Trending Local Algorithm Update in April 2020?

[Pete]

I own a service based business. We’ve been in the top 1-2 map positions for our main focus for 1+ year and secondary focus for 2+ Years. Last week I noticed we weren’t in the top 3 for either. The next day we were back on top. Following day dropped even further. Yesterday jumped back to the top. Today dropped back down. Most of my business comes from the maps section. I have an SEO company that’s working on our organic rankings. My first thought was that they were building spammy links that got me penalized. After reading this thread I’m not so sure. Is this the appropriate place to hire someone to audit my GMB and site?

We just dropped out again too!

 

[sixthcitysarah]

We are just seeing some our rankings in the local pack come back today - still some we haven't recovered but it's a start. It's still fluctuating daily though.

 

[Pete]

We are just seeing some our rankings in the local pack come back today - still some we haven't recovered but it's a start. It's still fluctuating daily though.

I'm still seeing the ups store, virtual office address and fake 24 hour gbm listings from national competitors dominate our top spots on local.

 

[djbaxter]

Google Says There Was No Major Local Search Update But We Want Examples
by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable
May 11, 2020

For the past couple of weeks, Google's local rankings in the local pack and Google Maps results have been very volatile. Heck, even the past few days, the local SEO community is chatting up a storm on the changes. But Danny Sullivan of Google said on Twitter there is "no major updates or anything like that" in the local search algorithm.

He went on to say that this doesn't mean nothing is happening, he said "so there's nothing in particular we know of that should be doing this. Which isn't to say it's not happening." Give Google examples he said, "It would be useful if people have any recent examples. If they see it over the past day or two or so, or see it forward."

Read more...

So, according to Danny there is no local update but that doesn't mean it's not happening? For those who have followed Danny Sullivan over the years, I would take this as evidence that working for Google really changes a guy.

 

[Mikek86]

We just dropped out again too!

Back up for a day and back down today. We work super hard to earn 5 star reviews. Now companies with no reviews or that don't even have an office are ranking in top 3.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Unfortunately, it's not over yet. I just saw one I've been watching closely drop again today. This is the 3rd time they've dropped in the last couple weeks.

Another that dropped on Friday, recovered today.

 

[chadkimball]

working for Google really changes a guy.

kinda like watching a politician change over the years

 

[Mikek86]

I think that instead of Google using a radius around the business, it's now limited to the city/town limits. I'm blocks away from the city border and it's pulling up service based businesses just blocks away. About every 3 days it switches back for approximately 24 hours.

 

[ed5150]

We have had the opposite (thankfully) to what happened to us late last year. In that case we were replaced in map packs by unverified listings with GMB names spammed with location/keywords (different to the actual business name in some cases) but this time around we seem to be benefitting from our organic SEO status vs the others and location based business names seem to be falling away a bit.

Who knows where it ends up but for us at least , it has repaired the damage of November (and more). Not that we are getting any enquiry at the moment anyway

OMG............all the spammy, barely non-existent businesses are back in the pack worse than ever. A few days ago it seems that more credible , geographically appropriate businesses were starting to dominate the map pack but now we're back to spammy names from 10 miles away outranking us. Our "visibility" in all our key areas dropped 20-25% overnight and we're back to even worse than after the November chaos. Biggest move we have ever suffered in one night.

Back to the drawing board.

 

[JohnMarathonAir]

So far...we are extremely pleased with the update, with even organic rankings improving with our site being in the number one or two spot for organic, and number one for all of our desired phrases in local. (In the past, we have struggled with organic being in the numbers 4-8 spots, although done very well in local.) I'm liking this update bc our content has expert-written relevant content and legit links. Now, whether that stays the same, or not, who knows. Since this is Google, I'm guessing not.

And like someone else said -- now if we could only get a few decent calls, life would be great. We finally manage to make progress in organic, and the world decides to have a pandemic. In our industry, I'm really not expecting improvement until next Spring at the earliest, if it ever comes.

