Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Name

[Linda Buquet]

Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Name

The image says it all....

<img src="http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/PigeonEMDbellevueDentist.jpg" alt="PigeonEMDbellevueDentist" width="65%" />​

We know Pigeon loves EMDs and PMDs and the local algo before Pigeon did too.

But have you ever seen a pack like that where every single listing has city in it???

QUERY: Bellevue Dentist

BACK STORY: I'm helping a Dentist at another forum that's in that pack and keeps telling me how much the pack keeps radically changing every time he turns around. So by the time you check this SERP the results could all be different.

Cray Cray Pigeon!


Which reminds me...

How many of you have tried adding a City descriptor now that it's allowed?

Did it help???

What do you think???
<meta property="og:type" content="article"><meta property="og:title" content=""><meta property="og:description" content="Have you ever seen a pack like that where every single listing has city in it???">
<meta property="og:image" content="http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/PigeonEMDbellevueDentist.jpg">

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

I wish Google would let me embed posts from my own Community!

Here is the link to a great discussion that's started at the Local Search Pros Community.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/101037504613481726969/posts/CMrHLDmwwHB

 

[mblumenthal]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Why do you think this is about domain matching rather than brand name matching?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Sorry - for title length I used EMD as sort of a generic catch all phrase.
Then later in title explained it was City in Name.

But 6 out of the 7 do have city in domain as well. However often city is in domain because it's part of the name as well, so there is a lot of cross over.

Andrew Shotland in the new Pro G+ Community said:

IMO this is an example of Pigeon's overweighting of the brand algo. GOOG interprets "Bellevue" as a brand query. Post-Pigeon GOOG looks at its local data to see if there are any potential brand matches so any business that has "Bellevue" in its title is a candidate.

We could see this effect in some clearly non-local queries that would bring up pack results with one of the search terms in the business' names. One of the queries we were seeing this happen for all over the country "True and co reviews" as of Friday is no longer behaving like this. In the case of "Bellevue Dentist", "Dentist" is an implicit local query so it still triggers this type of result.

Or a GOOG engineer just spilled his coffee on the server...

 

[HurricaneK8]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

I know the general consensus is that pigeon has not landed on .ca and I've been seeing the EMD/PM domain correlation happening for going on 2 months now on .ca.

https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=ssl#q=cosmetic+dentist+toronto

The top 4 results for "cosmetic dentist toronto" are partial/pretty damn close to EMDs.

Portrait dental actually used to be portraitdental.ca and bought cosmeticdentiststoronto.ca, redirected everything to the EMD and VOILA, they're ranking page 1.

Anyways-- I'm not sure if it's pigeon related or just an overlay of anyother algo.; perhaps they tweaked the "low quality EMD update" (The EMD Update: Like Panda & Penguin, Expect Further Refreshes To Come) when they re-ran panda/penguin.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Yes like I said "the local algo before Pigeon did too." (Like EMDs and City in Name)

It's been like that for quite awhile and was bad before too. So that's what you are likely seeing up in CA. It just seems a little worse since Pigeon to me and that one is especially bad since it's 7 out of 7 with city in name and or domain.

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

It's not just happening in Canada. I'm constantly encountering situations here in Australia who have named their business cleverly (and the URL) and the search returns brand results even though the intent of the searcher very likely is a generic search. That same search with a different geo returns the proper pack.
G def has bad bias to emd/pmd and city in the biz name, effectively locking out competition in the local pack.

Have had positive results with location name appended to biz name, no negatives seen yet.

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Should also say I can't be certain this makes _the_ difference because of all the other things I do as well.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Ya so many moving targets at the same time - the work you are doing, the changing algos, competitors making changes that move them up or down, which moves your client up or down as a result. Cause and effect is just so hard to track.

Would almost need to take a claimed but dormant listing that you knew no one was doing marketing on and just change that one thing.

I've often thought of getting the company that does my house cleaning to let me use them as a test case for stuff like this but just don't have time to mess with it.

And like you said with your own clients you are obviously doing other things so can't just track movement to that one change.

 

[Phil Rozek]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Linda, I think you're right: Google does seem to favor EMDs and KWs in the business title at least a little more post-Pigeon.

But I think one factor at play might be that in certain cities/towns with nice-sounding names - like Bellevue - many businesses weave the name of the city into their brand. So I suspect the pool of Bellevue-branded businesses (say that 5 times fast!) might be larger than usual to begin with. And of course Google has to draw from that pool to fill up a page of local results.

 

[HurricaneK8]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Interesting that city name has such a big influence in the "Official Business Name". We've tested a few adding descriptors and haven't seen any movement-- but, no pigeons in Canada

Mozcast reports quite a few fluctuations and an overall rising trend in EMD influence: MozCast Metrics

 

[MartinD]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Hello Linda,

I am pretty sure results for dentist will be different if you are actually in Bellevue and type "dentist" from your mobile device chrome app or Google map Ap. The results will be different also if you type "dentist" from a desktop machine in Bellevue. Google is trying to make it as easy as possible for users to find what they need either via hummingbird or one word query as it is in the case. They do not want to make users type city, state next to the keyword. What do you think about that?

 

[cwtaylor]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Hi Linda, I have tried the descriptor feature on a client's google plus page. But have not seen the bump in ranking I had hoped for... Not sure how much weight Google is putting on this.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Didn't see much a jump in the descriptor myself.

Definitely agree that EMD's and PMD's as well as exact match business names and partial match business names are absolutely killing it right now.

 

[Broland]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Yea.. Phil kinda touched on it but there are so many more factors that are in play here than I think most of you realize. Branding, branded domain, anchor text matching brand/domain name, etc etc. It's all out there in Google patents if you take the time to read..

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Yea.. Phil kinda touched on it but there are so many more factors that are in play here than I think most of you realize. Branding, branded domain, anchor text matching brand/domain name, etc etc. It's all out there in Google patents if you take the time to read..

Enlighten us Broland

Always interested to hear your take on things.

 

[cwtaylor]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

This might be a bad idea but has anyone thought of buying an EMD and just use that domain for the Google plus page and just 301 redirect it to the "real/existing domain"? Your thoughts would be super appreciated. Thanks

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Nope not good idea I don't think.

I've posted about this a few times but...

1) Google hates redirects (In the wild wild web redirects often take you to P orn, malware or other places you really don't want to go.)

2) It can cause disconnected listings in the pack.

Mature domain A is the one that already ranks in organic and WOULD be in the pack.
Except GMB links to domain B, instead of high ranking A and it can cause probs.

Now I should mention PRE-Pigeon it would just totally disconnect the listing.

Post-Pigeon I've seen some sites rank even though they were confusing Google with a KW URL that redirects to the ranking URL. But I think if they switched the URL on GMB to the original high ranking URL, they would rank higher than they do now using the re-direct.

But then again a lot of spammy stuff is working post-Pigeon that I hope will be short lived.

 

[cwtaylor]

Re: Pigeon is Partial to City EMDs & PMDs - Every Single Pack Listing has City in Nam

Thanks Linda