Organic and Local ranking changes UK
-
Hi,
Has anyone seen any major fluctuations in local and organic rankings over the last week?
I'm recording some significant changes, cannot fathom why at the moment other than Pigeon is still maybe rolling out...
Dan
-
We have seen quite a few ranking changes in the UK SERPS across the weekend. For both local terms with geographical qualifiers and those without. Not huge swings either way maybe + or - 5 places but enough of a pattern to think it is more than just coincidence. Niches include legal, B2B, consumer goods, fashion, web design, home and gardens and recruitment. Mainly positive movements for us.
We keep a close eye on them across the week.
-
Yes Pigeon hit the UK back in December. BrightLocal started noticing changes around Dec 18th and asked me about it.
I told them it sounded like Pigeon and spotted some telltale changes that made me pretty sure it was, so I called it as an official update. Then SE Land announced it with confirmation from Google on 12/22.
-
Thanks Rob,
This is more or less the conclusion we arrived at.
The locations are all in the South of the UK apart from one but are all in separate towns/areas and each location is optimised as such (We're not targeting multiple locations on one page).
Hopefully we may see an up-turn over the next weeks if the A/B testing theory is valid.
I'll post again if I notice anything further.
Dan
-
Dan,
The first thing that came to mind was something Pigeon-related. I have spoken to a few people in my office regarding the updates and the same trend seemed prevalent - several months of boosted performance followed by a quick decline perhaps 2-3 months later. However, if you optimize all of your sites in a similar fashion, they should all be getting the same negative downturn (unless you did something different with this one). This might be of interest to you:
http://moz.com/blog/pigeon-advice-from-local-seos
Specifically: "After doing lots of Pigeon analysis, I'm almost positive that Google is testing at least 3 versions of Pigeon on different datacenters and rotating results - maybe for AB testing."
More details here:
I don't know if this is still an on-going process, but it sounds as if it might be a factor.
Are your locations geographically near to each other? Are they in different nations/state/provinces? It's possible for this site Google has interpreted these locations as being "close enough" to be centralized, or "distant enough" to not hold any significant relevance.
Hope this helps with some insight!
-
Hi Robert thanks for your reply,
It's only one site that seems to have been affected and I've checked all the usual signs, no site changes have been made of any note.
Rankings had actually notably improved over the last few months and now all of a sudden seen some dramatic changes in the last few days.
Main changes have occurred on location pages - Google appears to have opted to use the home page now to rank for the target terms which is strange. My first thought was that Google had dropped the organic listing for the pages as the same URL appeared in local results, but there seems to be no real pattern of this occurring and is inconsistent with competitor rankings.
Dan
-
Hello Dan,
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint) I haven't seen any major fluctuations with any of my clients - most changes in the rankings I can explain with factors other than potential algorithm updates.
I assume you have taken the standard steps - observed link profile for potentially harmful links, assessed sites for duplicate content, checked on competition levels and performed checks on all known on-site factors?
Have you made any changes to your sites in the recent past?
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
-
GMB Account Fallen Off Rankings in past 24 hours
My map pack presence has fallen off the face of the earth over the last 24 hours. My location The Escape Game Chicago was top 3 yesterday for 'escape room chicago' and now they only show up when searching for the exact brand name. What's weirder is I still rank #1 organically for that keyword.I have looked through the account, nothing seems to be totally amiss. Google has not notified me of any issues or penalties. I have no clue what happened.Can anyone point me in the right direction or provide some insight as to how I can recover my ranking?
Local Listings | | danieldaher0 -
Why is my local page is ranking better than yellow pages for that particular search?
My search query is "façadier bastogne" in google.be which in English would translate as "plasterer" and bastogne being the local city I am targeting. I can't seem to understand why my site peintre-plafonneur-facadier-bastogne.be/fr would rank higher than our local directory "Pages d'or" (Yellow Pages) which has a high DA and almost always ranks first for similar searches as "peintre bastogne" (painter)? Not to mention my site was created by Pages d'Or. How did they manage to rank this so high whereas if you look at it you'll see that they have not made any SEO work on it whatsoever. Could anyone help me understand this or tell me which way to look in order to get that information? I really need this as I am paying a lot to this directory for my site and was planning to launch my own WordPress website.