 

[ray]

Hi Everyone our listing yet again suffered from the update in the local pack we have been sown for almost 12 days now still have not recovered from number 1 in almost all keywords to number 70 any insights.....?

 

[ed5150]

Hi Everyone our listing yet again suffered from the update in the local pack we have been sown for almost 12 days now still have not recovered from number 1 in almost all keywords to number 70 any insights.....?

It's crazy stuff. I have attached a graph of our "visibility" as per Rank Tracker vs our key competitors - we are up top in green - over the last few weeks for our top 30 keywords averaged out over our geo areas of interest. Back in November we collapsed from mid 50's to mid 30's then recovered to high 40's over a period of months, but the way GMB works for us, we need to be WAY ahead of our competitors organically to show up in the map pack. It seems to prioritise keyword spam and we end up being kicked out by spammy names with no website/commercial location and who are miles away from the relevant locations.

Anyway..................you can see that in early May we began to take off (for no real reason other than a "righting of the ship" IMO) and once we pushed through 60 - a massive gap to our competitors organically - we finally returned to prime position in the map packs. Then last week we collapsed from top of the map packs in all our key areas to appearing in none (reflected in the graph) and then after two days...............all back to "normal" again.

Crazy stuff!

 

[ray]

It's crazy stuff. I have attached a graph of our "visibility" as per Rank Tracker vs our key competitors - we are up top in green - over the last few weeks for our top 30 keywords averaged out over our geo areas of interest. Back in November we collapsed from mid 50's to mid 30's then recovered to high 40's over a period of months, but the way GMB works for us, we need to be WAY ahead of our competitors organically to show up in the map pack. It seems to prioritise keyword spam and we end up being kicked out by spammy names with no website/commercial location and who are miles away from the relevant locations.

Anyway..................you can see that in early May we began to take off (for no real reason other than a "righting of the ship" IMO) and once we pushed through 60 - a massive gap to our competitors organically - we finally returned to prime position in the map packs. Then last week we collapsed from top of the map packs in all our key areas to appearing in none (reflected in the graph) and then after two days...............all back to "normal" again.

Crazy stuff!

glad you Guys are back No such luck for us our category is FULL of spam new listings that pop up on top and 1 specific listing with no site and stole our registered company name that we simply can't remove they violate every GMB rule and still show in the 3 pack and I think directly affect out listing that is a registered company....
Any ideas on how to approach this?

 

[djbaxter]

https://searchengineland.com/google-may-2020-core-update-is-done-rolling-out-334826

It is now time for you to review your site to see if this May 2020 update had an impact on its Google rankings.

Google announced “the May 2020 Core Update rollout is complete” via Twitter on Monday.

 

[ray]

thanks but all talks about the ranking of a site as a whole what if the site was not effected at all but GMB took a massive hit and did not recover for no apparent reason no one at all seems to have any real insight on that ..... anyone?

 

[ed5150]

thanks but all talks about the ranking of a site as a whole what if the site was not effected at all but GMB took a massive hit and did not recover for no apparent reason no one at all seems to have any real insight on that ..... anyone?

I am no SEO expert but , as I have hinted earlier , overall our GMB performance dramatically lags our organic performance vs our competitors .

So even now I have only JUST managed to pass competitors who (based on organic visibility) are 30% weaker organically, have no reviews , no commercial address , no website (or a website business name that doesn't match their GMB profile) , have keyword spammed their GMB name and are up to 10 miles from the location in question.

The only conclusion I have come to in my area is that having a keyword as early as possible in your GMB name is super powerful. We stick to our actual business name and suffer for it.

For now...............fingers crossed .......... we are back on top but we have had to massively outperform these spammy competitors to get there (the main one's website also has a Moz Spam Score of 60% , so blackhat SEO could also be a factor)

 

[Mikek86]

Our area seems to have evened out. We’re back on top and have stayed there for the last 4-5 days. Has it evened out for everyone else?

 

[JoyHawkins]

Update: Google just clarified all these fluctuations were a bug.



The best part is that all the examples from this forum thread that I sent to them helped them fix it. It's amazing to have a community like this!