Ranking drop in organic results after crushing Google Places ranking?

[PascalKremp]

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[Motrd]

Hi Pascal,

I am not sure there is connection, did they do any changes what so ever with their website? Have you checked if the keywords in Google Places are connected to the keywords they used to show up with? If the Keywords are not related, it could be that Google took the Google Places listing as a reference since it is verified usually by the local phone companies as the "Real Business". If yes, well I am not sure what to answer, but I will ask around! Keep me posted if it's a no GoogLuck!

[PascalKremp]

Thanks for your fast response, Jean.

They and I haven't changed anything on their website.

I relunched the website. After the relunch the rankings were well after a few weeks and for a few weeks. And than this drop. Maybe the site had the freshness bonus?

What do you mean exactly with: "Have you checked if the keywords in Google Places are connected to the keywords they used to show up with?" Do you mean the categories in Google Places profile?

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[RobertFisher]

Pascal,

We do a lot with Local in the US, and I have not seen that type behavior before. In monitoring universal rankings, the effect is generally positive for most keywords. Also, remember correlation is not causation and take a step back. To me, the big ? arises when you say: The site was on the first page of google results for 3/5 of the keywords. Now they are all "not in top 50"

If there are 5 main kw's you are monitoring, you had three on page one and now one of those is first in seven pack and other two are not in top 50. is this correct?

Was site always on Places and the only change is you moved up to position one in 7 pack? Or, was site newly on Google Places? This is important as to categories, etc. (If they were recently in Places or if some change was made to categories, etc. that could impact or if keywords have some geo component (e.g. Hamburg Italian Restaurant, etc.) Remember, you have to list out every variable that changed for every keyword if there is to be hope of finding what caused the change.

I would do this: Since you have been monitoring the terms for the restaurant go back to some point at least a month prior to any consistent change. For each keyword list out any change you know of and when (I am assuming that by "monitoring" you are also controlling what changes and would have that data.).

Do you see any corollary for the ones now "not in top 50" (other than Places position change for kw A)?

If you can supply any of this data it would assist us in assisting you. If you are not able for any reason to be more public, you may PM me and I will endeavor to provide a bit of guidance to you.

Hope this helps,

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Pascal,

Robert has given you a great response, here. I want to add that I have seen reports of things similar to what you are describing in some aspects. It's important to understand that if you earn a lettered ranking in the blended/local results (a result that includes your website and your Google+ page with a letter next to it) your former organic ranking will typically be subsumed into your blended/local one. I've had many business owners ask me why inclusion in the local pack made their organic ranking for that keyword phrase disappear and that is my answer. It didn't disappear - it simply got included into the blended/local pack which takes both organic and local signals into account.

This may be part of what you are experiencing, and could explain what you are seeing for your main search term (would this be 'italian restaurant, your city'?), but does not explain your ranking lost for the other 2 phrases for which you were previously ranking well.

• Are you saying you had blended/local rankings for all 3 of those keyword phrases and that 2 of them are now gone?

• Or, are you saying that you had organic rankings for the 3 phrases and that you now have local rankings for 1 and no rankings of any kind for the other 2?

I hope you can provide further information, Pascal, and reply to some of Robert's good questions.

[PascalKremp]

Hi Miriam,

I've talked with Robert in a PM. And yes his answer was great and helpful.

What you are describing must be correct. I checked the rankings manually and i found out that for the other keywords the site is in places now. SEOmoz isn't up do date yet.

To answer your questions. I think Google took time to rearange the rankings. So, I've seen sometimes nothing. But now I'm ranking for 4/5 of keywords in blended/places. That's great.

But two question left:

If I got a "merged" ranking in places, I'l will never be on position one in none blended/places rankings (results before blended/places)? No chance to get twice in it?

Thanks all!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Pascal,

Prior to the Venice Update (see: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understand-and-rock-the-google-venice-update), it was pretty common for very strong businesses to be able to get organic rankings and local rankings on the same page. I would see this all the time.

For example, a law firm that had done a good job with their website and off-page SEO might have an lettered local listing in the pack, a second listing that was purely organic and, sometimes, even a third listing that might be an internal page of the site or even a video or something like that.

Then something changed and this favorable type of display became extremely hard to find in the SERPs.

There was a specific type of search I ran frequentyl for which I very commonly used to see this type of multi-listing display. For example, let say I knew of a small town in a rural area. This might be a town with a population of 800 people, with 2 neighboring towns of similar size about 10 miles away. Let's say town A had the only bakery, serving all 3 of the small towns. In such instances, it was very typical for that bakery to dominate the first page of the SERPs for all of its terms for all 3 towns. There could be a local listing, several organic listings for pages on the website and then a bunch of other citation-type listings for the business from sources like Merchant Circle and Yelp.

Then, it seemed to me that after Venice, this type of dominance disappeared. A business could get only one listing on a page, despite a rural location and despite a lack of competition. I was even seeing Google pull in bizarre things like car dealerships to fill up the page with other result for the bakery search (not very helpful).

However, very, very, recently, I am just starting to see things move back in the other direction again. My bakery search performed today, vs. a month ago, has started to show a few more instances of multi-listing dominance in rural areas of low competition. So, I would hazard a guess that something has changed again. Now, how deeply this may be affecting businesses in populous areas with lots of competition, I am not yet sure. Let's do a search for 'hotel san francisco ca'. As I expected, not one of these businesses has more than 1 listing. If they are in the local pack, they are not in pure organic, and the rest of the page is made up of directory/review-type listings.

I'm sure at least one of these hotels has an SEO on board working like crazy to dominate, but, at least in my SERPs, not one has achieve a multi-listing on the page.

So, what you can achieve for your Italian Restaurant client in Germany may be largely dependent on the competitiveness of the the search terms. If the client has the only Italian restaurant in a rural location with low competition, you might be able to get those bakery-type results I'm just starting to see again, but it will be more typical to get just one results per search phrase. *Note, Local in Europe is not always identical to Local in North America, so some variables may exist for your region of which I'm aware.

But, here's something good to tell your client. If he is concerned about their perceived loss of organic rankings because they've been replaced by local/blended rankings, let him know that heat map studies indicate that those lettered results get more eye action than the organic ones. So, it's better to have a blended/local listing than just an organic one, according to these studies. Show your client Dr. Pete's great article on this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps Long response, Pascal - but your question deserves a detailed answer.  Hope this has helped!

[PascalKremp]

Hi Mriam,

thanks for your insights! Really helpful!

I hope that I can give you something back in the future!

Pascal

[MiriamEllis]

My pleasure, Pascal. Thanks for using Q&A!

Miriam