2015 Upword Search Marketing Confidential

Updates to the Local PackAugust 2015

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BackgroundGoogle’s current 3 pack, formerly known as the 7 pack, is a feature on a search engine result page (SERP) that, for a collection of three businesses, will display each business’s name, street, average Google review rating, closing time, and map location, all in a box toward the top of the page. It is called the 3 pack because all of this information is displayed for a maximum of three businesses on a SERP. Before August 2015, this feature was known as the 7 pack because it showed information for seven businesses.

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Recent Changes

A relic of the past: The local 7 pack

Prior to the recent August 6 update, results in the local pack included a few more details, such as full business addresses, phone numbers, and detailed hours of operation. The current exclusion of this information is apparently meant to encourage CTRs so that searchers become more engaged with brands by clicking through to their websites to retrieve contact info. Additionally, the move to subtract results from the local pack is meant to make the feature friendlier for mobile searchers. Many, however, are balking at what they consider to be a major downgrade in general UX quality.

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Changes for Restaurants

Something that’s been added for restaurants, however, are drop-downs that allow searchers to filter their results by star rating, type of cuisine, price, hours of operation, and Zagat rating.

So, while similar tactics are being used to increase CTRs by withholding contact information, users will be granted more control in filtering search results for local restaurants.

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Effects on Local SEOObviously, the main drawback to this

update is that fewer businesses are going to be included in the local pack. Higher exclusivity means that only a select grouping of brands will benefit from the heightened exposure and traffic that is almost guaranteed from being included in that pack. A benefit, though, is that there is now more real estate available in the SERPs for organic results. More organic results means more opportunity for presence on the first page, which could be beneficial for branding.

Will increased organic exposure put more weight back on optimizing website location pages?

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The Fall of Google+?

What’s more, the downsized local pack appears to be heralding the death of Google+’s role in local search. Previously, links to G+ pages for businesses were part of the local pack results. With this update, however, those links are removed. Google has steadily been diminishing the presence of G+ in local SEO for a while, so this change is not too surprising.

Current local pack result

Old organic result

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Summary• Number of results in the local pack has gone from 7 to 3• Important contact information has been removed from the

results in order to increase CTRs• Local pack results for restaurants include filtering options for

cuisine, average star rating, and hours of operation• Fewer results in the local pack means more results in the

organic listings — what are the pros and cons here?• Google is continuing to diminish the role of Google+ by

removing links to G+ pages in the local pack results

Sources:http://searchengineland.com/google-updates-the-local-pack-showing-3-instead-of-7-local-results-227368http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/08/07/thoughts-about-the-new-local-stack-display/https://moz.com/blog/google-local-snack-pack-shakeup