Disappearing Local Packs For Big Terms

[JoyHawkins]

I've been tracking some SERPs for years for personal injury lawyer terms in Philadelphia and am fascinated to see recently (last 90 days or so) that a lot of big terms are not consistently returning local packs. It varies based on the day and where you're searching from, but the general pattern is that there are a lot less 3-packs than there were before. Here are 2 specific examples:

Philadelphia car accident lawyer (before vs after):

Best lawyers in Philadelphia (before vs after):

I'm seeing this reflect in the Google Business Profile calls as well.

Februrary
Google Business Profile calls - 41
Calls onsite from Google organic - 20

April
Google Business Profile calls - 30
Calls onsite from Google organic - 34

Make sure you always track both - you never know when Google is gonna shake up the search results.

Are you guys seeing anything similar? I've seen other trends for different clients where packs are moving further down the page.

 

[sixthcitysarah]

We've noticed local packs drop off (and back on) for general terms like SEO, marketing, SEO agency, SEO company, etc. in the past few months for sure

 

[Professor M]

I am seeing the same

 

[Norbert Z.]

I see it.

 

[gyitsakalakis]

Seeing same. Try with "near" and pack is back (i.e. car accident lawyer near philadelphia).

 

[JS Girard]

I've noted before that sometimes, the presence of a three-pack varies from city to city, even for fairly popular keywords. Normally I see it for keywords that do not match a vertical. Most notably "agrandissement de maison + [City]" (French for house/home extension) has shown wild variation depending on time and place. At the moment it seems more likely to show a threepack than not.

Even taking into account Google's scaling back the amount of three pack over the last two years, seeing this for a query with a major vertical word in it ("lawyer") is really strange.

 

[Justin Mosebach]

Sometimes I see it, sometimes I don't. Even when I'm searching from the exact same location/device/browser (desktop, Chrome Incognito). I open Incognito and sometimes the map pack shows #3. Other times, there is no map pack. I'm about 1.5hrs west of Philadelphia (in Lancaster, PA) and am not using a location-changing Chrome extension.

Without map pack on desktop:

With map pack on desktop:

On mobile, the map pack consistently exists and shows up immediately below ads:

 

[Trifo1991]

I believe recent updates involve some sort of A/B tests on the best possible user intent satisfaction. I am not sure yet, but we will see.

 

[sd1111]

In my vertical (wedding industry), I haven't local packs dropping out entirely as much as being pushed down. I've seen multiple SERPs with local packs further down the page, with 1, 3, sometimes 5 organic results above them.

Anyone else seeing this? Seems like a good change for us, to drive more traffic vs have searchers compare options in the local pack...

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yes, I'm seeing more SERPs with local packs pushed down than ones without them.

 

[liftmarketinggroup]

For towing industry SERPs, so far we have *not* logged local packs dropping off or getting pushed down.

 

[25YearsInTheTrenches]

It started off a few months ago, I would see it pop up from time to time. Now it is becoming rampant for both push down and nothing. I cannot divulge anything sadly.

 

[jmshap]

What I am finding most interesting about this is that map pack is consistently being shows on mobile still.

 

[Orlando Sydney]

In our sector, I've been observing this for the last 12 months or so. Periodically the Pack is essentially at the bottom of page 2.

In other words, if it's not at the top of the page, left hand side, its fairly much pointless.
It make me wonder whether it's tied to G Qtr earnings or if local packs are kinda a thing of the past as far as commercial traffic?

 

[bernardoklock]

Sometimes I see it, sometimes I don't. Even when I'm searching from the exact same location/device/browser (desktop, Chrome Incognito). I open Incognito and sometimes the map pack shows #3. Other times, there is no map pack. I'm about 1.5hrs west of Philadelphia (in Lancaster, PA) and am not using a location-changing Chrome extension.

Without map pack on desktop:

With map pack on desktop:

On mobile, the map pack consistently exists and shows up immediately below ads:

Same here for the ISP niche.

Desktop map pack disapears.

Mobile map pack is back.

But for other terms in the same niche the map pack is still in the SERP but way down than before.

Another thing are the ads. Now alwas showing 4 ads. Before we could see 2, 3 or 4.

 

[sixthcitysarah]

@bernardoklock I am seeing the same thing with ads and I've mentioned this on other posts too, the local pack is nearly the 5th to 10th result on SERPs now, and although we are ranking really well in the local pack, we have seen such a loss in clicks from how far it's gotten pushed down. This post goes into it a bit: Google is testing out lowering the map pack

 

[bernardoklock]

@sixthcitysarah thanks for sharing!

Although the traffic on this niche (ISP) (for our clients here in Brazil) came 70 to 90% from mobile, this drop isn't hurting too much.

We, as local SEO professionals, need to keep an eye opened everyday to avoid surprises like these from Google.