Google Carousel - What Should We Now Be Doing Differently?
-
Google Carousel is rolling out for even more topics. How does it affect or change tracking in Google Analytics? For example, if I am in the Carousel and someone clicks my listing, then Google completes a search for my property… then the searcher clicks through to my site organically. Will I know that someone originally clicked the Carousel or will I have no idea and simply see a Google organic click? Should we be optimizing our Google+ Places listings differently? How does this change our own organic keyword targeting? In other words, if I am in the Carousel should I go after a different keyword organically? Does anyone know how many people are clicking into the Carousel vs. the organic listings or even pay per click below? Searchers behavior will be altered because of this change. What say you all?
Articles That Relate:
-
Hi Katie -
You are one of several people I've seen raise this very question about analytics. The answer is - we don't know yet how this will affect data. It's a really good question! Stay tuned and I am sure there will be an avalanche of posts about this all over the web over the next couple of months.
Right now, what seems clear to me is:
-
having a really good photo is critical in the carousel; some businesses are coming up with a Google Map instead of a photo and that certainly looks generic.
-
having your citations in good shape are really important, because once someone clicks on the image, everything below the carousel looks like some form of a citation to me
-
you still need to do everything you've already been doing in terms of having a strong website, a clean Google+ Local listing, reviews and citations.
Beyond this, the next few weeks will point out strategy changes, if any, for local business owners to be aware of. This is going to be quite a ride!
-
-
Hi David:
I am in the hospitality industry and am seeing it for hotel terms and some B&B terms.
I can see it for:
- "Monterey Bed and Breakfast"
- "Carmel Hotels"
- "Things to do in Denver"
- "Melbourne Beach Florida Hotel"
And more... hope this helps!
Katie
-
I can't get it to work for anything other than restaurant search terms at the moment. Can you confirm you've tried it and it worked for something non-food industry oriented? Also curious about what contributes to their numbered rating system and how to possibly optimize for that now.
Sorry to answer your questions with more questions!
-
FYI I just announced the carousel launched - it's official and rolling out now!
-
I've been posting about the new carousel a lot too, since it was 1st spotted in the wild and have many of the same questions you do.
Since I have not been lucky enough to sit on a test server that is displaying carousels yet, I have not had a chance to investigate. Have only seen other people's screen shots.
But I have a strong feeling this is launching soon, so when it does I can investigate more. At this point I'd only be guessing. But again GREAT questions that I hope will spark a good discussion.
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 News Publisher Benefit?
I'm curious about the benefit of verifying your website in the Google News Publisher Center. Right now my website isn't showing up under "My Sites," and it recommends I submit the site to be reviewed for inclusion. However, when I go to news.google.com and search for news topics we cover, our site does show up sometimes. Will verifying the website in the Google News Publisher Center help to include it in News results more frequently? One thought I had is that perhaps Google will start to ONLY include sites in Google News that the webmaster has verified here. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Image & Video Optimization | | davidkaralisjr0 -
Local Search Clean up Done. Now Best Way to Index?
I have spent hours doing some local search clean up and have a list of all the URLs to index, about 75. Is there a place I can dump these to get them all indexed quickly or do I have to wait for the hand of Google to come down and bless me with indexing. I don't want to dump all these to Google +, Facebook, or Twitter; that would just be wrong. Any ideas for fast indexing. I want them to all get indexed before the business address changes in a couple years 🙂
Image & Video Optimization | | photoseo10 -
Shared location and phone number in Google Places...what now?
Interesting conundrum I've run into with a legal site we've recently started working on. The client didn't initially tell us that their law office shares an address and a phone number with another firm. It didn't take long for us to find this out, but interestingly, it didn't seem to be negatively impacting their rankings...at first. Then as we got into June we simply fell out of the map listings. We occasionally resurface back to a 1-3 position and then disappear again. My presumption is that Google is having trouble deciding if either of our separate listings are legitimate as there are a lot of citations for each and the on site and off site SEO/link factors are fairly similar (with our site having a bit better link profile). So my thought is get a unique phone number (if I can make the client agree) and add a unique suite number and try to reclaim/edit every existing citation we can get our hands on. Anyone else run into a similar problem and beat it?
Image & Video Optimization | | NetvantageMarketing0 -
Can SEO companies be listed on Google Local, Bing Local, and Yahoo Local?
Can anyone confirm if SEO companies can be listed in the local results for Google, Yahoo, and Bing? I'm asking because when you search for most local terms, it will return their local listings. However, that doesn't appear to be the case when searching for SEO or marketing services - or at least none show up when searching from Houston and I'm pretty sure we have quite a few SEO companies here 😉
Image & Video Optimization | | ChaseCameron0 -
Is specifying a floor descriptive enough for Google Places?
Hello everyone, I have a quick question regarding Google Places. I have a client who operates her business in a building with multiple other businesses. This address is completely legitimate and our client provides fitness services at this location. We have asked her for a more specific location, but she does not have a suite or room #. The best we can do is the floor #, but there are other businesses on her floor as well. Would this lack of specificity affect her ability to rank in local results? There are 4 other businesses at the address. If we provide strong and relevant citations, will this be enough? Thank you and my apologies if this has been asked before. I searched the previously asked question but didn't find what i was looking for.
Image & Video Optimization | | Robertnweil10 -
Whats is going on with Google Places?
I know they recently started rolling out their update of their Places pages but a lot of people, including myself are having problems such as missing descriptions, hours, categories (not updated), etc. Anyone have any insight into when we might expect these issues to be corrected? As far as I can tell Google has not really addressed the problem whatsoever. Their forum is packed with people complaining but so far so they have remained quiet. Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | PMC-3120870 -
Google Places - Under Review
Working with a new company. In the Google places listing they have two listings...obvious duplications created under the same account. Both show as "Under Review" and have been for months. SHould I try and delete one listing (tried...has not worked so far), delete both and start over? This is one of several franchises in the same area with similar names and similar issues, as well as older companies that bought the franchise and still show in Google Places with old phone number and address. Any help appreciated.
Image & Video Optimization | | AgileInt0 -
Does position in local directories effect google detecting citations?
There are a lot of local directories that i have seen google pull citations from. Quite often i see people putting listings in these directories prefixed by several "A"s, so that they will appear on the first page of the list. Just how deep does google crawl through the pages of these lists? will google actually crawl through all the pages? Some of these directories offer paid listings that appear at the top of the directory. We have been considering purchasing some of these paid positions, so that google would be more likely to pickup our citations. In one case i have noticed a directory: shopincities.com do something that spiked my interest. Basically, if you start clicking through the different pages of a category, the site will block you after 3 or 4 pages in. It serves you an error saying that you are not human. In my mind this is to prevent google from fully crawling their whole list, so that the people who pay for the top positions are picked up, and the people who don't pay, even though their profiles are listed there, never get crawled by google. So would you pay for position on these directories? here are some examples: http://www.shopincities.com
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg
http://www.411.ca
http://www.goldbook.com
http://www.n49.ca
http://torontodirect.com
http://www.yellowpages.com Or would you just throw a whole bunch of A's infront of your business name so you appear on the first page of listings? Or do you belive it doesn't matter how deep you are in the listings, and with enough time google will find it regardless and credit it as a citation?0