SEO companies and web-design firms no longer appear in the local listings of Google search results, thanks to a change made by the company in the last days of 2009.
Whilst queries for any kind of product or service will generally return around seven local results in the results page on Google, a search for, Web-design or Search Engine Optimisation will bring up no local listings whatsoever.
Even if location is one of the keywords in the query, the local listings section of the results page will not appear. Originally this was thought to be a bug by the SEO and web-design community, but WebProNews reports that a post on the Google Maps Help thread has confirmed that the change is intentional.
Barry Schwartz of the RustyBrick site alerted users to a post by a Google employee that explained that Google is “intentionally showing less local results for web design/SEO queries. For example, [web design sacramento] doesn’t display local listings today.”
Whilst many people in the search engine marketing and web-design industry see this as unfair treatment of their service, Google believes that their decision “is an accurate representation of user intent”. As services like SEO or Web-design can be conducted entirely online, Google appears to believe that local listings provide no extra benefit to users searching for those services.
Online commentators have had mixed reactions to the change. Some, like Bill Sebald on SEORound Table, are puzzled. “I’m all for their interest in balancing for user interest” he wrote, “but I’m missing the logic here.”
Others were more positive, such as user Logan3, a commenter on the WebProNews article. “As a designer and SEO with customers around the world, my opinion is bias, but Google’s move from local results for web design and SEO is smart – it best reflects user intent. Google’s dogmatic insistence on delivering the best results per user intent will keep them on top”.
Although local listings have now been removed, SEO and Web-design companies still gain localised weighting in ranking for queries including local keywords. If a site has been optimised for local search terms, then it will still perform strongly in the organic results.
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