Decrease in Organic Traffic Due to Google Places

[imspecialistgotjunk]

Hello there, we are national junk removal company and have franchises in most major cities in the US.  We wanted to check to see if anyone else has seen a drop in organic traffic with the changes that Google has done with the amalgamation of Google Places with the organic rankings.

All our places pages are ranking quite well and we are ranking higher organically but it appears that people go to the Google Places page and then either leaving or picking up the phone and calling our 1800 number to book a job instead of going to our website to make the booking.

The interesting thing is that although Google started these changes back in October 2010 we have seen the drop in organic traffic mostly starting in April, even though we have seen a steady increase in organic ranking across the board.

Has any other franchise based company seen this happen as well?

Your feedback is greatly appreciated!

[Gyi]

Albeit not working with franchises, we have seen a similar trend for several clients. In fact, we have seen decreases in organic traffic with increases in call volume.

[theideapeople]

Maybe increased competition is taking traffic away.