[Build Backlinks Online] Hummingbird's Unsung Impact on Local Search

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Hummingbird's Unsung Impact on
Local Search'

Posted by David-Mihm
Though I no longer actively consult for clients, there seems to have been a
significant qualitative shift in local results since Google's release of
Hummingbird that I haven't seen reported on search engine blogs and media
outlets. The columns I have seen have generally espoused advice to take
advantage of what Hummingbird was designed to do rather than looked at the
outcome of the update.


From where I sit, the outcome has been a slightly lower overall quality in
Google's local results, possibly due in part to a "purer" ranking algorithm in
local packs. While these kinds of egregious results reported soon after
Hummingbird's release have mostly disappeared, it's the secondary Hummingbird
flutter, which may have coincided with the November 14th "update," that seems to
have caused the most noticeable changes.


I'll be working with Dr. Pete to put together more quantitative local
components of Mozcast in the coming months, but for the time being, I'll just
have to describe what I'm seeing today with a fairly simplistic analysis.


To do the analysis, I performed manual searches for five keywords, both
geo-modified and generic, in five diverse markets around the country. I selected
these keywords based on terms that I knew Google considered to have "local
intent" across as broad a range of industries as I could think of. After
performing the searches, I took note of the top position and number of
occurrences of four types of sites, as well as position and number of results in
each "pack."



Keywords


Markets


Result Type Taxonomy


personal injury lawyer


Chicago


national directory (e.g., Yelp)


assisted living facility


Portland


regional directory (e.g., ArizonaGolf.com)


wedding photographer


Tampa


local business website (e.g., AcmeElectric.com)


electrician


Burlington


barnacle webpage (e.g., facebook.com/acmeelectric)


pet store


Flagstaff


national brand (e.g., Petsmart.com)



I also performed an even smaller analysis using three keywords that returned
carousel results (thanks to SIM Partners for this sample list of keywords):
"golf course," "restaurant," and "dance club."


Again, a very simple analysis that is by no means intended to be a
statistically significant study. I fully realize that these results may be
skewed by my Portland IP address (even though I geo-located each time I searched
for each market), data center, time of day, etc.


I'll share with you some interim takeaways that I found interesting, though,
as I work on a more complete version with Dr. Pete over the winter.

1. Search results in search results have made a comeback in a big way

If anything, Hummingbird or the November 14th update seem to have accelerated
the trend that started with the Venice update: more and more localized organic
results for generic (un-geo-modified) keywords.


But the winners of this update haven't necessarily been small businesses.
Google is now returning specific metro-level pages from national directories
like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Findlaw, and others for these generic keywords.


This trend is even more pronounced for keywords that do include geo-modifiers,
as the example below for "pet store portland" demonstrates.




Results like the one above call into question Google's longstanding practice
of minimizing the frequency with which these pages occur in Google search
results. While the Yelp example above is one of the more blatant instances that
I came across, plenty of directories (including WeddingWire, below) are
benefitting from similar algorithmic behavior. In many cases the pages that are
ranking are content-thin directory pagesâthe kind of content to which
Panda, and to some extent Penguin, were supposed to minimize visibility.




Overall, national directories were the most frequently-occurring type of
organic result for the phrases I looked atâa performance amplified when
considering geo-modified keywords alone.




National brands as a result type is underrepresented due to 'personal injury
lawyer,' 'electrician,' and 'wedding photographer' keyword choices. For the
keywords where there are relevant national brands ('assisted living facility'
and 'pet store'), they performed quite well.

2. Well-optimized regional-vertical directories accompanied by content still
perform well

While a number of thriving directories were wiped out by the initial Panda
update, here's an area where the Penguin and Hummingbird updates have been
effective. There are plenty of examples of high-quality regionally focused
content rewarded with a first-page positionâin some cases above the fold.
I don't remember seeing as many of these kinds of sites over the last 18 months
as I do now.


Especially if keywords these sites are targeting return carousels instead of
packs, there's still plenty of opportunity to rank: in my limited sample, an
average of 2.3 first-page results below carousels were for regional
directory-style sites.





3. There's little-to-no blending going on in local search anymore

While Mike Blumenthal and Darren Shaw have theorized that the organic
algorithm still carries weight in terms of ranking Place results, visually,
authorship has been separated from place in post-Hummingbird SERPs.


Numerous "lucky" small businesses (read: well-optimized small businesses)
earned both organic and map results across all industries and geographies I
looked at.



4. When it comes to packs, position 4 is the new 1

The overwhelming majority of packs seem to be displaying in position 4 these
days, especially for "generic" local intent searches. Geo-modified searches seem
slightly more likely to show packs in position #1, which makes sense since the
local intent is explicitly stronger for those searches.




Together with point #3 in this post, this is yet another factor that is
helping national and regional directories compete in local results where they
couldn't beforeâadditional spots appear to have opened up above the fold,
with authorship-enabled small business sites typically shown below rather than
above or inside the pack. 82% of the searches in my little mini-experiment
returned a national directory in the top three organic results.



