As several folks on Twitter as well as Google confirmed yesterday, Google search results officially have a new look for peculiar single term (and in some cases two phrase) search queries. They have decided to “make search as easy” as they can by returning more intelligent and relevant search results based on the searchers current location
Basically if you search for a single term related to a product or service offer like a jeweller, letting agents, a dentist or taxi, Google now displays 3 organic search results and then a set of a maximum of 10 localised search results. After which, the remaining 7 organic search results are displayed.
Some variants of Google news snippets above the organic search results or sometimes above the local Google maps search results are displayed and in some rare cases Google video results are squeezed in between the organic and local search results.
If you wondered how Google is doing this, they say that they are guessing the searcher’s location, ‘in most cases’ by using the not so accurate IP address of the searcher. But Google say that they would eventually replace IP-targeting with an improved triangulation/GPS right in the searchers web browser or device they’d be using.
My observations on my iPhone is that they are also relying on cookies and historic search because when I searched using the query ‘dentist’ the local results returned were for dentists in Cambridge – which I visited a few weeks back and have not made any searches since.
The Implications on Your Rankings?
Well, they are obvious – if you rank anything from No.4 – 10 you would be harder to find as at least 14 search results would be stacked up above you. But in reality, how many SEO campaigns focus on single word search terms? Some SEO campaigns have achieved or are maintaining their rankings for highly relevant 2-3 phrase search terms and might be up for the challenge for generic single term key phrases. For those of you at this advance stage, guess what…the bar has been raised a bit higher.
