Over the past several weeks in Google Place results there has been numerous changes. The changes have continually been modifying the map results overall layout, number of results generating and the content displaying for each listing. The first changes that we started to notice was the number of local search results generating on the first page changing. Please reference our post from last week about the New Ranking Formats on Google’s Local Search Results.
Also mentioned in SCSD’s recent blog post “Images not displaying on Google Listing?” which talks about how there has been issues occurring within the Google Place backend for business owners. Over the past several weeks we have noticed a significant rise in the number of bugs and glitches being reports by listing business owners in Google’s support forum for Google Places. In our experience with Google Places, when a spike in the number of issues and bugs starts to occur in Google Places it is a pretty reliable sign that Google is in the process of initiating a fairly substantially update to the Google Place algorithm.
Several of the changes that we have seen so far in Google’s local search formatting:
- Local results no longer display a short descriptions summarizing the business’s services.
- Some Local results have links to internal pages of the business’s website.
- When logged into a Google account the local results pull information from Google+.
- Google reviews have been given more real estate in the results and are easier to find under each business.
- The number of results that generate for local results is no longer a standard 1, 3 or 7-pack.
Below is an example of the new layout of Google’s local search results.
We will continue to monitor the Google’s local search results to see more effects the change to the algorithm will have on Google Places.
