Hi everyone.
I've been looking into what looks like a big drop in ranking for my locations.
I run search grids every few weeks for a handful of keywords (11x11 grid, 200m spacing)
I noticed a steep decline in average position for my locations some time between early Sep and late Oct
I assumed this was a result of more competition, or perhaps I'd let my listing get a bit stale, or perhaps even directly penalised
But I looked at competitors and saw *all* of their average ranks had dropped by a similar amount in the same window
If the main competitors all drop rank, it must mean more competitors... so I dug into the detailed data a bit more.
Thought this was interesting enough to share
I looked at the number of distinct businesses who occupied all the top-3 slots on my grid (11x11 grid so there are 121x3=363 positions to dish out)
As recently as early September, 27 businesses shared those positions. By end Oct that increased to 123 (4.6x increase). At another location, 29 increased to 132
That is not explained by a surge in new business openings
What has happened (imo) is a Google change which is giving significantly more weight to the searcher's proximity. So even tiny listings with a handful of bad reviews are out-ranking competitors when the searcher is on the doorstep of the small business, and that has not been the case for the last few years, at least in my data
I hope this is just some testing and the proximity-importance-knob will get dialled down
But I fear the effect is that the more established and historically better-ranked businesses now have to resort to Ads for display, so our Google overlords will see the change as successful!
Maybe this will help others - it probably applies more to businesses operating in dense metro areas, and particularly inside clusters of businesses with similar primary categories, however new/small they may be
Thanks for reading!
I've been looking into what looks like a big drop in ranking for my locations.
I run search grids every few weeks for a handful of keywords (11x11 grid, 200m spacing)
I noticed a steep decline in average position for my locations some time between early Sep and late Oct
I assumed this was a result of more competition, or perhaps I'd let my listing get a bit stale, or perhaps even directly penalised
But I looked at competitors and saw *all* of their average ranks had dropped by a similar amount in the same window
If the main competitors all drop rank, it must mean more competitors... so I dug into the detailed data a bit more.
Thought this was interesting enough to share
I looked at the number of distinct businesses who occupied all the top-3 slots on my grid (11x11 grid so there are 121x3=363 positions to dish out)
As recently as early September, 27 businesses shared those positions. By end Oct that increased to 123 (4.6x increase). At another location, 29 increased to 132
That is not explained by a surge in new business openings
What has happened (imo) is a Google change which is giving significantly more weight to the searcher's proximity. So even tiny listings with a handful of bad reviews are out-ranking competitors when the searcher is on the doorstep of the small business, and that has not been the case for the last few years, at least in my data
I hope this is just some testing and the proximity-importance-knob will get dialled down
But I fear the effect is that the more established and historically better-ranked businesses now have to resort to Ads for display, so our Google overlords will see the change as successful!
Maybe this will help others - it probably applies more to businesses operating in dense metro areas, and particularly inside clusters of businesses with similar primary categories, however new/small they may be
Thanks for reading!
