Google's July local update has reached Canada. Do not chase rumours: confirm your listing's name, address, phone, category and hours, make the website say in text what you do and where, and correct old directory listings.

Results that look a little different

An owner searches for her own kind of business in her own neighbourhood, as she does most weeks, and the results look a little different from last week's.

The change is real. Google confirmed this week that the local search update it introduced in the United States in July now applies in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Nobody outside Google knows exactly how it works. What Google said in July, and what American results showed afterwards, is enough to know where an owner's attention belongs.

What Google said in July

When the update launched in the United States, Google said it tied the local results more closely to the signals used for ordinary web search, the same ones that decide which pages appear for any query.

Google also said it had improved how distance and location are used. People who watch local results nicknamed the update Pigeon, and the name stuck.

Local ranking is usually summed up in three words: relevance, distance and prominence. The update appears to have shifted how those three are judged, with more of the evidence drawn from the web at large.

What American results showed afterwards

In the months after July, people who watch local results in the United States reported several patterns:

None of these will necessarily repeat here, and Canadian results may settle differently over the coming weeks. They all point the same way, towards the basics.

Distance is not yours to change

Distance is measured from wherever the searcher is, or from the town typed into the search, and no setting changes it.

What a business can control is whether Google is sure where it is. The same address, written the same way, on the listing, the website and every directory, leaves no doubt.

A business that travels to its customers can show a service area instead, so the listing describes where it works, not just where its office sits.

Prominence comes from the wider web

Prominence is how well known a business is, judged from what the web says about it: reviews, mentions in local news and blogs, links from other sites, and listings in directories.

None of it can be bought quickly or safely. It accumulates from doing good work in public, and from making sure the places that mention you have your details right.

The website behind the listing

If local results now lean more on the signals used for regular search, the website linked from a listing matters more than it did.

The site should say in text what the business does and where: the services or menu, the neighbourhood, the address and phone number on every page, and page titles that name both.

Text inside an image, such as a scanned menu or a banner with the address, gives search engines nothing to read. Nor does a home page that is only a slideshow.

A worked example

A pho restaurant on a busy street in an older suburb shares its block with two other noodle shops and sits a few minutes from several more.

The owner heard about the update from a supplier and asked what to change. A look at the listing and the website found the ordinary problems that matter more now.

The listing's category was just Restaurant, the phone number was one the restaurant had replaced, and the hours took no account of the closures planned for this week.

The website's menu was a photograph of the printed one, and no page named the neighbourhood. Two directory listings still showed the address of a unit the owners left three years ago.

The category now says Vietnamese restaurant, the phone and hours are current, and the menu is text, with the dishes and prices a searcher would type. Every page carries the address and the neighbourhood's name.

The old directory listings were corrected. None of this moves the restaurant closer to anyone, but Google now finds one consistent account of what it is and where.

Directories in the results

If directory pages do appear more often in Canadian results, as they did in American ones, your listings on those directories become part of how customers find you.

Search for your kind of business and town, note which directories appear, and check your listing on each: the name, address, phone, hours and photographs.

Many directories copy details from one another, so an old phone number left in one tends to spread to others.

Watching the change calmly

Results will shift over the coming weeks as the update settles. Daily checks of a single search say little, because results differ by location, device and account.

Watch the trend instead: calls and bookings in your own records, and visits from search in Analytics, each compared over several weeks with the same weeks last year.

The counter-case

Many businesses will notice nothing. One found mostly by name, through referrals or repeat customers, depends little on the local results for general searches.

A business that already keeps its listing, website and directory details in order may have nothing to change at all.

But the basics serve every kind of search, local or not, and the week an update lands is a good time to confirm they are right.

The basics to confirm now

  1. Open your Google My Business dashboard and confirm the name, address and phone.
  2. Choose the most specific category that fits.
  3. Check the hours, including holiday closures.
  4. Put the address and area in text on every page.
  5. Replace menus and price lists in images with text.
  6. Correct directory listings that show old details.
  7. Watch the trend over weeks, not a single search.

Step six is the step owners put off, because old listings are scattered and dull to chase. They are also part of the evidence Google weighs, and customers find them too.

What the listing dashboard holds, and what to check on first signing in, is covered in Google Places becomes Google My Business.

Frequently asked questions

What is Google's local update?

A change to how Google ranks local results, introduced in the United States in July. Google said it ties local results more closely to regular search signals and improves how distance is used.

Has it reached Canada?

Yes. Google confirmed this week that the update now applies in Canada, as well as the United Kingdom and Australia, five months after it began in American results.

Why did my results change?

Results shift as an update settles, and they differ by location, device and account. Judge the trend in calls and visits over several weeks, not one search.

Where should I start after the update?

Your listing name, address, phone, category and hours, then the website: what you do and where, in text, on every page, with the same details in directories.

Can I change my distance from searchers?

No. Distance runs from the searcher, or from the town in the search. What you can do is make your location and services unmistakable wherever they appear.

Do directory listings matter after the update?

They can. American results showed directory pages more often after July, so check which directories appear for your searches and correct your details on each.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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