And then there were five? Google Local Results to change again?
3rd December 2009 by Kerry Dye
It appears that Google is again revising how they show their Local results on the search engine results page (SERP).
Malcolm Coles details a test that he is seeing on Google.com where the map is larger and the number of results is reduced from 7 to 5.
Now, it wasn’t really that long ago that they switched from the 10-pack to a 7-pack of results (the beginning of October 2009 in fact), so it is interesting they are playing with it again.
The 10 pack results also started showing in April 2009 for non-geotargeted queries (based on the searcher’s geolocation information) and this garnered some criticism for how much screen real estate the local results took up on a generic search. The new layout uses even more screen for the local results.
The previous change (after a little research) was waaaaay back in search engine time to January 2008, when the then-traditional 3 local listings was upped to the 10 pack.
Vertical Leap deal with quite a few clients who operate in the local search space as well as nationally, and we know that for some searches, getting in the Google Local results can drive significant amounts of traffic. The less of these results that are shown, the more competitive we will have to be in order to get our clients to show in that top 5. Whilst it is an inclusive part of our SEO service, it is likely to rise in prominence if this change comes in to force, at least for those clients for whom customer location is a big factor.
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Tags: Google, google local, interface, Maps