Google published a post on their blog back in February 2012, citing 40 key changes they had made to their search algorithms over the previous month. Among these updates were projects codenamed Nesehorn (impacting flight queries), an expansion of rich snippets globally, and an update that significantly altered local search forever: Venice. According to the blog post:
“Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.”
At its core, Google has always aimed to satisfy user search intent by acting as a document retrieval system. The Venice update demonstrated Google’s awareness that users often seek search results related to products and services within close geographical proximity by increasing the frequency and volume of local hybrid results.
The Impact of Google Venice
Prior to Venice, Google used Google Places within search results to display localized content. Venice, however, extended this capability to the traditional "10 blue link" results, which started to cater to local intent.
Local intent is clearly defined by queries such as [X near me] or [X in town], but some queries can imply local intent even if it’s not explicit. In the past, when users made non-dominant search intent queries with multiple common (and some local) results, Google would return SERPs based on optimization.
With Venice, Google included search results based on either a user’s selected physical location (a feature available back in 2012) or their IP address. Venice also opened the door for smaller businesses and brands to rank for more competitive, short-tail search phrases. Typically, larger brands with extensive budgets and advanced SEO campaigns monopolized top-ranking spots for these high-value keywords, with some exceptions.
Organic Listings vs. Google Places
Thanks to Venice, smaller brands and businesses could compete for high-volume keywords through proper local search optimization. Having microsites and landing pages for specific areas became even more crucial with Venice, allowing businesses to gain a foothold on page one without necessarily having a physical location or registered business address in that area.
The Venice update also saw homepages for large national firms competing with localized pages from smaller businesses on Google’s first page.
Venice Didn’t Stop Local Spam
However, the Venice update also brought increased focus to local SEO and the spam tactics used by some to gain higher rankings, such as location stuffing and doorway pages.
Spam Still Works
On many local niche queries, spam continues to be effective. In October 2017, fellow digital marketer Mark Preston raised an issue with Google’s John Mueller about a "lorem ipsum" website appearing on Page 1 for one of his business’s commercial keywords. Mueller responded:
“The query is really rarely used, not a lot of people see that result, it’s unlikely the spam team would take manual action.”
For extremely niche and low-volume search queries, which constitute many local searches, Google scrutinizes queries and search results pages less. This approach allows them to allocate time and resources to more widely used queries. Mueller further commented:
“All of this is not to say any query isn’t important, but assuming 1-3 people/day (guessing) sometimes see this, it’s really, really niche.”
In many local verticals, old websites developed long ago remain unchanged and lack high-quality content. This can be frustrating as spam often still ranks highly on Page 1 of Google.
Local SEO Since Venice
Since the Venice update, local SEO has evolved to both improve user experience and demote spam tactics.
Google Plus & Google My Business
When Google Plus launched, it effectively replaced Google Places as the go-to for businesses to gain a foothold in local search results. Google Plus Local encouraged businesses to be more social, prompting regular postings on their Google Plus page, engaging in Hangouts, posting events, and motivating customers to +1 their pages.
Google My Business replaced Google Plus Local, followed by the Map Pack, which uses similar local SEO variables but weights them differently.
Pigeon & Possum Updates
In recent times, Google has taken further steps to improve Map Pack results for users while targeting duplication and spam.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Modified Shutterstock image
2012 Results Screenshot: Sourced from Google Images
Other screenshots: Taken by Dan Taylor
