This is a very interesting find coming from the States, found originally by Linda Buquet of Catalyst eMarketing which could have a very interesting impact on a number of advertisers relating to local search.
Source: Blumenthals.com
Interestingly this has a number of significant changes particularly
- Map migrated from central position to right hand column, moving the paid search results down
- Standard organic search results slightly larger in size against local search results
- Map follows you down the page
- Local results appear to still use traditional SEO real estate – meta descriptions
- Reviews included with ‘local results’
Why do I suggest this is significant, well for a number of reasons:
- This is a further fusion of traditional organic results with a blended search result. However this time it goes one step further by including local features within both traditional organic and paid search real estate
- The migration of the map down the right hand side pushes down the paid search ads. This could have a significant impact on advertisers who have traditionally chosen to target the ‘considered searcher’ and kept away from the top 3 positions. Net result could be increased CPC on top terms, and lower CTR on the side advertisers.
- The local results still look like normal results. Given some of the recent tests I have seen where the paid search results look very similar to the organic results in style – this is interesting to see this carried through to real estate which has previously been kept very different in style
I haven’t seen this migrate to any UK results however one would suggest this may only be a matter of time
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Interesting article… however I’d like to know if a Google account was logged into at the time, as that can have a significant impact on the returned results, especially for local search terms.
{ 2 trackbacks }