Overview of Google Integrated Search

You may have noticed Google has recently started pushing out a new local search results format which uses information from both your Google Places and organic listing combining them into one single listing. Many small businesses depend on search engine traffic to drive potential consumers to their location; if you are one of these then you may have noticed these changes could’ve affected your traffic.

1. If you had two search results (home page and an indented search result below it) on the first page you will now only have one.
2. For PPC concerns the map has now been moved all the way to the right forcing the sponsored results even further down making the top position all the more valuable.
3. Your information is now easily accessed directly from the search result, which means that there may be less of a chance of a potential customer actually clicking to your website. The integrated search results provide much more wealth of information about your website including reviews, your business address, star ratings, and phone number.

For most business owners who had healthy organic optimization but didn’t augment it with Google Places may have seen some of your traffic die down. Google’s new algorithm for the integrated search results carefully assesses both places and organic page ranking aspects, with a higher weighting on prior organic optimization.

Follow these 4 tips to help remedy the problem and gain ranking in the new sought-after integrated local search:

1. Check that your Google Places page URL matches your site URL precisely. To spark the integration progression try changing out any city specific URLs (I.E. example.com/los-angeles) used for tracking traffic back to the main domain this seems to help.
2. Confirm the accuracy of your pre-existing citations. Check that your existing citations have the exact Address, Phone Number, and Name that your website uses.
3. Build local links: Make sure to reference your address, website URL, business name, and phone number these will vary from links that are also citations, or they may be unstructured mentions such as those in tweets, youtube videos, and guest posts. Try to get these links from other local websites such as local businesses, directories, bloggers, or chamber of commerce.
4. Update your Google Places page. Editing the key areas of your Google Places page can often spark the integration process. Also editing the text areas like the description of your business seem to have a better effect with helping the process than editing or adding images and videos.