Google Local Search Update On March 23rd 'Corrects' Vicinity Update

Mar 28, 2022 - 7:41 am 8 by
Filed Under Google Updates

Google Local Update

On March 22nd and 23rd I noticed the BrightLocal tracking tool spike up a bit, so I kept tabs on that we may have had a Google local search update. Well, Joy Hawkins posted in the Local Search Forums that this update seems to have been a "correct" of the "Vicinity Update," which was the local update we reported on in December 2021 that later Google confirmed.

Joy wrote "I'm happy to say that we're seeing corrections to some of the overkill that the Vicinity Update had on businesses that have keyword-rich business names. We were seeing patterns before that businesses with keyword-rich business names were being filtered out if there were several businesses in a market that had similar names (@Yan Gilbert discovered this). Thankfully, that seems have been reversed."

She shared these charts showing the before and after for these local pack rankings. The first one shows the "biggest impact on explicit keywords, keywords that include a city-name."

Googlemaps Cash For Junk Cars Chicago 10012021 03242022

This second one shows a lesser impact for keywords that are implicit, no city-name:

Googlemaps Cash For Junk Cars 10012021 03242022

Here is the chart from Bright Local showing the changes on March 22nd and March 23rd:

click for full size

Here is a chart from Joy showing the spike in a different tool on March 23rd or so, this is from WhiteSpark:

click for full size

I wonder if we can get Google to confirm this March 23rd local search ranking update?

Forum discussion at Local Search Forums.

 

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