What Happened to the Local Results Box?
Early this month, we started seeing changes in search engine results pages for local listings. Google started putting maps above these local stacks, meaning that users have to click to view more listings or scroll down the page to see the rest of the organic results. Ads are also much more prominent across the board. Local results for mobile phones and maps applications have also changed, so while getting directions is easier, finding phone numbers and specific addresses is a little harder.
Online Image® is keeping track of these changes and we have adjusted our in-house tracking software to adapt to the change. The differences are affecting all websites across the Internet. However, if you have a good site that’s ranking well, that won’t change. You can visit your customer dashboard and use the new control panel to make sure that what customers see in the local results is 100% accurate.
The local updates have been changing a lot recently, and we’re seeing signs that Google is still testing its algorithmFormulas or computational procedures used to solve complex computer problems. and results pages on the back end. Watch this space for updates.
Don’t Worry – Your Site is Still Indexing
We saw a bug in Google’s Webmaster Tools last week that meant several sites showed incorrect stats. Reporting inaccuracies meant that for these sites, the number of pages that actually were indexing was much higher than what was being reported.
When a page is indexed, that means search engines can see it and recommend it on search engine results pages. If fewer pages are getting indexed, that can be a big problem. However, the drastic drops that appeared between August 16 and 23 aren’t anything to worry about. The problem seems to have been fixed now. If you have questions, contact your Online Image® representative.