Again Google Local 3-Pack Makeover!

Google continues to update the display for local search results in the Local Pack by removing the website, directions and call buttons from listings, and replacing with an image.

Over the past six months we have seen numerous tests in the pack display. Today we are seeing a widespread (re) appearance of the snack pack type display that shows images instead of the click to call icon.

Previously this display was exclusive to restaurants and hotels but today (anyways) is being seen across most types of retail and service industry results. Although NOT on lawyers or doctors.

We have seen this style before but the rollout today seems more broad based. A test? The new normal?

The imagery persists across the local finder requiring at least two clicks in to get to driving directions or click to call….. the rabbit hole appears to be getting ever deeper.

Here is a comparable screen shot taken last week that shows the same search result and comparable screen :

Whether this is the new normal this week or not, it clearly demonstrates Google’s desire to:

1. Keep searchers at Google and
2. Force them into the Local finder.

This has plusses and minuses from the local business POV. It makes it harder for users to take immediate action and but it provides users with a greater range of choices from which to choose. The former hurts those ranking in the 3-pack and the latter helps all the others. What it does for any given businesses traffic is unclear.

Obviously this design offers up significantly more choices to the user and in doing so moves away from the idea of “the 3 best” companies that is implied with the 3 pack. If this were tied to the horizontal local finder that you now see in the Google iOS app, the idea that the listings are more equal would be even further reinforced.

Like with most recent changes this one, if it is a real rollout, seems to offer a mixed bag for the merchant and plus for Google and a few more steps for the searcher.

A Little History: Three, Ten, Seven, Three

In 2006, Google launched the One Box. In terms of local listings, this was also known as the very first “3-Pack.” This box was a blessing to many wishing to receive local business information quickly.

In January 2008, Google began to unveil its new 10 pack. The 10 pack was a godsend to many SEO professionals offering local listing services to their clients, as they could prove real ROI (“Look, you’re being highlighted by the Google Gods!”).

By October 2009, the 10 Pack was cut to the lucky 7 pack (Lucky for some, anyway!). Many local SEO professional saw this as a challenge, but not one that was too difficult to master. Google has been very straightforward from the beginning, explaining what was expected of local businesses in their online presence in order to appear on the new 7 pack.

In 2015, after a long, strong run, the 7 pack that local SEO professional have grown to love and master was replaced by what is now known as the Google Snack Pack.

How To Dominate The Google Snack Pack & Local SEO

If you don't have a Google Local SEO Strategy to Get your Business Found on Google Maps, You can follow My Local SEO Strategy. Adopting My Local SEO strategy will help your business flourish locally. Whether you are a local brick and mortar retailer or a national brand, starting at home is an excellent way to get your feet wet with Local SEO and become a local authority. I always advise clients that before you worry about your visibility around the world, take the top spot in your home city and scale up from there.

So how to do you get started? Get ahead of your competition and stay there with My 4 Phase Local SEO Strategies.

1. Full Citation Audit: The most important part of any Local SEO Campaign is ensuring NAP consistency, which is why MY every single Local SEO Campaign starts with a full audit. Without this crucial step (that most cheap competitors skip), you’d be throwing money down the drain.

I put every campaign through this extremely detailed, time intensive process. I record correct and incorrect citations, avoiding any duplication of efforts. This results in a fully detailed report, including a road map on how to repair incorrect citations most effectively.

2. Local Citations Building: Local Directory Citations are the bread and butter of Local SEO. With MY careful, manual submissions, I make sure you are in the BEST directories for your niche and market. This is not just a standard list of directories. Every single campaign is different and I leverage 3 strategies for determining which directories to submit to for that particular client.

Strategy 1: Ego directories – The most popular, traffic dense, authority directories.

Strategy 2: Competitor directories – I take your specific keywords and find out what citations are important not only in your industry but your specific SERPs.

Strategy 3: Competitor review directories – I scrape competitor review directories to find Google trusted directories.

I claim all the most important directories where possible, and provide detailed instructions for all others that should be verified by the client (some require a phone call for verification or other methods). Only live profiles are delivered, including all login info.

3. Rich Media Citations: Anyone can do plain old directory submissions, but to make them count, I beef them up with geo-tagged photos and videos, plus citations and links from rich media sources.

Video: I create straightforward, Animoto style video slideshows, with music, pictures and text. These videos are optimized to the fullest extent, including geo-meta data. I then submit these videos to the top video hosting sources, creating high authority, legit links and citations.

