Trending [November 5, 2019 Local Algorithm Update] Unexplained big drops in GMB rankings

[loic]

Back to the top 3 since yesterday evening. The machine learning starts to learn ?. And a new feature (in France) : the keyword with a # format is under the listing (the # keyword was included in a post 2 weeks ago)

And for you ?

 

[JoyHawkins]

I saw several businesses tank last Thursday and Friday but they've all rebounded since Saturday.

 

[ray]

Hi Joy my listing is still going from 1 to 30 every 2 or 3 days even though all other locations that had an issue are back to normal this main listing still fluctuates for some reason I am unable to find...? however I reached out to you and hoping Nikki Will find the answer with the audit

 

[JoyHawkins]

Google said one of the purposes of this update was to make it so that keywords in the business name didn't impact ranking as much. I'm starting to see more cases that are showing that happening.

 

[ray]

yes that may be a change they want to do but that does not explain how an ad can bounce from 1 to 40 I can understand a small 2 3 or 4 spot change due to also but not ghosting an ad

 

[djbaxter]

yes that may be a change they want to do but that does not explain how an ad can bounce from 1 to 40 I can understand a small 2 3 or 4 spot change due to also but not ghosting an ad

I'm confused. I thought you were talking about GMB or perhaps site rankings. What do ads have to do with this?

 

[ray]

GMB = AD sorry

 

[ray]

I am talking about a GMB listing

 

[kurtztay123]

I saw several businesses tank last Thursday and Friday but they've all rebounded since Saturday.

I had several businesses that had never taken a hit, take a hit and then rebound in November, but they are now starting to decline in the map rankings again.

 

[kurtztay123]

Google said one of the purposes of this update was to make it so that keywords in the business name didn't impact ranking as much. I'm starting to see more cases that are showing that happening.

That's a tad frustrating. What about, let's say, a law firm, who's name is (Last Name) Law Firm.

 

[ray]

Is anyone still seeing the ranking drops and reappearing of local map listings?

 

[georgebizpro]

Everywhere I've read has said that authority is being rewarded over proximity in Bedlam update. Maybe it's different dependent on the industry, I'm not really sure, but I surely haven't seen law firms with more authority being rewarded. I have a client who, for the past 5 years, has ranked in local snack pack for search terms in his city.

Following launch of Bedlam, they dropped to page 3 organically and #8 locally.

I analyzed all 7 competitors which improved in rankings, compiled a spreadsheet breaking down number of pages indexed, citation sources via WhiteSpark, backlinks and domain authority via SEMRush, reviews, and even calculated the distance between each law firm's location to the center of the city.

4 of the 7 competitors which suddenly outrank my client are located less than a mile from the center of the city. My client has more reviews, pages indexed, local citations, backlinks, referring domains, and domain authority is significantly higher than all of these firms. My client is only 2.9 miles from city center. The firms outside of the 1 mile radius which now outrank my client pay extra money for Findlaw and Superlawyers listings. I don't necessarily see how authority is being rewarded when 4 law firms, one of which doesn't even have a website listed in their GMB profile, suddenly outrank my client simply because of where their law firm's office is located.

 

[ed5150]

Everywhere I've read has said that authority is being rewarded over proximity in Bedlam update. Maybe it's different dependent on the industry, I'm not really sure, but I surely haven't seen law firms with more authority being rewarded. I have a client who, for the past 5 years, has ranked in local snack pack for search terms in his city.

Following launch of Bedlam, they dropped to page 3 organically and #8 locally.

I analyzed all 7 competitors which improved in rankings, compiled a spreadsheet breaking down number of pages indexed, citation sources via WhiteSpark, backlinks and domain authority via SEMRush, reviews, and even calculated the distance between each law firm's location to the center of the city.

4 of the 7 competitors which suddenly outrank my client are located less than a mile from the center of the city. My client has more reviews, pages indexed, local citations, backlinks, referring domains, and domain authority is significantly higher than all of these firms. My client is only 2.9 miles from city center. The firms outside of the 1 mile radius which now outrank my client pay extra money for Findlaw and Superlawyers listings. I don't necessarily see how authority is being rewarded when 4 law firms, one of which doesn't even have a website listed in their GMB profile, suddenly outrank my client simply because of where their law firm's office is located.

I agree - total opposite to what is supposed to have happened in most cases. Businesses that barely exist (no website , no address in some cases) appearing in map packs in place of established businesses with good authority.

I got back in to one pack yesterday by suggesting a business be deleted - I had been replaced by a business with a 2 star rating that hasn't existied for 3 years.

It's hard to see a lot of hard work go up in smoke , so I have had to resort to Google Ads - funny that.

The one big mystery to me is how poor GMB accounts which are 15 miles away (one particular competitor) continue to perform really well. This business has absolutely nothing going for it - other than a keyword+suburb name on GMB (that doesn't match the website) .......doesn't have authority or proximity and is thrashing everyone else , always has and hasn't been hit by the Bedlam update.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Following launch of Bedlam, they dropped to page 3 organically and #8 locally.

Bedlam wouldn't have caused them to drop organically because that update was specific to the local results. There was a different update Nov 7-8 that probably impacted them but you can check those dates in Search Console. We saw several law firms negatively impacted by the update on Nov 7-8. Most of the drops were to sensitive/legal topics and in some cases the sites that made them drop are .gov sites or medical sites. That's the trend we've seen with most of the organic updates in the last 2 years.

 

[marston gould]

Everywhere I've read has said that authority is being rewarded over proximity in Bedlam update. Maybe it's different dependent on the industry, I'm not really sure, but I surely haven't seen law firms with more authority being rewarded. I have a client who, for the past 5 years, has ranked in local snack pack for search terms in his city.

Following launch of Bedlam, they dropped to page 3 organically and #8 locally.

I analyzed all 7 competitors which improved in rankings, compiled a spreadsheet breaking down number of pages indexed, citation sources via WhiteSpark, backlinks and domain authority via SEMRush, reviews, and even calculated the distance between each law firm's location to the center of the city.

4 of the 7 competitors which suddenly outrank my client are located less than a mile from the center of the city. My client has more reviews, pages indexed, local citations, backlinks, referring domains, and domain authority is significantly higher than all of these firms. My client is only 2.9 miles from city center. The firms outside of the 1 mile radius which now outrank my client pay extra money for Findlaw and Superlawyers listings. I don't necessarily see how authority is being rewarded when 4 law firms, one of which doesn't even have a website listed in their GMB profile, suddenly outrank my client simply because of where their law firm's office is located.

1) Take a look a the page rank of the competing pages using your favorite tool (Ahrefs, Moz, etc.)
2) Compare the backlink profile to each of the competing pages and look to see what the page rank profile is of the pages linking to these competing pages - both external and internal.

 

[georgebizpro]

I have a client who I've tracked local rankings for in Localfalcon for months. Two locations, legal client.

I've shown them which competitors outrank them. The competitors before the latest update were all in the same WA state cities, but a different zip code. So I suggested to the client, next time you're looking for office space, lets look in this particular zip code.

So they move to a new location, and following latest update....for both locations....all competitors showing up in top results in Local Falcon are now not in the same city as client/city being searched for, but instead are in closest major city (Seattle) which is fairly far for potential clients of both locations.

So it's possible that you're not doing anything wrong when local rankings drop. Something is up with latest update and who is ranking.

 

[djbaxter]

@georgebizpro

The member you are replying to is a spammer who has been banned. This thread is from November 2019 and given that we have seen several updates since then it is doubtful that this particular one is responsible for any recent changes to rankings.