch of local map listings popped up and pushed us to the second page. Any idea what attorney wouldn't have any maps, but lawyer would?

Thanks,

Ruben

[KempRugeLawGroup]

The local pack returned like you though it would.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ruben,

My pleasure, and I'll be interested in your follow-up, for sure!

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Hi Miriam,

I absolutely will followup. I'll mark it in my calendar. Thank you so much for such a thorough response! That was incredibly informative; I really appreciate it.

Thanks again,

Ruben

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ruben,

I run into things like this from time to time, in which I'm expecting to see local results, but at the time of search, Google doesn't show any. Google is always testing things and it appears to me that, sometimes, keywords that are typically local fail to trigger local results. It's likely you'll see the local pack return at some point for this search, but as to when this will happen, I can't say.

Sometimes, when there is a low volume of search for a specific keyword, Google will not show a local pack of results, of course, but 'attorney' isn't typically going to fall into this category. Unless you're in some geographic location where no one is searching for an attorney (unlikely!) then this is probably not the case. There is also a situation going on right now in which Google is showing a one box instead of 3-7 results for broad search terms, and this appears to be tied into the hummingbird update. In such a case, you'd be getting one local attorney results instead of 3-7 of them. But, it sounds like you're not seeing any local results at all.

There might also be a case in which a category of industry has been so spammed that Google decides not to show local results for it. When Google stopped showing web design and SEO firms in the local results, some people speculated that this was due to heavy spamming of that category, but it's my opinion that Google simply considers those types of businesses to be largely virtual.

In general, though, I would recommend that you keep checking on the keyword over the next few weeks to see if the local pack returns. If not, it might be worthwhile to report what you're seeing to the Google and Your Business Forum (http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business), titling your post something like 'Local Pack No Longer Triggered By Attorney Searches In My City'. It's likely that you will receive responses to the tune of there being dramatic shifts in Google's display all the time in local and that Google personalizes the results for each user, but if the issue continues for some weeks and you report it, you might get some interesting replies.

I don't see any mass reporting of the issue you're describing right now, and 'attorney' is still triggering local results in my town, so this is likely a hang-tight kind of thing that may change tomorrow or two weeks from now. I'd be interested if you'd follow up on this thread in a few weeks to see if you're still seeing the same thing.