Changes to the Map Pack - In Line with the July 28th Rollout?? (UK)

[joereadseo]

Hi all,

I've done a little digging into some UK GMB pages in reference to tomorrows rollout.

Here's the map pack for the term 'plumbers rugby' from 17th July - every listing has a direct connection to a Google Plus page:


<small><small>(Apologies for image quality!)</small></small>

As of 27th July, this is the map pack:

Notice that:

• The Google plus links for 'C Gregory' and 'Greenmarket Heating' have disappeared
  • The G+ pages for these are also completely gone
    • Cannot get to these through the review link in maps or through Whitespark's G+ shortcut
      
      
• However they still appear in Google Maps & the map pack
  • The map pack link goes straight to the website
• I can confirm these were initially unclaimed, unverified pages

What strikes me as odd is that 'J Myatt Heating & Plumbing' still appears as normal despite it being an unclaimed, unverified page.

I've backed up the links here: G+, Gmaps. Interested in seeing what happens to this one in particular tomorrow.


My theory...
...is that these changes took place on the other two listings as Google could associate a website URL with them and therefore could delete the G+ page whilst still keeping the businesses listed in the map pack.

Google does not associate a website URL with J Myatt and therefore cannot make the same changes.

Interested in hearing your thoughts,

 

[Linda Buquet]

Interesting Joe. Thanks for sharing.

I just cross referenced your thread with the one we already have going and noted it's weird that in Joy's screen shots it's odd that so many have no site and just a G+ page.

Here is that thread:

<a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-search/34957-%2A%2A-change-coming-july-28th-%2A%2A-google-announcement.html">** Change Coming July 28th ** Google Announcement</a>

 

[Linda Buquet]

Last night, after researching I decided it looks like this already happened yesterday.
Or at least one phase of it, maybe more to come.

So at least at this stage, it looks to me Joe like your theory is correct. If a listing ranks in the pack BUT has no site associated, it will still link to the G+ page because the listing needs to anchor to something. If no site, it needs to stay anchored to the G+ page.

See more info here:

<a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/35109-28th-google-local-page-removals-happened-27th-good-news-though.html#post67864">The 28th Google+ Local Page Removals Happened on 27th? Good News Though</a>