Problems with the methodology:

1) Isolating different potential ranking factors from each other.

The researchers decided to look at “each ranking factor in isolation and accounted for variation in competitiveness across search terms”. While this might be a method that matches the purposes of their study and the way they decided to present the results (in parts), it might jeopardize the accuracy of the findings. Yes, we all agree that “statistical correlation … does not imply causation”, but this could not be an excuse for providing results based on isolation of each factor, when the Google’s algorithm is based on all these (and many more) in batch. There are many potential threats when using such an analytic methodology, and they increase when we take into account the fact that the sample surveyed was relatively small – the top 30 results for 22 business categories across 22 cities in the US (overall 477 queries, as they excluded 7 which did not produce local results).

2) Using the same methodology when researching different types of businesses.

Researching businesses in different niches itself using the same methodology is already dangerous for the accuracy of the final results, but even more dangerous might be doing so for both brick and mortar businesses and service-based businesses. As Bill Slawski points out Google treats some local searches differently based on the potential intent of the searcher. A search for a “restaurant” should return results of places that are relatively near to the searcher’s physical location. Using the same logic, and knowing that Google uses the geographical center of an area as the direction point for a query such as “[keyword] + [area/city]“, it could be predicted that the results for “[restaurant] + [city]” query would return places that are nearer to the geo-center of [city] (the centroid). At the same time if someone searches for “[wedding planner] + [city]“, they might be putting much more stress on that they would like to find the best in the industry as opposed to the one that is located more closely.

3) Researching only major cities.

As the researchers went the way of analyzing each factor in isolation, it might not have been the best idea to pick only large cities with severe competition. Instead, as they use such a methodology, they might have rather picked some smaller towns with less competitors and potentially “clearer” search results, where analyzing each factor on its own might have returned more accurate and unbiased results.

Results that intrigued me:

1) The power of the “at a glance” phrases:

- In blended search results “having the search category or a synonym in “at a glance” was associated with a 0.36 improvement in rank.”

- In pure search results “having the search city in “at a glance” was associated with a 1.42 improvement in rank”; and “having the search category or a synonym in “at a glance” was associated with a 0.85 improvement in rank.”

As I’ve previously written the descriptive terms are to be very important for local SEO. Bill Slawski notes these terms might come from both structured (such as ones on Yelp, Citysearch, or Google Places itself) and unstructured (practically any local citation page on the web, implying sentiment) reviews. This is a very strong signal for Google to understand what “categories” particular business might be associated with.

2) Google Places factors not so important in blended search:

One thing that could be derived from these results and taken as a near-to-sure finding, no matter the problems with the methodology, is the fact that the purely Google Places factors (keywords in title/description, photos on Place page, Google reviews) matter much less in blended search. However, as we still don’t know for sure how Google determines when to display which type of results (although it is most probably it is based on user behavior which no one out of Google has access to) , it would be a good practice to work on improving the Google Places factors that you have control over even though for your main target keywords the SERP is currently blended type (it might change in an hour).

3) Importance of Google reviews:

- In blended search results “having five or more Google reviews was associated with a 0.31 improvement in rank.”

- In pure search results “having five or more Google reviews was associated with a 1.47 improvement in rank.”

As Aaron Bird, CEO of Bizible noted: ”The average Places page has very few reviews and if you are one of the only businesses in the results that shows a star rating, this will likely drive clicks, which will help your ranking.” Therefore, the number of reviews itself might not be the actual factor. It might rather be the additional click-through rate that the 5+ reviews bring, as supported by this case study. This statement could be supported by the finding that “getting your fifth Google review significantly helped ranking, although incremental reviews between one and four and above five had a very small impact on ranking”.

4) Some findings that are a result of the methodological problems:

The research found out that “the presence of a business description alone did not help ranking, but having the search category in the business description did help”. This could potentially mean that the business description is not a factor at all. However, as businesses that do care about their online presence have invested time ( and probably money) in getting high in the local search results, they would have most probably filled out the Google Places profile 100%, including adding a keyword-rich description in an attempt to gain relevance. For me, it is very possible that the photos and the listing being owner-verified being important for rankings (according to the survey results) derive from the same argument.

