Recent content by gabagoon

No punishment, their goal is to decrease the ranking signal for keyword filled titles. You'll have to rank harder in other ways. They still haven't achieved this, but looks like it's their goal right now. So if your competitors are doing other things right too, they can outrank you.

This neural matching was supposed to tone that down. Hasn't really. On another note, off-page seo is playing a big role in this update. Have a look.

A bit too early to say since we are still seeing major ranking fluctuations but in the long run it could change due to the emphasis they are putting in GMB in the last month or so. I'm seeing GMB's with no sites linked to it doing well too.

If you read properly you'd see that I mentioned, constant fluctuations and that we would see this over the next 2 months. Huge updates like this take a while to stabilize. Works out in googles favor too. They basically mention that they are targeting keyword stuffing, yet keyword stuffed...

Not sure why everyone is over complicating this update. Google mass released this update that they thought was good to go and obviously failed. There is no "Swapping" if that was the case, it would be swapping businesses in the map pack across all keywords (Check your long tails) GMB experts...

Prepare for another roller coaster is all I am going to say. This one won't be as big as the first update you felt, but it's still going to get a lot of people talking again.

You could have literally done nothing and you'd get the same results. Wait it out if you're in panic mode and not sure what you're doing.

If you have a strong GMB (authority) you won't need to worry much about proximity. I actually like when google does this, makes it more challenging for single businesses to dominate an entire city. The word "Best" as a keyword can be manipulated in the serps. Sometimes there are way better...

That's pretty much their goal. They will see a huge uptick in adwords revenue in the next few weeks if this keeps up. They will hide behind the "We wanted to provide our search users the best experience in making sure they are getting what they intended to search for and not drive across the...

1. I doubt it's to do with service areas being given more authority. It's aged GMBS given more authority (and some other factors) 2. True, but some GMB's are still ranking within top 3 even if you go further apart from the business address. (Goes to show there's more involved, which I wont go...

Look at the top 5 in the map pack. Not the top 3, then you will see it's a proximity update. Of course brand authority, age of gmb listing, and etc still outweigh the new update, but this is still a proximity update.

I don't think this update will last. Google will go back and realize what a huge mess this has created. I give them another week and everything will revert back. They will go back to the drawing board after, basically they are trying to figure out how to dial up on the proximity filter is why...