STEAK Blog Changes Happening in Local Search

Amongst all of the speculation surrounding the early September algorithm update, a potential change to Google's local listings seemed to go under the radar. All of the ruckus regarding a possible Panda update or the appearance of the long awaited Penguin 4.0 (article to follow on latest penguin 4.0 news), deterred many search specialists' attention away from changes to local listings. Local search forums proposed that the real shake up towards the end of August was in fact contained to the local listings. There were multiple fluctuations in universal rankings reported by local specialists from a variety of industry verticals. Since the end of August and through September, myself and other members of our team, have been watching competitors move in and out of map packs. These were the largest local fluctuations we've witness since Google updated the "local pack" to 3 results, in order to coincide with its mobile framework back in August 2015 (Could this be a yearly algo change?). What we've seen so far? Over the course of the last month, we've seen local competitors enter the map pack who haven't paid homage to the local listings since Google allowed up to 7 places in the map [...]The post Changes Happening in Local Search appeared first on The STEAK Blog.