I am looking forward to seeing all the parts of the research, as well as the raw data, but I believe if Bizible proceed using the same methodology the results might be seriously jeopardized, and controversial at best.

While this is a generally good move, and a long-awaited one (at least by me), mostly because of the relative clumsiness of the old platform, one thing spoilt (spoiled?) the mood of the local search experts and me. Google decided to not only shut down the old forum, but to remove all its content from public usage, and to not archive it. Therefore, it was going to be completely gone. Here stepped Mike Blumenthal, who saved the day by pulling as many of the posts as possible. The old Google Places Help Forum (or at least the biggest part of its information) is now located at: http://places.blumenthals.com . This is a very valuable resource for everyone as it might tell a lot about the history of Google Places and the different stages through which the platform passed – its bugs, updates, support issues.

What will usually update in a few days:
• Newly verified listings (even though it reads “Active” in your dashboard)
      –> This includes newly verified bulk uploads (and any attributes, as noted below)
• Business titles
• Addresses
• Phone numbers
• Website URLs
• Pin marker moves
• Descriptions
• Hours
• Categories
What will update in about a week:
• Photos
• Videos
What will typically take several weeks to resolve:
• Merged listings
• Duplicate listings

Some of these, as Vanessa notes, are new. It is particularly interesting that information submitted by business owners would take “a few days” to show up live. It’s a major changed compared to the state of things up to now when most of the updates done via the verified owner’s dashboard appeared on the front end almost instantly. This post also gives an insight to what might have been causing the numerous problems with images that many people were complaining about lately. Vanessa shared the following as a reason for that change:

“We’ve been doing some work on our backend, cleaning up the pipes in order to make more improvements to Google Places over time.”

Unfortunately, these updates seem to not cover (at least for now) the withstanding problems of the long turnaround time for seeing mergers and/or duplicates resolved.

Another interesting announcement from this post on the Google Places Help Forum was the new “Technical Issues with Reviews” help file. While there is a lot of useful information there regarding possible reasons and some solutions to problems with Google Places reviews, owner responses, fighting against spammy or fake reviews, etc., what is very interesting is the following two claims:

• We have data spread across multiple databases, and we bring all that information together to create your local listing. Reviews can sometimes be dropped from Place pages when we’re trying to reconcile all that information. As we mentioned at the beginning of this note: This is a known issue, and we are working to make it better.
• Occasionally, there is a technical issue that causes Place page reviews to drop from Google Maps for a short period of time (a few days) and then reappear on your listing. This happens every several weeks, when we push out a giant housecleaning update to our listings database. Again, this is a known issue, and we are working to make it better.

In other words the problem with missing reviews is very often caused by imperfect syncing of data and the association of the business information database with the Google reviews database. Furthermore, Google shares publicly that the majority of the problems that occur on Google Places happen during the “housecleaning update to our listings database”, which happens “every several weeks”.

What is your takeaway on the situation? How do you see Google going with Google Places – right/wrong way?

Google, in their monthly Search Quality Highlights report announced two interesting improvements with direct effect on organic local search:

1. Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.

2. Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.

While Google did not directly share what the consequences of each of these might be, or how the display of the search results might change, I’d like to share some personal thoughts on what could be the front end implications deriving from these updates.

On the updates

First, it is notable that these updates are already live, i.e. this was a retrospective announcement, not preparatory. This means that the changes could already be seen and they happened during the end of January and in February. However, analyzing just the information Google shared, we could draw out the following:

1. The “Venice” update might be re-worded as “the importance of the “main search results” as a ranking signal and as a SERP triggering signal in local “Universal” results has improved”. By “main search results” Google probably means the organic website results. By “Local Universal results” Google might mean what is more widely known in the local SEO world as “blended local search results”, i.e. mixture between Google Places and website results. Therefore, my interpretation of this announcement (without having any third-party information) would be: “The importance of the organic website results as a ranking signal and as a SERP triggering signal in blended local search results has improved.”

