Local SEOs still seeing volatility in ranking with Google’s latest algorithm update
1Reported today on Search Engine Land
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Local SEOs still seeing volatility in ranking with Google's latest algorithm update
November has been a crazy month for the SEO industry. Although there have been a ton of changes on the organic side, I'm going to be focusing on the changes we're seeing in the local results (Google Maps packs).
Starting on Nov. 5, we started seeing huge changes in the local results. A lot of these changes got updated further (many reversed) on Nov. 10. I named the update "Bedlam" based on the utter chaos I was seeing everywhere. However, last week the changes continued and we saw another big update on Nov. 13 that was mostly reversed a couple of days later.
BrightLocal's Local Flux tracker is helping us keep track of the changes. If you work in Local SEO, I'd suggest keeping a close eye on it to make sure things actually settle down.
This update is about relevance
This update seems very different from the last major update we got in Local SEO. I haven't seen this many drastic changes since Possum in 2016 which was a huge change to the way Google treated proximity.
For this update, the changes I'm noticing are mainly related to relevance. Specifically, I'm noticing that Google is doing a lot better job of understanding a broader set of search terms that apply to a single business. Previously, Google has always weighted Google My Business categories extremely high. Having the right categories could either make or break your ranking. Similarly, the primary category would influence ranking at a much higher rate than the additional categories.
With this update, I'm seeing some changes to that. For example, here is a client of ours that is both a personal injury lawyer and employment lawyer. He cares more about personal injury