5. The number of pack results seems now more dependent on industry than
geography

This is REALLY hypothetical, but prior to this summer, the number of
Place-related results on a page (whether blended or in packs) seemed to depend
largely on the quality of Google's structured local business data in a given
geographic area. The more Place-related signals Google had about businesses in a
given region, and the more confidence Google had in those signals, the more
local results they'd show on a page. In smaller metro areas for example, it was
commonplace to find 2- and 3-packs across a wide range of industries.


At least from this admittedly small sample size, Google increasingly seems to
be a show a consistent number of pack results by industry, regardless of the
size of the market.


Keyword


# in Pack


Reason for Variance


assisted living facility


6.9


6-pack in Burlington


electrician


6.9


6-pack in Portland


personal injury lawyer


6.4


Authoritative OneBox / Bug in Chicago


pet store


3.0




wedding photographer


7.0




This change may have more to do with the advent of the carousel than with
Hummingbird, however. Since the ranking of carousel results doesn't reliably
differ from that of (former) packs, it stands to reason that visual display of
all local results might now be controlled by a single back-end mechanism.

6. Small businesses are still missing a big opportunity with basic geographic
keyword optimization

This is more of an observational bullet point than the others. While there
were plenty of localized organic results featuring small business websites,
these tended to rank lower than well-optimized national directories (like Yelp,
Angie's List, Yellowpages.com, and others) for small-market geo-modified phrases
(such as "electrician burlington").




For non-competitive phrases like this, even a simple website with no incoming
links of note can rank on the first page (#7) just by including "Burlington, VT"
in its homepage Title Tag. With just a little TLCâmaybe a link to a
contact page that says "contact our Burlington electricians"âsites like
this one might be able to displace those national directories in positions
1-2-3.

7. The Barnacle SEO strategy is underutilized in a lot of industries

Look at the number of times Facebook and Yelp show up in last year's citation
study I co-authored with Whitespark's Darren Shaw. Clearly these are major
"fixed objects" to which small businesses should be attaching their
exoskeletons.


Yet 74% of searches I conducted as part of this experiment returned no
Barnacle results.




This result for "pet store chicago" is one of the few barnacles that I came
acrossâand it's a darn good result! Not only is Liz (unintenionally?)
leveraging the power of the Yelp domain, but she gets five schema'd stars right
on the main Google SERPâwhich has to increase her clickthrough rate
relative to her neighbors.




Interestingly, the club industry is one outlier where small businesses are
making the most of power profiles. This might have been my favorite
resultâthe surprisingly competitive "dance club flagstaff" where Jax is
absolutely crushing it on Facebook despite no presence in the carousel.



What does all this mean?

I have to admit, I don't really know the answer to this question yet. Why
would Google downgrade the visibility of its Place-related results just as the
quality of its Places backend has finally come up to par in the last year? Why
favor search-results-in-local-search-results, something Google has actively and
successfully fought to keep out of other types of searches for ages? Why
minimize the impact of authorship profiles just as they are starting to gain
widespread adoption by small business owners and webmasters?


One possible reason might be in preparation for more card-style layouts on
mobile phones and wearable technology. But why force these (I believe slightly
inferior) results on users of desktop computers, and so far in advance of when
cards will be the norm?


At any rate, here are five takeaways from my qualitative review of local
results in the last couple of months.

Reports of directories' demise have been greatly exaggerated. For whatever
reason (?), Google seems to be giving directories a renewed lease on life. With
packs overwhelmingly in the fourth position, they can now compete for
above-the-fold visibility in positions 1-2-3, especially in smaller and mid-size
metro areas.
Less-successful horizontal directories (non-Yelps and TripAdvisors, e.g.)
should consider the economics of their situation. Their ship has largely sailed
in larger metro areas like Chicago and Portland. But they still have the
opportunity to dominate smaller markets. I realize you probably can't charge a
personal injury lawyer in Burlington what you charge his colleague in downtown
Chicago. But, in terms of the lifetime value of who will actually get business
from your advertising packages, the happy Burlington attorney probably exceeds
the furious one from Chicago (if she is even able to stay in business through
the end of her contract with you).
The Barnacle opportunity is huge, for independent and national businesses
alike. With Google's new weighting towards directories in organic results and
the unblending of packs, barnacle listings present an opportunity for savvy
businesses to earn three first-page positions for the same keywordâone
pack listing, one web listing, and one (or more) barnacle listing.

National brands who haven't taken my advice to put in a decent store locator
yet should surely do so now. Well-structured regional pages, and easily-crawled
store-level pages, can get great visibility pretty easily.



Andrew Shotland already said it in the last section of his Search Engine Land
column, but regionally-focused sitesâwhether directories or
businessesâshould absolutely invest in great content. With Penguin and
Hummingbird combined, thin-content websites of all sizes are having a harder
time ranking relative to slightly thicker content directories.



Well, that's my take on what's happening in local search these days...is the
Moz community seeing the same things? Do you think the quality of local results
has improved or declined since Hummingbird? Have you perceived a shift since
November 14th? I'd be particularly interested to hear comments from SEOs in
non-U.S. markets, as I don't get the chance to dive into those results nearly as
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