2. The “Improved local results” update is more obscure. In my opinion, the keywords here are “user’s city” and “local to the user”. It might mean that now Google treats the city-level user location in a new/updated way. Furthermore, it might also mean that they improved their semantic understanding for recognizing when a search has local intent. An improvement to the way Google determines when/if a page is relevant to a particular location is also possible.

When we look into what happened during the time frame covered by the announcement, we could notice a few events that match relatively accurately the above descriptions.

In the end of January, Google started decreasing the Google Places results for many queries (first noticed by Mike Blumenthal). Now for the majority of the local searches, 3-packs or 4-packs of Places listings results are returned. This seems to be a result of the “Venice” update, as now the “main search results” prevail.

In the beginning of February, Google seemingly “increased the radius” within which the local Google Places search results might be located (again, first noticed by Mike Blumenthal). This means that Google might have “loosened” the ranking factor “Distance” for search queries implying search within a city (“keyword+city” search queries for example). This seems to be a result of the “improved local search” update.

What do these updates mean from a local SEO perspective?

The “Venice” update would not be liked by the ones that rely mostly on Google Places as a online marketing tool. The reduction of the listings that show up in the local SERP means that it is now more difficult to show up on first page with your Google Places listing. I constantly hear in the last few weeks that the Google Places pack now shows up lower in the SERP overall, i.e. there are many organic web results above it. For me personally this is a good change, as Google Places is a way too unreliable product to be taking up the biggest part of the local SERP and the click-throughs. Focusing on improving your website (more on- than off-) is now more important than it has ever been since the introduction of Google local. Furthermore, rich snippets for authorship and reviews started showing up which could only increase the CTR for the ones smart enough to implement them.

The “improved local results” update is exactly what it says – the local search results are now better than before. For a very long period of time it was impossible for a plumber, whose office is his home, living 10 miles away from the center of Dallas to rank high for a search term such as “plumbing contractor Dallas”. Many such small business owners were forced to abuse the system and look for some rather devious solutions to that problem. Google Maps was literally spammed with listings using virtual addresses or outright fake ones. Now, Google provides the opportunity for the businesses that were up to now in a disadvantageous position to fight for the top spots. This is a great improvement on the search engine’s side and something we’ve all been asking for. Implications on local SEO? Now if you cannot rank your/your client’s website/Google Places listing on first page it will be entirely (in most of the cases) your fault, and not the fault of Google’s very distance-sensitive local search algorithm. If previously “Distance” was the dominant factor in city-level local search, now “Prominence” prevails – a factor which is much more difficult to be abused.

Bing?

Bing has also been active on the local search front. They introduced a new layout for the local SERPs, and it seems very similar to the blended local search Google launched in October 2010 (present until now with slight moderation). Some of the interesting changes include “merging” between the website and the Bing Business Portal profile of a business. The local pack might now show up in the middle of the page, or to at least be over-ranked by organic web results. This implies that Bing now might also rely more heavily on some traditional organic SEO ranking factors in their local search algorithm.

Images 1 and 2 courtesy of Mike Blumenthal. Image 3 courtesy of Bright Local.

Nyagoslav: Dan, could you present yourself with a few words to our readers?

Dan: Hi, my name is Dan Austin. I live in Olympia, WA, and am employed working on various real estate projects. I spend quite a bit of free time on the web, exploring the world, and in-between cat videos and Netflix marathons, I like to dabble in Google Maps.

N: How did you get involved in Google Maps and Map Maker?

