New views for 3-pack and Local Finder.

[WilliamGMBE]

Recently google has been testing some new views for Local Finder and 3 pack. Thought will share about the views here. Have given notes about it on the bottom. We found these as part of our testing for GMB Everywhere.


3 packs views:

Type 1: Map pack with images:

Type 2: Map pack with map pin locations:

Type 3: Most common one

Local Finder Views:
Type 1: With border views
This is one of the most common test we have seen for Local Finder. The search box moved from the top to the left section and it allows you to filter locations locally. The version is live for about a month now.

Type 2: Local Finder with Photos

Type 3: Traditional version:

Some notes about what we observed:
- The above are based on our observations with GMB Everywhere. Since GMB Everywhere is a chrome extension, when a new view comes online, things break, and people report the view to us. The free version is used by around 30k people in 120+ countries. So we do get alerted usually.
- We have noticed that the frequency and scale of the tests has increased a lot in the last month. The same with number of varriations.
- Some of these views where deployed and then withdrawn.
- Some of these changes are within niche, like for example the image result comes up only for terms like 'cafe's nearby'. Even within the niche there are different views.
- These views are not geographically targeted. These views are targeted based on session or accounts.
- We believe these are A/B tests, more specifically multi-variant A/B tests. This means that even within a view they experiment with buttons, links, photos and other parameters for different users.

Thought will share about these observations here. Hope the community finds it helpful

 

[JS Girard]

We've had the picture one show in french for "rénovation cuisine" and "rénovation salle de bain" for a while. Oddly enough, I notice I absolutely cannot reproduce it in English either for Quebec or other places (I tried areas in Toronto).

As far as I can tell, the pins show up when Google expects/wants to show images for the query, but the profile doesn't have any. This is from the finder, but I assume you could easily generate a 3-pack with mixed pins and images by fiddling around:

 

[WilliamGMBE]

@JS Girard
I had not seen the mixed one with images and map before, thank you for sharing this.
When you changed language, did you open a new chrome profile or incognito window, or was it in the same session? Very interesting.

 

[JS Girard]

@JS Girard
I had not seen the mixed one with images and map before, thank you for sharing this.
When you changed language, did you open a new chrome profile or incognito window, or was it in the same session? Very interesting.

These pictures are from the agency profile. The English was attempted both on that profile and my personal one in English with kitchen remodel, kitchen remodeler, kitchen remodeling, kitchen renovation...

OHHHHH nevermind I just found two more in English for "Kitchen surfacing" (oddly enough only THAT word. it does not happen for very closely related kywords like "kitchen resurfacing" or "kitchen refacing"), and for "hardware store" (I remembered we had pictures on our problem spray paint gun searches).

I really cannot even begin to guess if it's vertical- or keyword-specific, or something to do with the proportions of profiles with pictures in search results.

 

[WilliamGMBE]

@JS Girard
This is very interesting. I see that the map types are also changing.

Great tests. Cant wait to see which view Google Local Finder and map-pack will finally end up with.

 

[JS Girard]

@JS Girard
This is very interesting. I see that the map types are also changing.

Great tests. Cant wait to see which view Google Local Finder and map-pack will finally end up with.

Hasn't that map been standard since March (Whitespark, Search Engine Land) At least it's been for us.

I've kept my eyes peeled and seen at least one 3-pack with photos for an electrician-related search. Also I'm generating a lot of picture 3-packs in English for non-branded retail searches. Searches like "shopping mall", "women's clothing", "computer store", "sport equipment", but not "hair salon", "beauty salon" or "dentist". This would agree with my previous finding regarding "hardware store" in English.

I couldn't confirm for "bank" and "drugstore"/"pharmacy", though because those are strangely enough treated as branded searches right now...

And as I noted, the pins show up in 3-packs where no picture is available (interesting that Google doesn't attempt to use StreetView, is it?):

 

[WilliamGMBE]

@JS Girard Thank you for sharing these link. Yes, seems like the hovering maps has been live for sometime. Thank you for sharing the link with this information.

Yes, we have noticed some of these variations too. Hope they finally settle with a good one