Why is NOBODY posting or blogging about the biggest thing to happen to SEO since SEO began?? Am I the first one to notice that Google has made a major update?? If you type in any generic, national phrase such as sporting goods, pizza, seo, used cars, womens clothing, etc. you will see that the top 4-5 natural listings are normal- that is national companies... BUT you will now see that all 5-6 of the bottom natural listings are LOCAL to your area or city! And YES I am logged out of google and YES all my cache is cleared. I've called 3 friends in separate states and they all see the same thing as I am- we all have different/local results for the bottom half on ANY generic keyword phrase! So far tested in texas, florida, tennessee and illinoise. What is going on guys??? Does anyone have news on this? If this sticks this means that SEO firms can no longer run successful national level campaigns for clients- we will have to push clients into PPC. Is that what Google is hoping???
This great news for local business! and great news for the average guy. I believe this makes Google even more relevant. It make searches which should be localized even better. I believe if you want to succeed at national level now you have to be in top five or PPC. The flip side of this is local SEO is where its at! Yellow pages die a little more you overpriced piece of crap!
It's great news. Google is cutting down on spammy niche sites that provide no relevant content at all (ex. mylongtailkeywordhere.com), and actually ranking sites that people want.
I have noticed that it is not across the board, but specif to select generic keywords for example when i typed in car repair i got bottom 5 local including google map listings. But when I typed in web design it was all national. This is on Google.ca so i think it is KW dependent or maybe a test run?
Thats odd because when I search for "web design" I still see local houston companies at the bottom like i do for all searches now. Are you sure? And yes- this may be good for local companies but bad for any company wanting to compete on a national level..it means we are now more dependent on PPC than ever before.
Well, "sporting goods, pizza, seo, used cars, womens clothing" are all local phrases, *not* national. I'm in NJ. Would I be looking for pizza delivery in San Diego? The phrases 'web design' and SEO result in non-geographic SERPs for me. Sponsored ads are NJ, but not natural listings.
Local SEO are getting hot these days. Maybe google start messing around with their algorithm to allow more local businesses websites to rank high in their engine.
sucks for generic domains - i guess google really wants you to list your business in their local directory huh?
From Michigan here, when I search for "Car Repair", after the third result, you see the first 7 local results. It is not a huge section, and there are still 10 regular listings on the page. Same thing for "Chinese food". When you search "Dead Rising 2", you see news results instead of local results. My thought is that Google tries to put the next most popular type of search, aside to web search on the same page. Good move on Google's part, but it will change the game a bit for Webmasters.
Is this trait visible only at some specific locations or territory ? As i seem to find no difference in my search results.