D: Years ago, I used to work for DHL as a delivery driver. Maps are one of the core tools you use to find people, places, things. It’s unfortunate, but we had paper maps that were good, but not great, and Google Maps and Mapquest were even worse—this was in the days before Map Maker and the more sophisticated multi-layer UI that you see on Google Maps today. Sometimes people just don’t want to be found, even though it was my job to connect them with the thing they had just found off the internet. I had finished some other projects, and was looking for something to ‘do’. I had been using Report a problem on Maps to sporadically fix Maps problems, but as you know, Report a problem leaves something to be desired, and the fixes usually just created more problems down the road. Map Maker had been available outside the U.S., but it wasn’t until last year that it was finally opened up in the U.S. I had a strong desire to fix all the maps problems associated with Map’s base data, and to add in missing details that I had noticed through my travels (and travails). Since my route covered four countries, that was a challenging project, to say the least. The rest, as they say, is cartography. Map Maker satisfies the itch.

N: What are the biggest challenges you find when using Google Maps?

D: Bugs, incorrect base data. Google Maps, like all other Google products, is constantly reinventing itself. It seems like every iteration breaks something even if it ‘improves’ something else. Google is also dependent on a wide variety of sources to construct its map system, and stitching it all together, while a remarkable technical feat, means that there’s a lot of bad data: street directions going the wrong way, a business marker for New York City being dropped in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, weird formatting issues, listings that disappear and reappear seemingly without rhyme or reason, etc. I’m cautious with Google Maps the way I’m cautious with general Google results: the results are quick and easy, but not necessarily comprehensive or accurate. Unfortunately, with so many people dependent on Google Maps, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Maps needs to shift away from the quick and dirty to just being trustworthy and accurate.

N: What are the biggest mistakes done by Google regarding the Maps’ crowdsourcing system?

D: Dependence on volunteers to try to work around technical issues on a product that requires a very reliable infrastructure to support their mapping efforts, and lack of good communication by Google as to why these technical problems continue to persist. In many respects, Google’s Map Maker product feels too beta. It’s one thing to use contractors or employees to work with substandard tools that have long since been surpassed by better off-the-shelf commercial mapping products (weirdly enough, you don’t really draw on GMM so much as point, click, drag, type). It’s another to expect mappers to work for free using those same tools, and all the energy from that production goes into Google’s pockets, very little of which seems to get reinvested back into the product. In many respects, Google’s products all suffer from a reinventing the wheel syndrome. Their reluctance to use ready-made products, and instead focus on developing everything in-house, and then finding a way to outsource the processes that feed the product development is an interesting technical and social experiment, but oftentimes, mappers, as we’re called, feel frustrated by the lack of resolution for those same problems, some of which persist for years. It’s basically inefficient. Free. But inefficient. Categories, for example, are not consistent across all the Maps products, even though they ostensibly share the same database. Sometimes categories are missing altogether, or they’re removed, or there are obvious typos. Why the inconsistency? Duplicates are another example. Places users are familiar with the ‘Why do I have two places on Maps when I only created one?’ problem. It gets even worse on the Map Maker side, because an errant Google bot can make one feature a duplicate of another, even if they have no relationship to one another. And once that’s done, it can’t be undone. So you basically either throw your hands up in frustration or you end up recreating the feature, sometimes multiple times. Google’s ‘quirky’ communication style often means that the issue goes unacknowledged, sometimes for years. So mappers just give up, sometimes on that feature or issue, and frequently, completely. They move on.

N: You are well-known with your restless endeavors against spammers. What made you focus on this particular problem?

D: Boredom. I wish it were more sexy than that, but filling my time can be a challenge, and spammers just happen to incite the right combination of factors that make this interesting for me. Initially, while I was mapping other features, I kept noticing how certain locksmith POIs—points of interest—kept popping up in the strangest places: the middle of intersections, 7-11′s, etc.—place where they have no obvious presence. As I began to investigate them, I found that the addresses were false, or obviously belonged to other features that it was pretending to be at or a part of. The Place pages for the individual POIs were even worse. Full of typos, the same pictures repeated a hundred times in similar type listings, reviews that linked to other locksmith spam locations, I began to suspect a pattern, and my hunch was confirmed when I did some additional research, and discovered that locksmith spammers dominated the local listings, and were extorting victim’s and decimating the ranks of the legitimate, licensed locksmith industry. I started deleting whatever I could find, gathered up additional search tools, raised the alarms on the Google Map Maker forums, and gradually began to focus more and more on locksmiths, to the exclusion of other mapping activities.

