The Local Search Results Page See’s Dramatic Changes with Places Search!
Wow, Google completely changed the local search game yet again. This should really come as no surprise to those who follow Google closely. My earlier blog post spoke about the importance of not putting all your eggs into one basket when it comes to Google places. So many businesses have been neglecting to optimize their natural organic rankings, instead placing a total emphasis on only optimizing their Google Places listing. In the local search world we call this “mapism”. This is going to come as a complete shock to many who have been benefiting from first page exposure do to their local listing, as well as a those those who relied on Pay per Click for first page traffic.
This full scale change by Google effectively puts an end to “mapism”. Those local businesses who only optimized to get into the 7 pack have to change tactics. Now, the local and general search algorithms have been combined (now called Places Search or Places Mode ) to generate listings based on results from both.
