In a recent Search Engine Land post, columnist Joy Hawkins shares some insights and data from her study with BrightLocal. It compares SERP results – before and after the “Possum” update from Google. “Possum” is the name given by the local search community experts to the local algorithm update. It happened on 1st September, 2016 but wasn’t officially announced by Google. The whole SEO community wasn’t very vocal about the whole update and it might be due to the reason it wasn’t organic and impacted on Maps/Local Search.
The SERP trackers like Algoroo and MozCast do great tracking changes in the web results. To track rankings and pick major changes – Local Finder ranking and organic ranking were tracked. However, this algorithm update did not make any huge impact on the charts. It because the local queries that trigger a 3-pack are only a fraction of the tracking of these programs. Majority of SERPs that are tracked doesn’t contain 3-pack and so huge changes wouldn’t show on the radar.
There were ranking trackers that were setup for 1,307 different businesses with 14,242 tracking keywords. After sometime, the results of comparative study done earlier came out:
• There were around 14% of the keywords that showed businesses have decreased by more than three levels.
• 15% keywords have decreased by one to two places.
• 35% keywords did not show any change in its place.
• 15% of the keywords showed business improved by one-two places
• 11% of the keywords displayed business have improved by three-four positions
• 9% of the keywords have the business appear in Local Finder which previously weren’t there.
Only 64% keywords underwent some changes.
Everybody knows SERPs change daily without any algorithm update. However the significant thing here is to note the vastness of the change. 34% keywords faced some kind of updates with an important change. It is defined as business altering three-four positions or a business appearing in results when earlier it weren’t even listed on the top three Local Finder pages.
It is important for the local experts of SEO to spend time analyzing the alterations that helps to figure which Local Ranking Factors altered due to “Possum”. This way the SEO experts would be able to offer
best seo packages in Kolkata as it is not easy to get most reviews or stuff keywords – both of which worked easily some years back. Currently, it has become tough to determine the changes that affects rankings as Google algorithm have turned complex.
Comments