Universal Local Results & Venice Update - What's what?

[DeptAgency]

There is some buzz in the community regarding the Venice Update of the Google Algorithm. Google has said the following about this:

"Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal."
source:http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/02/search-quality-highlights-40-changes.html

A lot of Blog posts refer to this update and discuss the effect of the location of the googler on the ranking of "standard/traditional results". My question is:

Does the term 'Local Universal Results' include "standard/traditional" results or is it used by Google to refer to 'Google Places' Results in the standard SERP?

So, are the results that are impacted by Venice recognizable as 'Local Results' (by the teardrop and google Maps and so on), or does it influence 'standard/traditiona results' as well, other than simply pushing them down by inserting Google Places results in the SERP?

Thanks a lot!

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[mediabase]

Hi Expand, First of all I want to tell you about what is Google Venice.

Google is rolling out the Venice update this week and has buried the information in a long list of 40 algorithm changes. In reality Venice is a really major change to how they show results and one that probably took a huge amount of work.

Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.

Local Search Results 'Venice' Update From Google.

I hope that you will found the solution.

[DeptAgency]

Hi Harald,

Thanks for your reply!

Both the blogposts you mention refer to 'standard organic results' being shown due to ´geographical factors´. However, before the Venice Update the term ´Local Universal Results´ was used quite often used to describe places results in the standard SERP. examples: http://blumenthals.com/blog/, http://flashious.com/how-to/how-can-an-out-of-town-company-compete-with-local-competition/

I guess we can thus say that the SEO community uses this term for both Google Places results and standard organic results that are shown due to geographical factors.

Can I safely assume that Google shares our interpretation of this term? Alternatively, if 'Local Universal Results' would be synonymous to 'Google Places Results', then the Venice update would only be impacting queries that trigger 'Places Results'.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Harald,

I agree with you...the terminology has become confusing. And glad to see that you are a Mike Blumenthal fan. As Mike states in his post to which you've linked, local results are essentially all blended. There used to be very significant differences between different types of results (7 packs vs. blended) for example, but in my opinion, what we are seeing now is that Google is moving it all into more or less one big lump. The actual Maps results remain somewhat different, but I think it's fairly safe to say (for the moment, anyway) that anything you see in the SERPs could be termed 'Local Universal Results'. It's not a very good name, granted, and I can understand the confusion on this.

Hope this explanation helps.

Miriam