In her article Alexandra Gavril says, Google’s local three-pack of organic listings may soon also include ads. More specifically, one of three local results in the local pack will be an ad. This was announced at the SMX Advanced Local Workshop last week and the news has left businesses with lots of unanswered questions.
What does this mean for those local businesses that have worked hard to earn a spot in the three-pack? What can they do to stay competitive in local search?
We’re here to help answer these questions.
But first, so we’re on the same page, we will go over what is the local pack as well as the most notable changes that have occurred in local search since Google’s generous local seven-pack.
What is Google Local Pack?
The Google local pack includes organic search results from queries that have local intent. In other words, they’re business listings triggered by a local search, and they contain information such as address, phone number, opening hours.
For example, here are the business listings that show up in Google’s local pack when searching for “dog walker London”:
But on August 6th of 2015, Google updated the local search results, switching from the seven-pack local listings to the three-pack listings when searching and adding a “More places” option that showed seven listings when clicked.
Now another major change is under way that would bring the number of organic listings in the three-pack down to just two, with the first of the three being replaced by an ad. Check out this mockup from Search Engine Roundtable of how the ad may show in the local pack:
It seems that Google has been testing this change for a few months. However, in their previous experiment the ads were added to the expanded local pack, instead of replacing organic listings. So users would only see those ads after clicking “More places” from a local three-pack in the Google search results.
Click here to read the full article and learn what all of these Changes Mean for Your Local Business.
Click here to read the full article
Original Article https://www.123-reg.co.uk/blog/search-engines/what-ads-coming-to-google-local-pack-mean-for-your-local-business/
Original article by Alexandra Gavril on https://www.123-reg.co.uk/blog