Local Listings | | Thomaspdt1 -
Changing the business name in citations and GMB
In Australia, some businesses are Pty Ltd (Proprietary Limited) hence, their business name ends with xxx Pty Ltd. How accurate do we have to be when building citations or updating citations that Pty Ltd is included in the business name? We've got clients who have left out Pty Ltd in their previously built citations and we're wondering if it's worth the time to actually update them to include Pty Ltd. Also, does changing a business name affect its rankings? This is more than just "Pty Ltd", it's changing from XYZ to ABC. We've previously had to change a client's address on their GMB and this had a negative effect on the client's rankings. Will changing the business name have an adverse effect? Thank you in advance for your advices!
Local Listings | | Gavo1 -
Local SEO Issue or Penguin? Or both?
Hey folks I have a fairly complicated SEO issue we have been looking at for a few years now. There are two parts to this problem so would be interested to get the input of the community here and any experienced in Penguin and Local SEO issues. I am going to have to change the names to protect the innocent a bit here as some of the issue relates to a competitor and a shared address. History My client originally worked for company A which we will call Events R us. He then set up on his own at a new address and lets call his company Fantastic Events. EventsRus never had a good website or SEO Fantastic Events set up a great website and really focused on adding tons of relevant content for all the myriad event options available and subsequently did really well. This is a few years back and they were also doing some article marketing on sites like ezinearticles.com to build links (1). As time went on they did get a bit carried away with these low quality links and were buying $5 spun content articles and other low quality links. They ranked really well for a few key terms. There was a suspected local SEO issue as fantastic events used the same office as their fathers business called fantastic finance and the citations / phone number issues etc all had to be cleared up (2). Fantastic Events and Events R Us remained friends and over time Fantastic Events moved to the same farm address as Events R Us so they could offer a wider range of services based on the farm (and ran by fantastic events) and to some extent run away from the address confusion with the same office and very similar name to the other fantastic finance business. Events R Us wanted some of the Fantastic Events success and built a new website and largely copied the website of Fantastic Events - at times even lifting entire pages of content but certainly mirroring the structure of the site. Fantastic Events tussled with them for a few years over this and over time they updated the content but the structure and services and address all pretty much mirrored what was offered on the Fantastic Events site. (3) Two companies - same address (it's a farm so whilst there are different barns I believe Google can only get as far as the farm gate so same address to all intents and purposes. Same services give or take. Events R Us was the older company overall by several years and was at the farm address many years longer than Fantastic Events (4). Fantastic Events starts running a blog and adding regular, useful event orientated content. The first true team building blog out there as far as we could tell and traffic tripled over a six month period. Penguin hits and Fantastic Events loses a lot of traction - this gets worse with Penguin 2.0. Both the homepage and the evening events page lose visibility and traction. The owner gives up on the blog to a large degree. Subsequent clean up happens and is rigorous - all bad links are pretty much removed and the remaining elements are disavowed. (90% of it is actually gone by now). Penguin 3.0 comes and no recovery at all. Nothing. If anything it gets worse and the once strong blog is now losing traction. Events R Us starts to do really well in search for exactly the same terms that Fantastic Events used to do well for. In particular one page ranks for exactly the same keywords and in exactly the same position (#1) as what was believed to be the primary traffic driver on the Fantastic Events site. It is almost like they exchanged positions and Events R Us went from nowhere to a strong footing with some national and local keywords and Fantastic Events fell from grace. A new website is built. All content is refreshed and bought up to date. Some light investment back in the blog. Some light link building is done around digital PR and infographics. Some initial movement in the right direction but overall this did not move the dial. Certain pages on the site that used to rank are nowhere - looks very much like a page level / keyword level penguin penalty. These same pages rank great, often first on the competitor site (an exchange of positions to some extent). Advice from myself and other esteemed consultants was to clean up, build some good links and wait for Penguin 4.0 to remove that eventuality. Also that the address issue could be causing some local SEO issue where Google believes the two businesses are one and has somehow merged the two with some local SEO filter or some such (same business with multiple websites at same address). Penguin 4.0 comes along and no improvements. Events R us sit pretty. Feeling is that the local issue must play a part here now that Penguin should be eliminated due to the extensive link clean up etc and there must now be some action to resolve this address / local issue. Issues low quality links - but cleaned up 100% now. same business name and address as fathers business initially older business copied the structure and content of newer business