Carousel bumped us out of our local ranking

[NetvantageMarketing]

Nearly every post I've seen on Carousel states that "the rankings basically stay the same" but that hasn't been the case for one of my hospitality sites. The site went from being in the top 3 of local listings but when Carousel hit the site got bumped. We have high quality images, reviews, citations...we even added some newer, better photos but aside from that I'm a bit stumped as to what steps to take next. Anyone else get bumped by Carousel or have thoughts on any other factors which I might be missing out on?

[Ron_McCabe]

have you done local SEO?  if not you need to populate all the local directories.  You can go to get listed.org for a start.  Make sure that these listings are populated with photos and other media for the search engines to index and populate in things like carousel.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Adam,

Perhaps due to the newness of the carousel, yours is the first report I've seen of a top 3 business being bumped entirely out of the display. There are several hundred factors that contribute to local search rankings, and when a sudden drop occurs, one has to suspect things like possible violations, duplicate listings, merged listings, etc. Without seeing your actual listing, I can't really assess where you are at with your Local SEO efforts, but the first thing to ask yourself is whether a violation of the Google Places Quality Guidelines has accidentally occurred (see: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en).

If your business had previously been ranking at the tail end of the results and disappeared once the carousel display was implemented, I would think you might have to just work a bit harder at your Local Search Ranking Factors ( see: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors), but given that you were already up on top and have now disappeared, I am suspicious of a violation, penalty or other similar problem.

There is always a small chance that Google is testing things in your city and you may reappear in the carousel tomorrow, but for now, I think you need to investigate possible problems with your listing. If you cannot share your data here, you might want to hire a Local SEO to help you, but if you can share your data, I'll be happy to take a quick look.

[NetvantageMarketing]

Hi Miriam,

Oddly, the next day after this went live we jumped into the carousel at fourth, then today we're back out of it. If you run a filter (for a minimum level of star ratings) it appears, but it's not in the carousel in standard formats. In a standard map search the site has fallen to 9th, so I don't think we've been penalized or we'd have taken a much bigger hit. The business is Presidents' Quarters and here's a search that we'd be concerned with. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Adam,

Speaking of testing....the user rating filter just is not working for me right now. Google is claiming they have no results with a minimum or 2 stars, 3 stars or 4 stars. Wonky! But 'wonkier' yet - when I choose the filter, Google is changing the search term in the search box from 'Bed & Breakfast Savannah GA' to just 'Bed'. So, no wonder there are no filtered results if Google is magically transforming the search term to 'bed'. Looks like a bug to me, and it's preventing me from replicating what you've described, unfortunately. So, I did some searches for B&Bs in other major cities, and weirdest of all, Google isn't showing me the carousel display. Yep, testing.

I was, at least, able to take a look at the Google+ Local page for your company (https://plus.google.com/114103513425453802836/about?gl=US&hl=en-US)

I see a couple of areas of concern that I'll jot down here.

1. It looks like you are listing a toll free number as your primary number, instead of a local area code phone number. This is not a good idea, though I know it's a common practice in the hospitality industry. In fact, I just wrote a post about this NAP consistency issue. See: Hotels A Hotbed For Local Business Nap Consistency Issues

If you take a look at all of the businesses appearing in the carousel for your stated search, you will see that all of them are correctly listing a (912) number as their primary number - not an 800 number.

Is this the root of your problem? Not sure, but it could be contributing to it.

2. It's an unwritten rule that you should not include geo terms in your business description field. Yours currently reads:

"The Presidents’ Quarters Inn, a historic bed and breakfast in Savannah GA, offers seasonal getaway packages and specials that range in focus. The perfect getaway awaits you!"

It has long been observed that inclusion of geo terms in your business description can have a negative effect on your rankings, so I would alter that business description.

These are the only issues I see with the page in question and am just not sure if they add up to the answer to what you are experiencing, but I would correct them and see what happens.

If, after correcting these, you do not see your hotel pop back into the results, I would suggest two things:

1. Start a thread at the Google And Your Business Help Forum (http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business) to see if you can get the ear of a TC or RER there with direct access to Google staff.

2. Get a professional audit done by a high level Local SEO to see if they can turn up problems other than the ones I've been able to see in my brief glance at the +Local page.

Hope this helps!

[LindaBuquet]

I just did consulting for a pretty sharp SEO that had a similar situation he could not figure out or overcome.

This very prominent restaurant ranked #1 in organic but was not in the carousel. It ranked I think 9 or so in maps, in a pretty big city - so did not appear to be penalized per se, but I could tell some things were holding it back that Google does not like.

After I did a deep dive and found some unwritten rules that could be tripping a filter and told him what to change his client jumped to a double #1, 2 weeks after he made the recommended changes.

Now he's #1 in carousel and still has the #1 organic as well.

So I'd do a deep and careful audit of the data in the dashboard.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Linda,

Thanks for sharing your experience with this. Agree, this situation may require a detailed audit.

[NetvantageMarketing]

Thanks all for the input. We've made some very minor tweaks and the last three days we've jumped in and out of the carousel but today are sitting back at number 3. We'll continue doing some minor experimenting but things seem to be looking up.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for following up, and I will mark this question as answered. I hope you see your business continue to appear well, and that you'll take note of those couple of issues I pointed out. I think we all need to be a bit patient with the carousel right now, because Google is clearly trying out different things with it.