ionadas local LLC

Phone Numbers Missing from Google Local Listings

The blogosphere and twittersphere are abuzz this morning with discussion of missing phone numbers from the listings within Google Local.

Previously, there would have been phone numbers next to the Google Map listings.

There are many theories as to what has happened, including:

• They’re cleaning up the interface.
• It’s in anticipation of a new call-tracking offering from Google.
• Desire to push more traffic into clicks rather than calls.
• Bugs within the Google Local Business Center.
• Google has a lack of confidence in the accuracy of the phone numbers in their system.

A more nefarious idea comes to my mind. Take a look at a result from the paid local listings Google is testing in San Diego and San Francisco:

The paid listings have a phone number, and the free listings do not. Google wouldn’t be trying to bias the traffic to the paid listings, would they?

I think what bothers me the most is that I’ve already finished up my presentation for PubCon next week, and now I have to redo all the screenshots.

Update: Google has confirmed that it was a bug, and the phone numbers are back.

Proximity to Centroid Still Matters for Google Maps Optimization

Early in the history of business listings being placed on Google Maps, your proximity to the centroid (fancy geometric term for “center”) of your city had a huge impact on your rankings. If you wanted to be on the first page for [pool hall austin, tx], you’d better be located in the center of town.

Over the last couple of years, however, Google has greatly devalued proximity to centroid as a signal in their calculations. With decent optimization, you can rank for [pool hall austin, tx] all over town.

As you can see, the seven listings are fairly evenly distributed across Austin.

However, proximity to centroid still plays a major part in your rankings in the suburbs. For many keyword spaces in smaller towns, Google does not have enough listings to fill the 7-pack. As a result, it pulls listings from the town’s neighbors, often the main city in the area.

For instance, let’s imagine you want to play pool in Cedar Park, TX (just northwest of Austin):

Only one location actually in Cedar Park made it into the top seven. The rest are pulled from the surrounding towns (and Austin). There’s clearly a bias for listings either from towns north of Austin or located in north Austin.

If you want to shoot pool in Kyle (directly south of Austin), your map might look like this:

It doesn’t appear that playing pool in Kyle is possible unless you own a table, but you’re shown listings from as far south as San Marcos and far north as well into Austin.

Only one listing, Buffalo Billiards, is found on all three map results. It is located on the world famous Sixth Street, deep in the heart of Austin. Because of its central location, it was able to fill slots in all those searches in the suburbs.

I’ve seen similar behavior on a number of keyword spaces. It’s clear that when Google is pulling listings across city lines, it would rather grab listings closer to the target city. As a result, being in the center of town still provides a real advantage when competing for listings in neighboring towns.

Not: All screenshots were taken on Wednesday, October 28, 2009, using Paparazzi. As a result of using this software, no personalization should have been in effect.

Does Your Business Need Local SEO?

Approximately eighteen months ago, the agency I was with at that time was hired by a company in the vacation travel space. They were seeing a twenty percent drop in traffic from Google, and a nearly twenty-five percent drop in sales from Google.

Meanwhile, their internally-developed ranking tools were telling them that everything was fine. They were third on Keyword A that month, and they had been third on Keyword A the previous month. This was substantively the case for the several thousand keywords they watched.

Among other things, they hired us to determine what had happened.

The change was that Google had started returning a map with ten business listings for the majority of their keywords, which referred to specific geographies around the country. This map was pushing down the traditional, organic search listings to the point that unless you were the first or second listing, you were “below the fold”, meaning one had to scroll down one’s monitor to see the listing.

This map became known as the “10-pack”, and are driven by the Google Local Business Center. (Note: the 10-pack has recently become a 7-pack.)

One of the constants in SEO is that the further down the page you are listed, the less traffic you receive. Consequently, the addition of the 10-pack was a substantial change to Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). I would argue that it’s the biggest change since Google started placing paid listings above the organic listings on certain queries.

Most disturbing for my client was that not only was traffic from Google dropping, but sales from Google were dropping at a higher rate. Clearly, it was the most valuable traffic that was being lost.

Local SEO (aka Google Maps optimization is a new type of SEO that focuses on causing companies’ Google Local Business Center listings to be returned for particular queries.

