The Buzz In Local SEO

October 23, 2009

If you are into providing Local SEO services then you are very much aware of the big changes that are coming to Google’s Local Maps (Local Business Center.) For the rest of you here is what is happening. Please pay attention here if you have a local business.

Google is rolling out a new advertising program it has been appearing in the San Diego and San Francisco markets for a while now. It allows local businesses to purchase ads that appear above the organic search results. These ads are currently highlighted with a blue push pin. So what’s the big deal.

Google generally has marketed this area of the search results to national players and has not gone after local markets. It had left this market basically to Yellow Page type information sites. To make room for this new advertising they have reduced the amount of listings that appear in the maps from 10 to seven. So three businesses will no longer be appearing in their local maps.

The pricing for these ads has not been made public and it will vary by location and by keywords. This has the potential is up end the local SEO cart in a big way. We have already seen the roll outs effects on the maps listings for several weeks. There was been huge shifts in the rankings for almost everyone involved with using Google’s Maps. Most of the information that was being used for maps rankings have been removed.

Google’s algorithm for its Local Business Center listing is different than for its organic results. A lot of weight is given to reviews that appear on other websites or local directory listings. If someone gave you are a review on Yelp then that was a good thing. These mentions on other sites are known as citations. Our listing had 29 citations showing in the Google Maps. It has been reduced to 4! It has been theorized by some that Google rolled back the listings to represent what your listing looked like a year ago and that make sense to me.

This all came at an awkward time for me. I was rolling out my own service offering for local maps when this occurred. I have put these plans on hold till I see how this all works out. Prior to these recent changes we ranked  #1 for are primary phrases Tucson SEO and Tucson SEO Solutions. While we still rank #1 for Tucson SEO we now rank # 3 for Tucson SEO Solutions. Also all of my actions over the last two weeks to move the rankings has failed. It appears that new citations are not being added at this time.

If you are interested in placing one of these new ads you will have to have your LBC account verified and this may not be easy. I was updating an unverified account for a client this week and the update got flagged. After doing some research on the LBC help forum I discovered this has been happening a lot lately. I posted a thread asking for assistance two days ago and I have yet to get an answer. However, I did notice that one person from Google has been assigned to answer these threads. So I do still have hope.

So until things get worked out I am holding off offering this service and its full blown marketing push.

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