Google Places......
-
Hi guys,
Anyone come across a problem with Google places and it impacting organic search results?
I have a client the was ranking top 3 on Google for all local keywords (letting agent). They have set up Google Places and now appear with a nice Google places ad but the organic position has now disappeared....Gone down to page 8 and nothing.
Any ideas?
Ta
-
We encountered a similar issue recently. We had two pages ranking on Google's front page (lets call them page A and page B). Page A was in the local bucket...page B was below the local bucket in the top 10. We updated our Google Places page to point to the URL of page B. Google moved page B into the local bucket and dropped page A altogether. However, page B did no better in the local bucket than page A.
We have since reversed this decision.
-
Hey Lawrence,
It may not be a problem at all, at least not by design. Google began merging organic information with Google Places a while back. If you notice that the title of the Place page on the results page is the same as that of your website page that ranked, this happened.
And when that happens, short of a few cases I have right now it always takes place of the organic listing. Meaning that you only get the one.
In some cases this is ok, as the Google Places page is taking the top spot of the results page. I've also noticed an increased conversion rate depending on the service.
-
Lawrence,
First I would ask: where are they ranking in Places - page one, number 3, etc.? (The change may not be negative, but need more info.) Has traffic, calls, leads, etc. changed? On the Places ad, did you change anything re categories, address, phone, etc.? Was the organic listing around a different area, etc.?
More info really is needed to dissect this: urls, target area, etc.
If you can supply those you will get more assistance as there are several really good local SEO pros on moz.
Best
Edit: Lawrence, I wanted to find some substantiation before I said this, but there is a lot of wait attached to a verified listing: From Google Places for Business:
With individual listings, once the listing is verified, your information will be trusted more than conflicting information from any other sources. I would really look at the site and see if anything is conflicting with what you have in Places. I am assuming the Places accurately links to the site url.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Drop Following Negative Article in New York Times
I have two sites that were mentioned in a negative article in The New York Times a couple weeks ago. They saw a good increase in traffic, but on the sixth both of them saw sudden unexplained Google drops. Both seemed on the average position from search console doubling overnight. I run similar websites that have seen no such drops. The only thing these two have in common are being mentioned in the same negative article. Normally I would expect the mention from a major news outlet to make the sites more authoritative in Google's eyes. Is this a coincidence or a possible manual penalty? They still rank number one for their respected brand names, but everything else has suffered. Did Google make any recent algorithm changes or do you think someone at Google may have read the article and decided the sites needed to be demoted?
Algorithm Updates | | PostAlmostAnything0 -
Google loves me. Yahoo and Bing not so much...
My site is ranked very high for my keywords on Google and Google Maps. But we come in 4 or 6 places lower on the other two search engines. Does any one have any pointers on the different types of algorithms they use? Many thanks in advance:)
Algorithm Updates | | MissThumann0 -
Google "In-Depth Article" Question
Google started featuring "In-Depth Articles" a few days ago. You can read about them here and here. I have two questions about them... If you already hold a great position in the SERPs. Let's say your existing article ranks at #2 or #3. If that article becomes one of the "In-Depth Articles", will it disappear from the #2 or #3 position? I have lots of content that I could mark as an In-Depth Article, but I don't want to do that if it will pull me out of a hard-earned SERP position. Has anyone seen "In-Depth Articles" that do not have the Schema markup? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | EGOL1 -
Google Rankings Dropped in Past Few Weeks
Hi All, I work for an online appliance retailer and over the past weeks, we've seen a drop in our google SERPs. This time last year we were ranking in the top 3 for our top converting key terms, but now we are ranking towards the bottom of the first page or even on the top of the second page with the big box stores now dominating for our key terms. Needless to say traffic for these pages has dropped off considerably. We still have quite a bit of traffic coming in for other key terms, but they don't convert as well. Is anyone else seeing the same thing? If so what are you doing to combat this? Do you have any suggestions? Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | airnwater0 -
AS we using the keyword related to our link but we are not listed in first page of Google search
AS we using the keyword related to our link but we are not listed in first page of Google search, but our competitors using the same keyword , they are listing in first page. how we can short this problem and get into first page on search
Algorithm Updates | | krisanantha0 -
Indexing well in Google but not in Yahoo/Bing - WHY?
Been using SEOMOZ now to analyze and crawl a client's website for a while now. One thing I've noticed is that our client's website is indexing well with Google. a few thousand pages are being indexed. However, when it comes to Yahoo and Bing, the website only has a 100+ pages indexed. We've submitted updated sitemaps to Google and Bing and have been fixing any broken links, and on-page SEO. Content is also good. Here's the website: www.imaginet.com.ph Any suggestions/recommendations are highly appreciated. Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | TheNorthernOffice790 -
Google new update question
I was just reading this, http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/220662 We have our official site, which has 200+ service pages, which we wrote once and we keep doing SEO for them, so they rank high all the time. Now my question is, how does Google handle the site freshness ? Service static pages or if we are adding blog items, then also they consider them as fresh site, right ? So, we dont have to update those service pages, right ?
Algorithm Updates | | qubesys0 -
Can AJAX implementation affect the rankings in Google Panda?
Hi there, I have the following situation with one of our job sites. We migrate the site to a new application, which is better from design point of view and also usability. For this we use a lot AJAX especially in searches. So every time a user is filtering down their search new results will be shown on the page, at the same url and with no page load. But, having this implementation. affected Bounce rate - which increased from 38% to nearly 60%, PI/visits - which are now half, at 3 and also Avg Time on Site is half that is used to be coming to 2,5 min from nearly 6 min. From Rand post, it is clearly that the content is very important in Google Panda, and all of these parameters we should consider, as it is telling the quality of the content. So, my question will be, can this site be hit by Panda updates (maybe later on) because Bounce Rate, PI/Visits and Avg Time on site, decreased in such way? At the moment we don't measure the Ajax impresion, but as I understood that we can do that though virtual pages in GA, does anyone of you have the experience how to handle this? Won't be this an artificial increase? Thanks, Irina
Algorithm Updates | | InformMedia0