April Fools from Google?

As always big G is making changes to how we see and use results on its search engines. Sometimes these changes are good, and sometimes not. But this change  doesn't look like and April fools joke! Today it looks like they have made some significant changes to Google's local search documentation named Improve your local ranking on Google. This document still outlines the importance of local SEO and how to perform it in a foundational sense, but now Google has expanded the information to include greater details on how it's search engines calculate and allow rankings to reach the top spots.

As always the local SEO game has to do with three primary factors:
Relevance + Distance + Prominence = the local SEO rankings for your content.

The document outlines this formula better and also shows you how to rank for the local 3 pack, the importance of mobile search and that despite numerous requests you cannot buy better local rankings with Google. So your still stuck making great content and getting known for it!

Google will continue to disrupt things for search as new technologies come to life and become critical to searching. Future planning suggests that by 2020 PCs and Mobile Computers will only be 25% of the market.

Keep an eye out for Image and Voice searching, as these will certainly have any impact on the market as well.

Where do you search from the most?

Do you use image or voice searching?

~Sean Riggs | Search & Rank Technologies