Google Local results ranking

[onlinechester]

This happened to us a while back last year, we haven't seen a drop in traffic at all to be honest. I've heard from other people who have experienced the same and agreed that traffic hasn't decreased. I suppose it also depends on the nature of your business whether or not people will click through the place page too.

I'm not sure about how to 'get back to organic results' in this situation but I'd be interested if anybody did know how.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ignite,

They are included in current ranking reports for PRO members, yes. Hope you will give it a try!

You are experiencing a common phenomenon with your organic vs. local rankings. Since the Venice update, it has become uncommon for any local business to have more than one spot per results page. So, if you make it into the local pack of results, you are likely to see your previous organic rank disappear because it has been subsumed into your new blended local rank. There are exceptions to this, but what you are describing is pretty typical.

Unfortunately, I do not know of any high level studies that have compared CTR for local vs. organic. It would be great if someone would publish such a study. Hope this helps.

[RepLoc_Tim]

Ditto to Miriam.  One thing I would add is that over the last year, I have noticed an interesting trend with all of my local SEO clients.  Google direct organic traffic to their site has decreased, in some niches up to 10-15%.  Despite this, they seem to be getting more calls and customers.  There are more people making decisions from review sites and directory sites without going to the actual website, especially in restaurants and hotels that you mentioned.  If you check out stats on Google+ Local/ Places, Yelp, etc. you will see that visits to those pages have gone up.  So we had to readjust our entire thinking and now keep a big part of our focus on ubiquity, building a wider footprint that is more valuable.

Regarding CTR, Google would not still have the maps listings there if they weren't getting the CTR.  Their model requires that people click or else they have failed to serve up good results.  Trust me, they have tested thoroughly.  They may get rid of the maps listings again, and if they do it is because they realized that the organic listings started working better.  Do what we do, adapt to what they have and do a great job with it.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Tim,

I think this is such a good point you make:

...building a wider footprint that is more valuable.

I think that diversity of the kind you describe is very healthy. *Bear in mind, you cannot rely on the figures in the Google Places dash, but yes, broadening the footprint is so important. Like your answer!

[RepLoc_Tim]

Thanks.  Agree that you cannot "rely" on the figures in Google Places, but relatively speaking you can use the information.  I know that my client getting 1000 visits  and 116 driving directions according to the dashboard, is getting much more exposure than the client getting 100 visits and 2 actions.  The key for me is that it at least gives me some data for comparison versus a lot of 3rd party sites and directories that don't.

[ignitehospitality]

Thanks Miriam, we are Pro members and sometimes it seems that our Local results don't seem to be included in our Moz rankings. Has anyone else experienced this?

Yeah I'd love to see a study on CTR Local Vs Organic for local, place orientated businesses.

[ignitehospitality]

Thanks everyone for your inputs.

In follow up to this, if you have a business, say a restaurant brand with multiple sites in one city.

For example: You target a fairly broad keyword phrase like: 'seafood restaurant london'. One site appears in the Local listings, with one address, but there are multiple sites for the same brand.

Obviously the result isn't accurate because the group is actually a good result for that keyword but only one unit within the group appears in the results, which might not be geographically ideal for the searcher.

Previously, the brands home page appeared in the organic results, now the single branch of the group appears in the Local listing.

Ideally Google local would work for a multi site brand with branches within a geographical area, but as far as I know it currently doesn't.

Anyone have insight into this conundrum?

Thanks!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ignite,

I'll bring your experience as a PRO member to the attention of our Help Team. I'll point them to this thread. Thank you for letting me know!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ignite,

You've pointed out an interesting negative nuance of being included in the local results. Google will sometimes show more than one location in the local pack of results for a multi-location business, but not always, and if you have more than a couple of locations, it's very unlikely that they will all show up in the Local results unless you are literally the only game in town. For a broad phrase in a metro location, you probably will never achieve more than a single Local result, unfortunately, so, yes, I can see what you are saying about your previous organic results essentially being a more accurate representation of a franchise-type business than a single local result would be. There isn't really anything you can do about this, per se, but developing content that achieves you broader visibility organically for things like 'best clam chowder in boston' and other more long tail-type phrases is a path open to you for diversifying traffic.

[ignitehospitality]

Thanks Miriam, appreciate your input!

Perhaps Google will add a way for Local results to represented as a group. We work with many chain restaurants and currently need to set up Google+ Local pages for each unit, which seems a bit overkill when there are 100 branches! As far as I know there isn't a way around this.

Cheers, Paul