Did your site get affected by the recent core algorithm update? Various changes have been made to local and small business sites after the update.

Below mentioned are the top six things noticed as a result of the update:-

These findings may be very specific to local businesses or sites ranking for local terms such as “plumber Seattle.”

This update was not related to links

This update laid emphasis on onsite content quality much more than backlinks. An organic increase across almost every keyword has been tracked. Most of the work done so far have been related to improving content quality and no links have found to be built.

Impact on Keyword

It is hard to get a business to rank in the 3-pack, in a surrounding city in the local search world. But it is sometimes possible.

With this update, the majority of keywords tracked and used such as [keyword + Dallas] increased. Even though the location is in Addison (the suburb of Dallas). While certain business decreased both locally and organically for the name of the major city but sustained rankings for the suburb where they are actually located.

Changes in organic and local results observed 

We have been ranking trackers that scan all our accounts daily so it makes algorithm updates easier to track. Several algorithm updates only impacted the organic results. Also, the local results. But it has been observed that this update impacted both. A small gap between the two updates is noticed. The local update seemed to have taken place around July 31-August 1. While the organic update happened from August 1-2.

The gap between organic and local algorithms is increasing

Generally, there is a strong correlation between the sites that rank organically and the listings that rank in the local results. However, much correlation have not been seen at all with this update. Sites with big organic increases did not simultaneously have big increases in local rankings and vice versa.

Also, in several cases patterns were completely opposite. The sites which increased organically dropped locally and vice – versa.

In few cases, sites saw a decline in organic traffic consistently with all the quality updates this year. However, their local rankings and telephone calls from Google My Business (GMB) have amplified extensively. These are getting almost triple the calls from GMB they were getting at the beginning of the year.

Increase in Video carousels for local search terms

For various keywords across numerous industries, there has been an increase in video carousels that did not exist before the update.

YMYL impacted deeply

This update mostly focused around Your Money or Your Life (YMYL)-type sites. With this update, there has been the biggest movement in industries related to healthcare. Large drops were related to pages about the particular medical malpractice lawsuits. Few drug rehab site lost two-thirds of their traffic overnight.

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