7 pack

How to Troubleshoot: Good Organic Rankings, No Google Places Rankings

March 14, 2014 by Phil 33 Comments

Do you rank page-one in the organic results, but seem locked out of the Google Places (AKA Google+ Local) results?

If this situation looks something like yours…

…then you might have what I call “detached” local rankings.

In other words, you’ve got an organic ranking right above or right below the “7-pack,” and you’re wondering why you don’t also have a ranking in the 7-pack.

It used to very difficult to have both – long story – but now you usually can have the same page rank both organically and in Google Places. (Emphasis on “usually”: something may be busted, or it may not even be possible in your case.)

It’s a common problem. Business owners ask me about it all the time.

Here are what I’ve found to be the most-common explanations for why you may have good organic rankings but no Places / + Local / “7-pack” rankings:

Explanation 1: Your business is too far from the city where you want the Places rankings. There may be nothing you can do about this except to apply the best-practices I’m always harping on.

Explanation 2: You show up in the Places results for other queries – just not the one you typed in. This one’s complex: Why you’re showing up in Places for some queries but not others depends on factors like point #1, whether you include the city name in your search term, where you’re physically sitting when you’re searching, and how many local competitors you have.

Explanation 3: Your Google listing has been penalized. Make sure you’re kosher.

Explanation 4: It’s too soon. If you just created your Google Places page, just wait a couple weeks.

Explanation 5: Your Google listing may have the wrong categories.

Explanation 6: You may not be presenting your NAP info correctly on your site.

Explanation 7: Your site may have no NAP info at all.

Explanation 8: The “URL” or “website” field in your citations may be empty on some of your listings, or it may contain wrong or inconsistent URLs.

Explanation 9: Your business may have no citations – or too few.

Explanation 10: Duplicate Google Places listings. Often these are caused by having messy citations. (Hat tip to Linda for bringing up this point in her comment, below. Also, check out this forum thread.)

Do you have any experience with “detached” rankings? What worked for you? Or do you have them now, and you’re stumped? Leave a comment!

New Google Places Layouts w/ Gray Map Pins: Face-lift or Botox Shot?

October 29, 2011 by Phil 9 Comments

Google has once again tested VERY different layouts for the Google Places local results.

This particular test lasted a few hours in the wee hours today (October 29) but features several elements that having been popping up in Google’s tests recently.

It included a new look for the “7-pack” Google Places results…

…and for the “blended” local results:

Most notably, it’s the second short test of the new map layout that I reported on recently, and it contains the gray map markers that Jo from LollipopLocal and Nyagoslav from NGS Marketing noticed (mainly in Europe) last week.

I didn’t notice any reshuffling of the rankings, nor anything to indicate an algorithm change; the test layout is pretty much just a facelift.

Or…is it just a Botox injection into the ever-changing face of Google Places? Both new layouts are far less colorful—no red map markers or photos—even though they hog more above-the-fold space than before.

Google has now tested both the different map layout and the gray map pins twice in the span of a couple weeks. My guess is that in the very near future Google will stop messing around and will actually roll out a new Google Places layout.

The 2011 Google Places Slangbook

August 25, 2011 by Phil 6 Comments

Fine, so maybe it’s not yet a book of Google Places slang. But “book” just sounds better than “compendium.”

Whatever you want to call it, I’ve written it for two purposes:

Purpose 1: To show that we Google Places visibility specialists aren’t just a bunch of geeks: We have our own culture—even our own language! I’d like to take you on a cross-cultural adventure, to allow you to bask in the richness of another language, and…eh, who am I kidding. The real point of it is:

Purpose 2: To clarify what these terms mean. Some Google Placers (should that be a new slang term?) use this specialized slang more than others do. Maybe you’ve checked some of their blogs, articles, or videos. Much of it is excellent stuff, but the slang can occasionally hold you up—especially if you don’t spend all day grappling with Google Places and its nomenclature.

In other words, I’d like to help make all the stuff that’s written by and for Google Places obsessives a little easier for you to digest and apply to your business, so that you can get more visible to local customers.

Some of these terms are pretty new (circa 2010-2011), whereas others have been around for a while.

By the way, this is NOT a glossary. I’m not going to define terms like “canonicalize.” You can look up technical jargon easily enough. I’m just dealing with the stuff that’s somewhat harder to look up.

In alphabetical order:

3-pack: When people type in a local search term and see 3 local businesses listed on the first page of Google Places, they’re seeing the “3-pack” local results. You typically see this in less-competitive markets, where there aren’t a ton of businesses competing with each other in the same local market. But they could become more common in the future: As I wrote back in June, Google seems to have tested 3-pack local search results on at least one occasion.

