Help, I am in Local Search Results!
-
I do not know what to do with this... and could use a bit of advice on this issue:
"Doing things right", resulted in great organic rankings and a bonus by showing top of local search results for our area. Sounds great... until Google decides it was time to mix things up a little.
I do not know if this applies to all types of businesses, but for ours it means that you will no longer get any organic page 1 listing if you are a local business that (un)luckily ranks in local results too.
One day G will include local results on a keyword, the next they won't... making our SEOMoz Campaign rankings weekly a true yo-yo of "50 keywords declined by >48 and >49 places", and "30 keywords improved by <47 and <49". It turned this feature in campaigns completely useless for me (ever since SEOMoz decided to include the local result light bulb that is)
Some traffic dropped from 240 a day for one keyword, to 30 now for that same keyword. Frustrated? You bet. I do not understand why Google seems to create a war with local businesses.
Should we get out of Local results or does anyone have any ideas, suggestions?
Thanks a bunch guys!
-
Riplash & PVB : Thanks for sharing your observation about local. 2 - 3 months ago, I joined a thread and asked whether anyone thought optimizing for local would decrease national search SERP rankings and no one seemed to think it would. My main site got mauled by B&W critters in April. So, if I set up a new site to replace it, I'll set up a micro-site optimized for local and move the good local links there rather than to any replacement non-localized site. Again, thanks for sharing this useful info.
-
No ideas or suggestions, I'm afraid, but I've noticed this too for some searches. Only seems to have started happening recently.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Help for a webstore with Google Warnings for Watermark Images and Panda
I have not had too much experience with helping websites that have been hit by Panda - any tried and tested formulas I can pass to website owner would be great. He does not want to reveal domain name - its in the area of children/baby products 'Web site featured on page 1 of Google search results for many years (website 5 years old- Australian domain) . In April/May 2014, Google suspended our Google Shopping account because we used watermarks on all our images. We were advised that the suspension would remain in place indefinitely or until such time the watermarks were removed. We wrote back to Google to explain that these watermarks were put in place by our store back 2005 with the sole purpose of protecting our intellectual property. Needless to say, their attitude was unwavering. And as a result, revenue plummeted. However, the perfect storm was about to hit our store without warning. In the same month, Panda 4.0 was unleashed and our store was hit once again. This update alone reduced visitor numbers by around 50% overnight. The Panda 4.0 algorithm update was designed to target poor quality, duplicate content and unfortunately we had some of it. We have now begun creating original content with many of the new products we're uploading onto our web site. It's slow and tedious. We have modified our web site to now include a tag on a the home page (this was missing). We have removed many duplicate links from our footer (it was too big and contained hundreds of links that were also repeated from the header). We introduced a blog and we have engaged the services of a local seo company to disavow any bad backlinks and add missing or improve existing content to category and brand pages. No improvement in our situation is yet visible and with Christmas just 3 months away, poor sales during our 'bread and butter' period will mean even tougher times for our store in 2015. ANY PANDA EXPERTS who can help please email me [email protected] - looking for independent freelancers rather than agencies
Algorithm Updates | | GardenBeet0 -
SERP Question - Site showing up for national term over local term recently
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)
Algorithm Updates | | Etna
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" TRQd9Hu0 -
Our root domain is no longer appearing in search results
Hi all The root domain for our site, roadtrippers.com, has been disappearing from Google's search results. Subfolders and subdomains still appear, but our root domain isn't found at all. I believe I've verified this by searching "-inurl:trips -inurl:byways -inurl:support -inurl:blog -inurl:places -inurl:guides -inurl:destinations site:https://roadtrippers.com/" in Google and our root domain is nowhere to be found. This may or may not be related to another issue we've had, where the root domain is appearing with a seemingly rotating set of parameters. Sometimes it'll be ?mod=, sometimes it'll be ?tag=translation. Originally they appeared to simply displace our ranking root domain, but now they and our root domain are completely disappearing. Our dev team believes they fixed the problem with recent 301 tags to any unapproved parameter being added to the root domain, but this hasn't fixed the original problem. Any insight into this is greatly appreciated! Brandon
Algorithm Updates | | brandonRT0 -
Google is showing crazy results
Google is showing crazy results in these days sometimes my sites are on top of all keywords sometimes far behind in search engine in same day what is going on ????
Algorithm Updates | | GM0070 -
Local SEO-How to handle multiple business at same address
I have a client who shares the same address and suite number with multiple business. What should be done to optimize their website and citations for local SEO? Is this a huge issue? What should we do so our rankings aren't affected. Will changes take a long time to take place? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | caeevans0 -
Changing the # of results per page in Google search settings displays totally different results. Why is this?
Curious what's going on here. This is the first time I've seen this before. What's happening is this ... In Google, I search for "mobile apps orange county" and get a standard list of 10 results. I go to Google's search settings in the top right corner of the page (button is grey with a gear) to change the number of results per page from 10 to 50 (also did 100). When I go back to Google and search again for "mobile apps orange county" I get a much larger list but with completely different results. This time around the top 10-12 are dominated by the same website (ocregister.com) What's going on here that Google would now show different results? Why is this one website all of a sudden dominating the first 12 results? Thanks everyone! ByteLaunch
Algorithm Updates | | ByteLaunch0 -
How did a competitor's brand name get in google's related search list?
When doing a google search for the term "ulster county real estate" the related search list at the bottom of the serp includes 7 obviously related search terms and 1 brand name of a competitor. (see attachment) The competitor doesn't rank for this term organically at all yet he enjoys a link on the first page with those of us that do by being in the related search list? I don't get it. Anyone know how something like this happens? Innhs.png
Algorithm Updates | | jhogan801 -
Why some results in SERP have a www. and some don't
Hello all, If this is posted twice, I didn't mean for it to be - but it looks like last time I tried to post this question it didn't post. This is my question: How come some results on Google's SERP page are shown with a "www" and some are not? Does this effect SEO at all? I am including a screen shot so you can see what I mean. The Geary Interactive result has a "www" in front of while ingenexdigital doesn't. R6GLL.png
Algorithm Updates | | digitalops0
