A look at Google local SERPs

 

As I was browsing through Google, checking out the landscape to see what’s going on, I thought I’d see if any changes had been made to the local SERPS. So I did a bit of an experiment and compared different geo-targeted business sectors, using the following phrases:

• hotels in Preston
• photographers in Manchester
• shops in Manchester

It’s really interesting because in the results for each of these phrases, you find more emphasis on ratings from different review sites alongside local listings for relevant businesses. What’s more interesting is it’s possible to see which review sites are (possibly) part of Google local SERPs ranking algorithm. I will list these.

Furthermore, take a look under the specific local business listings and Google has categorised the different types of businesses according to the original search. By this, I mean a search for ‘hotels in Preston‘ brings up in the results what Google considers relevant categories, namely ‘luxury’, ’4 star’ (not ‘four star’), and other accommodation like ‘bed and breakfast’. Click on one of these and you Google takes you to its local listings page. Here’s an image:

You also see links to places in the vicinity of your geo-targeted search phrase: Leyland, Chorley, Garstang Road!

But what about review/ratings sites? The search for ‘hotels in Preston’ also shows us which sites are seen as important for ratings. Here’s a snapshot of the results for ‘hotels in Preston’:

So the ratings sites here include: Tripadvisor (.co.uk and .com), qype, activehotels, laterooms, travelpod and booking.com. To what extent each of these individually influence local SERPS is unknown, but a relevant site such as Laterooms would probably carry more weight than Qype.

The same is for the phrase ‘photographers in Manchester’, and relevant links include: wedding, commercial, portrait and baby photography.

For ‘shops in Manchester’, you get: clothes, bedding, designer, and, for some reason, aviation shops.