7-pack: That coveted list of 7 local businesses on the first page of Google Places. It’s where you want your business to rank and be seen when local customers type what you offer into Google.

10-pack: As you probably recall, you typically used to see 10 local businesses when you’d type in a local search term. But in April of 2010, Google chopped it down to just 7 local businesses that rank on the first page of local results. (That’s also when Google Places started being called “Google Places,” and no longer “Google Local Business Center.”)

Algo: Short for “algorithm.” As you probably know, this just refers to the giant, messy orgy of factors that Google weighs when determining how your business (and others) will rank.

Centroid: I know it sounds like something you take for an upset stomach, but it actually means the geographical center of a city or town, as defined by Google. How close your business is to your city’s “centroid” affects your ranking: all other things being equal, a business that’s located closer to downtown generally holds a ranking advantage over others. Some people used to think that the “centroid” was the location of the downtown USPS post office, but this wasn’t and isn’t true. Where’s the “centroid” of your city? To find out, type the name of your city into Google, click on the “Maps” tab at the top of the page, and zoom in: the “A” map pin marks what Google sees as the geographical center of your town.

Google Love: When the owner of a business / Google Places page sweeps Lady Algo off her feet by following her official guidelines, being a responsible category-picker, a sensitive citation-gatherer, a charming conversationalist, and someone who enjoys long walks on the beach. Said business owner is then invited upstairs—up to a higher local ranking, that is.

IYP: Short for “Internet Yellow Pages.” Any local-business directory sites, like Yelp, AngiesList, SuperPages, CitySearch, etc.

NAP: Stands for “Name, Address, Phone”—which itself isn’t particularly clear. It usually refers to the practice of including the name of your business, your business address, and your business phone number at the bottom of each page of your website. This info should appear as crawlable text (not as an image!) at the bottom of your webpages exactly as it appears on your Google Places listing—and with the same formatting. Even more info about NAP here.

One-box (also written “1-box”): Any time you type in a local search term or search for a specific business by name and see only ONE local-business result on the first page of Google, you’re looking at a “one-box.” It contains a website OR Google Places search-result for that business, the red Google Places map pin, links to the Places page, usually at least one photo that the business owner uploaded, and sometimes sitelinks. It also used to contain a little map, but I haven’t seen this recently. It’s excellent if your business shows up as a one-box when you type in a local-search term (rather than search for your business by name), but this isn’t likely to happen if you’re in a competitive local market.

Places Purgatory: When your Google Places listing supposedly is active, and should be highly visible in the search results, but instead is NOT—and for no apparent reason. You don’t know what (if anything) you’re doing wrong, and the Google Gods have not descended to tell you how you must change your ways. Mike Blumenthal describes Places Purgatory excellently.

Snippets: Before July 21 of 2011, Google would grab little excerpts of reviews and other info from third-party sites (see “IYPs,” above) and display them prominently on your Places page. The purpose of this was to supplement whatever info a business owner put on his or her own Places page with a bunch of info culled from other sites. Google has since removed these because of the whole antitrust case that’s been brewing.

—

I must have forgotten some terms. Which ones am I missing?

Leave a comment and hit me with your best slang suggestions (and even your definitions, if you’re feeling generous). If I like your slang, I’ll update this post to include it. Just don’t bother telling me technical jargon: I know it, and anyone who doesn’t can easily look it up.

By the way, if you’ve coined any Google Places-related terms, do let me know. Maybe this slangbook is where they’ll catch fire…

3-Pack Local Results in Google Places?

June 8, 2011 by Phil 3 Comments

It’s probably a short-lived test by Google–but earlier this fine Wednesday evening if you typed in just about any local search term, you’d see only 3 results displayed on the 1^st page of Google Places.

Not 10 local businesses, not 7 businesses. 3.

We’ve seen “3-pack” local business results before, but only for less-competitive or slightly uncommon searches–like if you searched locally for “cobbler” or “taxidermist.” Or we’d see a 3-pack for local searches in less-populated towns, where there maybe are only 3 nearby car mechanics, not 7+.

But earlier today you’d only see 3 businesses when you’d type in a term as ultra-competitive as “New York pizza”—terms that would normally return 7 local search results on the first page (with a whole lot more behind them, trying to scratch their way onto the 1^st page):

This picture shows what I mean:

It’s a test, and probably a very quick one. It may be on-again, off-again for a few days, for all I know.

But many times when Google tests something like this on a large scale–even if only a few hours–it’s only a few weeks or maybe a couple of months before it becomes the new standard everywhere. The standards for local businesses may just get tougher.

7 pack

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