N: Which are the industries that use most black hat techniques?

D: Locksmiths, garage door supplier, movers, carpet and other cleaning businesses, tow services, limo and taxi services, bail bondsmen, dating services, check cashers, and any kind of service contractor (plumbing, HVAC, electrical, auto repair, etc.).

N: Why do you think spam is widespread exactly among these business types?

D: Basically, a lot of what we consider ‘shady’ industries, where the profit margins are low, the line between black and white is exceedingly grey, limited regulation, no storefront, and the temptation to ‘get slightly ahead’ where there are so many competitors who are also spamming Google Maps, usually attracts spammers. And it’s also easy to get into spamming, because the industrial support for it is enormous—everything from black hat SEO optimizers to website builders who do nothing but build spam websites. The other is that Google really isn’t that concerned about Places spammers. Their primary interest is attracting ad dollars, and their products are built accordingly. They have no enforcement mechanisms; their verification mechanisms are opaque, crude, and easily circumvented; there is no regulation of their own product by either consumers or the government, and since it’s given away for ‘free’, there’s no sense of responsibility to the business owners or customers that the listing be accurate or even legal—the prevailing assumption is buyer beware; lack of communication and customer service, unless you happen to be a well-connected politician, a zealous crusading state or federal law prosecutor, or a big ad buyer, in which case, yes, the giant does notice, and the giant does not like these bees flying around. It just wants the honey. And it will do what it has to keep the honey—and the money—flowing.

Additionally, some longstanding criminal enterprises have made the leap from the white and yellow pages (what we used to call the ‘internet’, albeit the printed kind) and used their SEO firepower, cash, and organized crime networks to expand into service categories that are particularly susceptible to bait-and-switch tactics, like locksmiths. Since the product is a service, and the ‘customer’ is usually a one-time ‘mark’, the spammers can afford to burn the connection to that customer and move on to the next victim, adopting a different name, a different location, a different number, a different ‘locksmith’. For every spam listing that gets pulled down, 10 more pop up, and they poison the well for all the other legitimate industries who share their business category. After awhile, every locksmith looks like a spammer, and many adopt the tactics of the spammers just to stay in business. Or just go out of business.

N: What is your methodology of discovering spam? How do you make sure particular information is spammy or fake?

D: Look at Places! More seriously, I find it using a lot of ways: searching through the Places forums using keyword search like spam or locksmiths, focusing on particular Maps categories like Escort Service and Locksmith and doing a general search on Google Maps or Google Map Maker. Once you know where they work and what they do, it becomes easy to find; they live on the dark side of Google Maps, so to speak, so they have a tendency to repeat the same patterns, ad infinitum. They basically make tracks, and I track them. Since I’ve deleted so many spammer POIs, I can usually tell right away what is spam and what isn’t, but I go through a process of verifying my intuition: I reverse search the telephone number and address and see what other businesses share the same address or if there’s anything fishy attached to it (or even if it’s a real address); I look at the Place page and reviews, searching for obvious signs or as I like to put it, ‘tells’, reverse searching images, examine content for misspellings, wrongly or weirdly worded descriptions and paragraphs; I also search a wide variety of databases that are particular to a business category, such as licensing and property databases; and I do a general search of the business on the internet. It isn’t one thing that confirms it (although it’s usually one thing that catches my eye): it’s all those things. It’s hard for a spammer to break their patterns, because they’re lazy and they’re trying to spam, and those two factor seem to cancel out whatever they try to use to conceal themselves. Sometimes I get it wrong: on several occasions I’ve deleted legit POIs. So then I have to do my best to restore and fix their listing, and learn from my mistake.

N: How do you deal with spammers? What steps do you take to get the spam removed?