moved to same address as older more established business with very similar content older business now seems to have taken all the exact keywords and positions the newer business used to occupy Penguin 4.0 and no resolution. Local SEO issue seemingly remains Summary So we are left in a difficult position. The business does not want to move. But if there is some filtering or merging going on here then how can we get around this? The client is likely collateral damage to an algorithmic component designed to stop single businesses having multiple websites. I know there are reports of this happening but I have never seen such a thing for an innocent business like this but the nature of the address (two separate barns on a gated farm) and the history and similarities between the businesses makes this difficult. Things are somewhat desperate though - a move has to be made now. Even if that is a physical one. The client has considered a virtual address to take that variable out the picture but I have advised caution. I am even cautious about a change in physical address. Google has a long memory. If such a move was made at considerable expense would it help or would the other business retain Is the best option a new start? New brand, address, website, services etc - cut all ties with the historic Fantastic Events brand and by association the Events R Us brand. This is not a recommendation I can quickly or easily make so would be really interested to hear the feedback on anyone who has come across such a multi faceted and complex issue before. This is a tough one. We know what we are doing on the local front. We know what we are doing on the Penguin front. We know how to build links and authority. We are doing this work of the clock to help a long term friend / client get back to where they really deserve to be. The history is not spotty clean but the good work and effort far outway a short spell building dodgy links several years ago now. As an SEO consultant I don't want to advise for the company to rebrand and move offices at considerable expense but whilst I have a theoretical understanding of the issue how can we prove it and be sure this is the best possible advice? Thanks folks - hope this at least makes for interesting reading. This is something of an edge case. A good business likely caught up in a filter designed to stop abuse. Cheers
Local Listings | | Marcus_Miller
Marcus1 -
address on my websiteto help with local searches
If I put my address on my website, does it help that page to rank for local searches? especially if it's the same address that i am using for moz local and all my citations? I want my other pages to rank in different cities as well as i have a service that travels to all cities in my state. Will that address of my home town on my home page make google think that i don't service other cities? Thanks, Ron
Local Listings | | Ron100 -
My #1 (A) ranking client in Maps is now #38 after update?
We have a client with 4 locations and all of them do pretty well in Google Maps. Since the latest update, we dropped from #1 (A) all the way down to #38 in Maps. We're still #1 for our keyword in Organic but our Maps got crushed. We use Yext for the citations but we also do some a lot manual ones too. We have 3 reviews on that location but not sure why the big drop. I'm not even sure where to being to get it back. From our research: We noticed our categories were a little out of order. Our primary was "legal services" instead of "personal injury attorney" (we've now updated that.) I've noticed that all the listings ahead of us, minus a few of them, have their homepage as their link. We've always used a local landing page that has hand written directions on how to find us, our hours and who people will meet when they come in. Things relevant to that location. Our domain authority is a 40. Our homepage Page Authority is 49 and our landing page for that location is a 22. What else should we check to see what's happened? Should I move the Google+ page to the homepage instead of the sub-page (as well as the citations we have)? Thanks for your help!
Local Listings | | DarinPirkey0 -
Do Local PPC Ads Get Ranked Higher Even Though the User Doesn't Specify Search Location
See the attached image.I searched for a drug called "Actos". The first Google Adwords result was a result specific to "Arkansas" which is odd because I didn't specify that I was in Arkansas. I understand that Google makes that recommendation because Google knows I'm in Arkansas. The resulting landing page has NOTHING to do with Arkansas and you can view it here: http://bladdercancerlawsuit.org/actos-bladder-cancer/My question is this: Does the fact that the AD has the name of the user's state (Arkansas) make the "click" less expensive or higher ranking or both? Is this known by Adword specialist community? I'm wondering because this is an expensive keyword and hard to guarantee top position for. If this is a technique we should incorporate, I'd love to do it. U1dfiiE
Local Listings | | iprov0 -
What to do if the domain name is very different from real business name for local listings
Hey guys, any advice is very welcome , I m´ ranking locally a website in the bay area for cabinets www.cabinetsbayarea.com we picked this domain name more for SEO purposes because it has the two most important keywords that we want to rank. My issue is that the real busniess name is HEMA DESIGN CENTER, so i dont know if we should change the name in the chamber of commerce to CABiNETS BAY AREA or list the business as HEMA DESIGN CENTER, with this website www.cabinetsbayarea.comr. We only mention the real name in the About Us. CABINETS BAY AREA it is more as a deparment of the real business name HEMA DESIGN CENTER What should i do? Thanks a lot, David
Local Listings | | conexion330