There is a sea change in local searches as a result of Google Maps

[earlpearl]

Google recently prominently inserted an expanded Onebox map with various businesses for that search query at the top of the page.

Do a long tail search for a business in a city or town; such as Divorce Attorney Philadelphia (hypothetical category) and often a onebox map with several links to prominent listings will show.

The most prominant listings are primarily or thoroughly pulled from Google Maps (formerly Google Local). The rankings(serps) of businesses within Google maps is dramatically different than that of organic search.


The onebox map, with up to 3 businesses takes up a significant amount of the search page, virtually all the great search page real estate at the top and accordingly pushes the organic search down on the page.

Recently, G had inserted either a onebox listing of up to 3 businesses within organic search or a single business w/a map at the top of an organic search. Now the map is most prevalent, w/the listing of up to 3 businesses. It is dramatically different than all previous methods to respond to long tail G searches.

It is a killer application.

It appears that google maps algos have been undergoing significant changes over the past several months...and frankly I can't figure them out at this point. In fact there could be several methods being currently used.

Mike Blumenthal, who is a member here, and has a blog that directly addresses the google maps phenomena blumenthals.com/blog has been addressing google maps for some time.

Bill Slawski (also a member) at seobythesea.com has written about G's patents for google maps. Both have been addressing the significant changes.

In any case the maps inclusion makes for dramatic changes. I'm actually looking for help on the maps algos. I'm not sure there is a fix on this. In December, prior to this dramatic change showing on organic search, I saw my business ranking on g maps change from virtually first to 3-8th in a matter of weeks and change again for the better.

It would be helpful to see if people are seeing impacts and can note trends with regard to G maps algos at this point.

One interesting side comment was made by Mike and brought comment by Bill as to differences between the onebox rankings and the maps rankings. Similarly Bill has noted different impacts in G maps by using different phrases
for potentially the same concept. Searching for new cars in a city versus searching for automobiles within a city. (Is that correct, Bill).

The changes are dramatic.

All comments and observations appreciated.

Dave