D: I delete them. I use Map Maker, primarily. I also use Report a problem on the Google Places page for problematic listings that Map Maker can’t take care of. I contact Google with the occasional issue if something doesn’t get done to my satisfaction, or if they need to explore a certain avenue that spammers are treading on and that Google isn’t. Sometimes I shame them—both Google and the spammers—publicly on the Places and Map Maker forums, in an effort to draw attention to the spam problem. It’s really a combination of approaches, coupled with my relentlessness. You just have to be relentless. They have an investment they want to protect, but you have to escalate the cost so that it’s no longer worth the effort to maintain their listing. And restless. There’s always more spam.

N: What advise could you give to the regular users who have to choose which business to contact?

D: Do some research before buying—read the reviews, look on their listing to see what they have to say about their business—and trust your intuition. It’s the Wild West, right now. For any service, get a quote. If they won’t quote, go to the next one. Shop around. If you’re getting scammed, you’ll know it, right away, and you can always say ‘I’m calling the cops’. If you pay, pay with a credit card, because you can always revoke the charge. You can always say ‘I’m not paying’. The tendency in any emergency situation (like being locked out of your car at 2AM) is to panic. 911 is for panicking. You have a few minutes to evaluate your situation. Use that time wisely. And ultimately be prepared to be scammed; it’s going to happen, it’s going to be painful, and you’ll be more aware the next time.

N: What advise could you give to the business owners on how to deal with unfair competition?

D: Don’t spam in response to the spammers. This is the biggest problem I can see. It just escalates the problem out of control, because spammers respond with more spam, not less. I would report it, and if the Report a problem doesn’t work, raise a stink in the forums. Call your representative, regulatory authorities, the media, and anyone you know at Google. Everyone is asleep, and they just don’t care. Wake them up! Above all, if you can take individual action, do it. Figure out how to do it. I did. End result: thousands of spam deletions later, those listings are gone. Be patient, by systematic, be thorough, be accurate. It will get taken down if you persist.

N: What advise would you give to Google on how to deal with spammers?

D: They need to actively clean out the spammers from their base maps data. Some of it is left over junk from spam wars years ago. Other stuff is more recent. Leaving it to inadequate reporting mechanisms, algorithms, and an army of easily thwarted and discouraged volunteers is not the most effective way of dealing with the spammer problem. Hiring a team of spam fighters is the only way it can be done. Once it’s gone, verification procedures need to be instituted for the categories that attract a lot of spam (see above), and more effort needs to be expended to work with law enforcement to exercise their muscles on particularly virulent spam. Connecting ‘real’ identities to real reviews, making sure that the Places listings are trustworthy and accurate, and creating a landscape that is focused on reliability, fairness, and customer service, are just a few of the steps Places can take to make Maps better, and free of spam. Mostly.

However, I wanted to notify you about a couple of interviews I was pleased to give a few days ago:

1. Interview With Google Places Help Forum Top Contributors: Blumenthal And Zhekov, by Miriam Ellis of Solas Web Design

This one was mostly focused on Mike Blumenthal’s and my life as Top Contributors in the Google Places Help Forum; a very local SEO-centric interview in general. It is to be noted that Mike and me did not see each other’s answers before we submitted them, but at the same time our thoughts seem to overlap.

2. Interview with Nyagoslav Zhekov ahead of SMX West 2012 in San Jose, by Viktoriia Gumetskaya of BizzTeam

I answered some general questions about my life, experience, personal thoughts, and of course – Google Places and local SEO. If you are interested to learn more about me as a person, this is your chance. Otherwise, you can always meet me at SMX West. I will be there between February 26th and March 1st.

However, the share of Geo-targeted searches on mobile devices (35%) is still higher than the same share for PCs (33%) despite the above-mentioned limitations. If all the possible location terms were included, the numbers would have been even higher, especially for mobile search.

The research is conducted for 50 cities. They are divided into three groups:

• Large (over 3 million) – 14 cities
• Medium (1-3 million) – 19 cities
• Small – (395K-999K) – 17 cities

The results show that the size of the city is inversely proportional to the volume of Geo-targeted searches (regardless if it is desktop or mobile search). The paper suggests the following: “In larger cities [people] must define their search more specifically than city name to get the most local results.”

