Price, Ratings, Cuisine filter does not show from Carousel.

[RobertFisher]

When looking at the carousel for restaurants Houston, or colorado springs restaurants, etc. I am not getting a price, ratings filter. I am using Chrome, have extensions off, etc. Not in a non-personalized search, logged into Google as one of my accounts.

Someone else on different machine next to me (they are both MacBook Pros though) is getting the ratings filter.

Anyone else seen this?

Thanks

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Robert!

Your question threw me for a loop. It made me say, "Review, price, cuisine filter in the carousel. What on earth is that?" Why did I ask this? Because I've never seen it!

I then tossed a question about this out to a few colleagues and the 3 who replied don't see the filter option either. I was able to find a screenshot of what you are talking about on this blog post regarding hotels back in May:

http://blog.acorn-is.com/2013/05/google-places-link-gone-new-local-carousel-results.html

But neither hotel nor restaurant searches in my town or the two towns you mentioned are delivering me this option in Chrome or FF.

So, what do we make of this, Robert? I guess we have to put it down to all the testing Google must be doing right now with this new product. It's really strange that you and your office mate are able to pull up different results. I have no explanation for this (oh, Google!). I'd certainly like to get to play with that option myself. I suppose if Google decides it is a good feature, we'll all see it eventually, or it could simply disappear.

I'll leave this thread open for discussion in case some of our other members can shed light on whether they are or aren't seeing the filter toggle. Thanks for bringing this up! A new puzzle.

[RobertFisher]

OK, that is officially funny.

My VP was sitting next to me with his MacBookPro 15 and I had a 17. Both with Chrome, same wifi, etc. He gets it and I don't. I am hurt by that Sergey and Larry!

Thanks for checking in with me on it. When or if we can recreate it, I will send you the screen shots.

Best,

[RobertFisher]

Well, that was quick. I shot him an email and asked him to see if he could recreate the search result.

He gets a ratings and reviews filter still. I have attached a screen shot.

Sorry I had given it a good answer and it shows as answered.

WSrbYSO.png?1

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Robert,

The plot thickens: compare your screenshot with the screenshots in the blog post I linked to by the folks at Acorn. Even between these 2 examples, that toggle button is slightly different. The Acorn one just says 'Ratings' on it, while your screenshot has several words in the button. Kind of confirms my suggestion that Google must be doing a lot of testing, eh?

I've set this back to a discussion question, but thank you for marking my answer as good! I appreciate it!

[RobertFisher]

So, what do we know?

We know that there are carousels for Hotels, Restaurants, and, I can get it for "gas stations 77077," but not for service stations 77077 or for gas stations with city name or gas stations 77024. Yes, they are testing some things out. The way I came up with gas stations was thinking about what do people typically need right now and would search from a phone. (No results with restroom and zip or city

I do think the bigger question is this: What is the reason for this type of play versus what they have with "places?" My thought is that it is revolving as always around monetization and Wall St. When you look now at any reasonably local oriented search it is rare you see less than 50% directory listings on page one and often it is 70 or 80%. The one I have looked at the most is Yelp, and when you look, they are running Google ads on their sites so it would make sense re revenue, to ensure they get better ranking. Yes, I know that is not supposed to happen that way, but as the saying goes, "perception is reality to people." (or something like that).

Now, when we look below the carousel for restaurants, we see one directory after another. We do not see restaurants. Imagine if we searched on book stores and that is what we got or anything else that is not as easy to scrape content, plug into a directory, and then start going after all to advertise in order to influence where you are listed. With those other queries, you get a series of book stores in the organic and local because that is what you are searching for.

In talking with people and showing them the organic and the carousel, most say the same thing: I do not like searching for something, clicking, and then having to search on some other site. So, the big question is: Is google making a mistake with this move? Do you really want to search on gas station and then get: mapquest, gasprices.mapquest, angieslist, houstongasprices, yelp, loopnet, etc.? I, personally, do not.

If you notice how the older demographic is going more and more to Bing, you have to ask yourself if any of it is driven by the huge change in the Google search experience? IMO, the worst thing you can do if you are trusted is to do something to lose that trust. If Google is losing people's trust, that could be very painful for them.

