SERP Question - Site showing up for national term over local term recently

[Etna]

Hey Moz,

This has been happening to me with a couple of clients recently and I wanted to kick it out to the community and see if anyone else has experienced it and might be able to shed some light on why.

(Disclaimer: Both clients are in the elective healthcare space)
Scenario: Client's site is optimized for a fairly competitive "procedural keyword + location" phrase. Historically, the site had been ranking on the first page for a while until it suddenly dropped off for that query. At the same time, the page now ranks on the first page for just the procedural term, without the location modifier (obviously much more competitive than with the location modifier). Searches on Google were set to the city in which the client was located.

Not that I'm complaining, but this seems a little weird to me. Anyone have a similar situation? If so, any theories about what might have caused it?

TL;DR - Site ranked on 1st page for "keyword + location modifier" historically, now ranking on 1st page for "keyword" only and not found with "keyword + location modifier"

TRQd9Hu

[wissamdandan]

is the city modifier in the same city you are doing the search ?

when you mentioned that when you do a search keyword + city ... the company was showing in the organic or local pack ?

[Etna]

Yes, same city modifier as the city where the search was performed. My client was not showing up in either the local pack or organic listing when keyword + city was searched.

BUT there were (and still are) instances where the client was showing up in BOTH the local pack and organic listings for just the keyword search.

[wissamdandan]

when you just search for the head term and google knows that you live San Luis Obispo, CA it will show you search results influenced locally.

go incognito ... change the location from San Luis Obispo, CA to United states and do the same search

then again to the search of keyword + city

[Etna]

I see what you're saying, but the client isn't in my city - I'm searching as if I was in the same location as them so I want Google to display as if I'm searching in that area.

What's weird to me is that Google would be displaying the client (organic and local pack) for a head term but not for the 'head term + city' in a search presumably performed in the same city.

Conceptually I get it, perhaps the algo is getting better at searcher intent without the need for adding the geo-location. What I can't wrap my mind around is why the site is showing up in a SERP for a national term and at the same time not being found anywhere for the head term + city for which it was optimized. Redundancy aside, you could assume if it was getting listed for the national term, it would also be found for the longer-tail query.

[wissamdandan]

Charles

its very difficult for me to respond to this question unless i have the url and the search queries . how the pages are optimized the g+ page where is it linking to

for more information about the venice update check out this post on moz

http://moz.com/blog/understand-and-rock-the-google-venice-update