People are mostly likely to Geo-target their search using the city name in Austin (266% of the LSI for desktop, 265% for mobile), Las Vegas (120%/133%), Nashville (111%/120%) and others.

People are most unlikely to Geo-target their search using the city name in Detroit (-89%/-88%), Norfolk (-79%/-79%), Los Angeles (-78%/-81%), and others.

The research analyzes the local search behavior for 30 verticals: car dealers, restaurants, hotels, lawyers, pest control, attorney, motel, massage, plumbing, florist, hospital, dentist, theater, bars, spa, mall, pizza, shopping, veterinarian, moving, doctor, storage, golf, payday loans, motorcycle, banks, insurance, maid, powersports, loan.

People are most likely to Geo-target their search when searching for car dealers (101% of the LSI for desktop, 71% for mobile), hotel (84%/93%), restaurant (101%/61%), and others.

People are least likely to Geo-target their search when searching for loan (-88%/-81%), powersports (-75%/-69%), maid (-73%/-82%), insurance (-68%/-65%), and others.

The last statistic in the paper is related to what device people use predominantly when they Geo-target their search for particular vertical. According to the findings, people use desktop when they look for a local lawyer (53% more compared to mobile devices), restaurant (40%), pest control (34%), car dealers (30%), and others. People are more likely to use mobile device when they look for bars (47%), shopping(27%), spa (22%), and others.

Takeaways:

This data can give us a lot of insights on how to perform local SEO, and general local search marketing. Here are some of the most important conclusions that could be done:

1) Focusing on increasing the rankings mainly for [keyword] + [city] search queries is often not a good idea. This is a very important note especially for businesses and marketers that focus on targeting the audience in cities with more than 1 million population (Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Detroit, etc), and focus on verticals such as loan, insurance, maids. This means that if you have an insurance company and you are located in Los Angeles, it would not be a good idea to specifically target the term “insurance Los Angeles”, because it might bring you neither the desired volume of leads, nor the desired quality of traffic.

2) Focusing on increasing the rankings for [keyword] + [city] is a good idea if your business is in a town with less than 1M population, and if you are a car dealer, hotel, restaurant, bar, or attorney.

3) Bars, shopping centers, spa centers must have a mobile version of their websites. Otherwise they might lose a large amount of potential customers.

4) Lawyers, restaurants, car dealers must have well-designed and optimized websites for desktop users.

Now:

Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. If you operate from a location but receive mail at a P.O. Box there, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your P.O. Box information in Address Line 2.

Before:

Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. Listings submitted with P.O. Box addresses will be removed.

Both additions are very important by themselves.

The first one bans people from using the very widespread map location marker exploit, which allows them to place the pin near the city center without changing the business address. Since I first mentioned this black hat tactic in September last year, there were many reports for this abuses in various cities and niches. Now Google moderators can completely legitimately suspend accounts that do not abide this rule.

The second addition is one that I have also written about in a verification workarounds article. Now Google recognizes this tactic as an official way to verify your listing by postcard in case you do not receive mail at your physical address.

What is your opinion on the changes? What else do you think should be added?

What is the reason and the purpose?

It is interesting that this SERP update roughly coincides with Google “trying” to show Google Places reviews on normal AdWords ads. A few weeks before that, Google changed the color of the almost branded red pins to grey. And in June 2011, Google removed the photos from the SERPs.

Are these gradual steps towards increasing the click through rate for the AdWords ads? Did Google realize Places are a click magnet and “steal” a lot of traffic from the paid results?

Judging from the tendency, the next thing that might happen is that the Google Places organic search results might start showing up lower in the SERPs. Currently, for almost every query, the Places results are the ones appearing right after the paid results, and in 90%+ of the times this is above the fold. If the business listings have 5 or more reviews on them, it is a sure CTR boomer.

Your thoughts?