Lastly, anyone who reads anything by me knows I am not a "Google Hater." I am far from it and I laugh at those who are. First, Google created a new way for a lot of people to make money and create jobs. Second, if you don't like change, well...go see a psychiatrist because life changes every minute. So, this is not a rant against Google, it is the curiosity of a searcher, a searcher for many things.

Thanks Miriam,

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[MiriamEllis]

Hi Robert,

Thoughtful follow-up. I share many of your qualms about the carousel, as it happens. Actually, some of things I find to be most awkward about this are:

1. The removal of phone number and address from the carousel, making the results less local.

2. The act of clicking on a single result no longer takes me anywhere. Not to a website, not to a +Local page. It takes me to more search engine results.

A decade ago, as a cub web designer, I read something that I've remembered ever since. Back then, splash pages were all the rage. People with sensitivity to good UX began pointing out that once someone clicks on your result in the SERPs, they have already committed to entering your website. Why make them click a second time once they hit your splash page in order to get to your REAL website? I found this advice to be so sensible, and it was one of the first things that came to mind when I first started playing with the carousel. In my opinion, Google's carousel has created a new interface on top of the things people want...namely, websites and Google+ Local listings. It has moved the user one more step away from what he wants...and that is not good UX.

But, is it good for Google's earnings? That's another story. Can't really figure that out yet, but I see sense in what you say.

I've also totally noticed the Yelp phenom. Actually blogged about this a couple of months ago - how Yelp had taken Merchant Circle's former place in the SERPs as a dominant Wikipedia-like result in Local. For several years, nearly all local searches brought up Merchant Circle results on the first page of Google. They no longer do. They bring up Yelp results. Not really sure this has anything to do with AdWords. I think the volume of reviews Yelp has is simply dominant, compared to what Google+ Local has managed to achieve.

On that note, I'm going to link to a short post I wrote last week on my blog regarding something interesting I noted regarding Yelp vs. Google review counts. I hope this isn't too off topic; our conversation has broadened a bit here, Robert.

Do Review Velocity or Recency Influence Local Business Rankings

I did a very tiny, informal look at the number of recent reviews in Yelp vs. Google+ Local and was quite stunned at what I saw. I'll excerpt here:

"I was shocked by how few people have used Google to leave a review in the past 6 months for restaurants in this lively, well-to-do urban community. When I actually started digging into the profiles, something quite interesting became evident. For those profiles with 100-200+ reviews, nearly all of them were left more than a year ago."

I think you might be interested to look at the numbers in my original post, Robert. They may explain why Google can't help but allow Yelp to be dominant right now in the SERPs. Would be very interested in your thoughts on this, actually.

[RobertFisher]

Well done Miriam and I love the fact you can state you looked at the data and you decided that it said.... ? 
I wholeheartedly agree with your conclusions. It is truly becoming mind boggling. Even beyond the Yelp piece and the carousel. We tell clients the same thing you do, NAP consistency, reviews, videos, photos, etc. for local. When we look at verticals where the 1,3,7 pack still applies, I crack up. 
I see sites with no site, no verification, and and a link by Google to no real G+ page ranking in the 7 pack in fairly aggressive verticals. How does that make anything Google has ever said about what they want make sense?

So, where it leaves me is still looking and understanding that as we are growing and changing so is Google. My fear is they forgot the very salient thing you mention here which is good UI/UX. Person after person I speak with outside of SEO, etc. are telling me they do not like having to go to Google to click on something they think is what they want only to find they are on a site where they are in need of making a query. Hopefully, we will wake up in a month or two and it will have been changed.

As soon as we have our data compiled (thanks to great paid interns) and we have parsed the data, I will post a blog on what we found regarding directories and organic listings. Hopefully, I can be as brave as you if the results show... nothing really pertinent.

Best

[MiriamEllis]

Robert, may I suggest that if you come up with a good study and results, you consider submitting a post to YouMoz? I would love to see something like this show up in my submission queue:) I get to take a first peek at all of our YouMoz submissions and, as you can imagine, I am extra happy when the topic is Local!

As for the carousel, I like this:

"Hopefully, we will wake up in a month or two and it will have been changed."

Haha! Here's to hoping. Thanks for the very enjoyable chat, Robert!