Photos: Here, you provide ME with 10, ideally relevant & branded images. I optimize, upload, and again optimize, including geo-meta data. I then submit these images to the top image hosting sources, creating high authority, legit links and citations.

4. Social Citations: Social Media Today brings together the news, trends and best practices around enterprise social and digital marketing. I make sure you’re ahead of the game and rounding out your citation profile by getting you awesome Social Citations.

In this phase, I create careful, manual Social Citations Submissions, adding all media and content which again results in high authority, legit links and citations. I submit to powerful & authoritative social media sites.

Need Help? Contact Me.

Internet Marketing News of The Week

Google’s mobile interstitial demotion updates when page recrawled

If your site has mobile interstitials or popups on it, you will need to wait for Google to recrawl each individual page before the demotion will be removed.

You can submit individual pages or individual pages and the links in Google’s Fetch and Submit tool in Search Console, if you want to get a jump start on the recrawl.

We try to launch all our algorithms globally now: Google

Google used to launch specific algorithms in different regions. Like with Panda, when it launched, it launched in English regions only at first. Then it was pushed to other language afterwards.

Gary Illyes from Google said now, when Google launches new algorithms, they try hard to make sure it is a global launch. He said on Twitter, 'nowadays we're working hard launching everywhere at once.

Google’s algorithms can ignore rel canonical when URLs contain different content

Google’s John Mueller explained if you are canonicalizing one url to another, but the content is different on both pages, then Google’s algorithms might think you made a mistake by using rel canonical. And if that happens, then Google may simply index the url that’s being canonicalized anyway.

DuckDuckGo: 10 billion private searches & counting

Privacy focused search engine DuckDuckGo] surpassed a cumulative count of 10 billion anonymous searches served, with over 4 billion in 2016!

People are actively seeking out ways to reduce their digital footprint online. For example, a Pew Research study reported '40% think that their search engine provider shouldn’t retain information about their activity.

Google's Gary Ilyes: use nofollow when linking to bad sites
Google's Gary Illyes said this morning on Twitter that it makes sense to use the nofollow link attribute when you link to bad sites.

So when linking out to bad sites, and your gut makes you feel bad about it, use the nofollow [attribute].

Google' John Mueller: don't build links from Google Sheets

Someone asked Google's John Mueller if they can use Google Sheets to build links. Basically, make a public Google Sheets page, post a ton of links on it and get Google to index the page.

Of course, John Mueller was like - why are you wasting your time with that?

the mobile first index will take some time: Google

In a Google webmaster hangout, Google’s John Mueller said that Google will release the mobile-first index later this year.

I don’t know about Q1 but it is differently not like next week where we will be switching [the mobile first index] on.

No need to change canonicals from desktop for mobile first indexing

If you are updating any canonicals, you do not need to update all desktop/mobile canonicals on your site to make the mobile version be the primary URL.

Sites do not have to make changes to their canonical links; we’ll continue to use these links as guides to serve the appropriate results to a user searching on desktop or mobile.

Google’s penalty for intrusive interstitials on mobile websites now live

Google’s John Mueller and Google’s Gary Illyes both confirmed that Google started to roll out the penalty for mobile websites that use intrusive interstitials.

The new penalty does not impact desktop searches. It seems that some websites lost 10 positions after the release of the new penalty. Some examples can be found here.

How search engines see entities and what you have to do about it: New Google Patent

Recently, Google was granted a patent with the name "Question answering using entity references in unstructured data". The patent is long and full of technical lingo but if offers some insights into how Google finds relevant information on your web pages.

What are entities?

According to the patent, an entity is "a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable. For example, an entity may be a person, place, item, idea, abstract concept, concrete element, other suitable thing, or any combination thereof." In other words, an entity is something that people search for on Google. The patent explains how Google might find information on the pages that are not organized in a pre-defined manner, i.e. regular web pages that can have any kind of layout and code design.

How do you have to adjust your web pages?

Google's algorithms try to find the connections between the different pages and the topics that they find. There are some things that you can do to make sure that Google finds the right "entities" on your pages:

• Make sure that your pages are relevant to a topic
• The structured markup code of your web site is important
• The structure of your web pages is important

The patent does not contain new information. It just confirms that Google is able to see your website as a whole and that they are able to put your website into a greater context with other websites.

Even without dedicated structured data code, your website visitors and search engines should be able to recognize the structure of your website. The easier it is to find the structure of your website, the better.