Google Place Search - organic results to disappear completely

[Whitey]

I just wanted to check my personal paranoia about organic results being removed from the front page sometime soon - have things moved again or was this always the recent case .

On a popular search this morning I noticed only 3 organic results with the 7 pack on a 10 results page , 2 organic above and 1 in the last position.

But this time the 7 pack had expanded information comprising 8 lines and the 3 organic results had the usual compressed 3-4 lines. So the percentage of the page real estate dedicated to organic results was less than 5% ( including maps , Adwords , navigation and place search ). On top of that , there's lot's of red dots and visuals to take your eye away from those organic results.

Is this more widespread than previously thought - are organic results in areas where place search is being pushed going to be eliminated from the first page ?

[tedster]

It's a blended search result. The rankings are often organic, but if there is a Place page then the orange marker also appears next to the organic information.

I don't think we've reached anything like a stable situation on these blended organic/Place searches. Google is testing variation after variation. Ultimately, I suppose that user clicks will decide where the whole thing lands.

[ken_b]

I've noticed a few times lately where a search returned a serp with only 3 organic results, and that was it.

No Place Pages listings etc. Just the 3 organic results and the ads on the right side.

Doing a refresh on that serp brings up a regular 10 listing serp.

I had assumed that's some kind of glitch.

[tedster]

I've seen that with only five. I also think it must be some kind of bug. It's as if the SERPs are polling several different sources and one of them doesn't respond.

Well, they estimate that a single search query travels across 700-1000 machines (reference) [webmasterworld.com], so there's plenty of opportunity for something to go wrong.

With regard to these blended Place and organic pages, I'm beginning to think it's a change that only bothers webmasters. And even then, I've yet to hear from anyone about actually losing traffic. And folks who really work their Place pages appreciate it.

[Catalyst]

"I don't think we've reached anything like a stable situation on these blended organic/Place searches. Google is testing variation after variation. Ultimately, I suppose that user clicks will decide where the whole thing lands."

I thought they were still testing too and hoped they would settle on a single layout style before too much longer.

A few days ago Matt McGee contacted Google. He sent them some screen shots of a variety of layouts: old 7 pack, 2 pack, 1 pack and a couple versions of the new merged Place Search layout and asked if they were still testing.

The answer came back that, no they were delivering results based on how confident the algo is about the local intent of the search term and the variety was intentional.

So that means not only are there a variety of layouts, but there are at least 2 algos that work totally differently - the old Places algo plus the new Place search merged algo.

Between the variety in layouts, the 2 algos and the new changes to the guidelines, she sure likes to keep us on our toes, doesn't she?

Linda Buquet

[tedster]

Thanks for that news, Catalyst. Here's a link to the reference:

Google Places Isn’t Testing New Layouts … Get Used to Variety [smallbusinesssem.com]

[Catalyst]

Thanks Tedster, wasn't sure about linking out, so better you than me. :-)