So, does your company need local SEO?

If you wish to generate website visits, phone calls, or foot traffic from people in particular geographies, then local SEO is likely appropriate for your business.

To test this theory, you might search on Google for your most important keywords. Is the 7-pack (or one of its cousins) coming up? Even if it isn’t, if your keywords contain local intent, the map will likely be added in the future.

You even might be able to cause your Google Local Business Center listing to be returned for particular keywords, if you work the system correctly.

But that’s a topic for a later post.

Are Google Local Listing Ads the Death of Internet Yellow Pages

Last week, Google announced Local Listing Ads, a paid alternative to the free business listings within Google Maps. The ads sit above the free maps listings, but are smaller than traditional AdWords, and are below the top AdWords listing, at least in many cases.

In the above example, the listings marked with bubbles #2 and #3 are Local Listing Ads.

Currently, the test is running in San Francisco and San Diego only, but I expect the test area to spread quickly, if Google views it as a success.

Google Local Listing Ads represent a significant threat to Internet Yellow Pages such as CitySearch and Yelp. The IYPs rely heavily on organic search traffic from Google that is directed to their advertisers. In fact, in many cases they sell on the idea that advertising with their service is a way to have one’s company come up in the organic listings (albeit a page from the IYP’s site, not a page from the advertiser’s site).

And, for a few years now, this model has worked well. The IYPs have well established sites with lots of links, and they know how to optimize their pages for the search engines. Advertisers with the IYP have received a great deal of targeted traffic.

But with the Google Maps listings being added to Google Universal Search, the organic listings are generally pushed below the fold (even on a large monitor).

The IYP countered this by purchasing AdWords to continue to push traffic to their site.

Google Local Listing Ads could be a major problem, however. If they work as Google hopes, small, local businesses will go directly to Google to purchase advertising. And if the traffic at the IYP drops, the advertisers may drop that channel.

There is no guarantee that they will work as Google hopes, however. Small businesses require definite hand-holding when it comes to advertising, and customer service has never been Google’s strong point. The IYP’s however, are generally quite good at customer service.

They are also out in the community actively selling, while Google has always relied on its advertisers coming to Google without much individual enticement.

It’s too early to say where this all will go, but hopefully the IYPs will view it as an object lesson in the dangers of relying solely on Google for your business model.

Rankings in Google Maps Dancing All Over

The last few days have been exciting for business listed in Google Maps. And, by “exciting”, I mean irritating has hell as I’ve watched some longtime 10-pack rankings for clients drop away.

A visit to Google Maps Help shows that my clients are not alone. The wailing and gnashing of teeth was constant. Clearly there were (are?) problems across the US and Canada.

And so the conspiracy theories began. Many thought it was connected to edits made in the Local Business Center. Others thought it was algorithm changes. Having multiple businesses at the same address was thrown out as a possibility.

None of these theories matched what I was seeing. I saw drops in competitive markets and in non-competitive markets. I saw some clients stay exactly where they were.

What I did notice is that the “Pages” tab in the detail for a company’s LBL seemed to have changed. In some cases, the number of pages had dropped; in others, the tab had disappeared completely.

There were reports of Reviews disappearing as well, but I did not see this happen to any of my own clients.

My instincts were telling me to wait it out, but I’m not a patient man. So, I emailed Mike Blumenthal, who has probably forgotten more about Google Maps than I know.

Mike had two theories, both speculative and unproven:

1) Switch to (Google) Places has caused disruption with associating businesses with underlying cluster data thus leading to loss of reviews, and web pages and attendant loss of rank.

2) They have implemented some sort of more draconian penalty system for keyword or business title stuffing.

Of those, the first seems more likely, and sounds like the sort of mistake Google might make (especially within the Google Maps system).

If it was an anti-spam smack, it was a rather ineffectual one. Mike says he hasn’t eliminated it as a possibility, even if the odds are slight.

Surprisingly, after the conversation with Mike, the listings for my clients began to come back. As a result, I really believe it was some sort of data error within Google Maps, and that they are in the process of fixing it.

I would not be surprised, however, to see continued volatility in the rankings for the next few days.