Hybrid Search Results Favor Local Businesses

04 Apr Hybrid Search Results Favor Local Businesses

Just recently, Google Everything Local launched a major change in the search results like that of the Hybrid local results. This change covers almost all local web searches and was first observed November last year. The change allowed Google to do brand filter. As a result, Google short listed multiple location businesses into a single listing.

Fortunately, early this month, the story changed making the local businesses back on track. The new changes are as follows:

1) Multi listing for multi location businesses.
2) Organic webpage placement does not affect the rankings.

So what does this new change do for local businesses? A study shows that hybrid results are similar to the Google Maps first page results, but the top search results differ in their rankings. The bias effect of the organic-like algorithm is eliminated; instead the conventional way of ranking Maps search results is back. This update favors the local businesses, as their chances to be on the top lists increases.

This update is in accordance with the Google Panda search algorithm update. Officially it has no name yet, thus temporarily, we can call this as the “Google Local Panda update” (or LP).

Have you been doing searches recently and observed this change?