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Report: Local Search ranking factors 2012

June 29, 2012 | Online Marketing

David Mihm released a brand new edition of his annual Local Search Ranking Factors report, highly anticipated by search marketers looking for the latest trends on which local search tactics work, hurt, help or don't affect website rankings at all.

Over the course of the past year, we've seen the search engine result pages that Google returns for Local Intent searches get more and more complex. Just over a year-and-a-half ago, Google introduced Blended Place Search, merging its traditional organic algorithm with its index of Local businesses from Google Places. But this was just the beginning.

Google Plus was formally launched in late June of last year, but for most of the year, its release only seemed to affect a few results visually, rather than algorithmically. Much more important were the "Panda," "Venice," and "Penguin" algorithm updates that took down a lot of low quality websites (albeit almost none of them traditional small business sites).

From a Local Search perspective, the former updates seemed to be the more important of the three, as we saw the number of "pure" Local results (those showing traditional "7-pack" formats) go from a consistent majority to a consistent minority. And we also saw Local organic results start to percolate into prominence.

Get the full report at David Mihm Web Design

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