subject: Google Places Changes The SEO Landscape [print this page] Google Places Changes The SEO Landscape Google Places Changes The SEO Landscape
It has been the philosophy for years when buying a house, "location, location, location", well Google has now adopted this philosophy with its recent change in their algorithm that defines search results. The organic local search results has now been launched across the whole network and this has significantly shifted the emphasis for SEO. The change to the algorithm puts the emphasis on your Google places location. The new algorithm now combines the Google places location and the organic optimisation significance to create a brand new search result for the user.
In recent research it was revealed that 70% of people are looking for businesses through search engines. Of this 70%, 33% use traditional search engines, followed by 23% for the now old yellow pages directory and 22% use internet directories, such as yelp. Now that Google has launched this new algorithm, it in effect, has combined all of the above so the internet user finds the information quicker and more effectively.
This is Googles way of taking control of the local search for businesses, products and services. Since their competitors have introduced a more local based theme to their applications such as Facebooks Places' and the Yellow pages going into SEO then they, like always, moved fast in introducing their local search algorithm. The whole Google Places is now more relevant as a local listing search engine than any of its competitors as they try and secure the market in local based searches.
The significance of this change has already had many SEO consultants scrambling to alter their keyword structure to include local relevance. If your business was originally optimised for a specific keyword and you do not necessarily have a location to match, you listing might have dropped to page 2 as there is no guaranteed SEO listing unless you are locally optimised as well.
This new organic Google location search will have a major impact on websites and businesses that have performed well over many years and almost had guaranteed SEO for their business because they are not generally location matched. These sites will incur a major drop in traffic and custom because of this change. The bigger brands that have good optimisation for general keywords such as mobile phones, laptops, consoles etc and have good local locations in directories will have huge gains. This may see the end of directories such as the yellow pages and yelp as Google takes the local search market and becomes even more relevant to their users.
