Google seems to be showing fewer and fewer local packs for various queries in the Google Search results interface. For the past few days or so, local SEOs have been noticing this trend and it is concerning them and their clients.
Joy Hawkins posted about this in the Local Search Forums saying, "I've been tracking some SERPs for years for personal injury lawyer terms in Philadelphia and am fascinated to see recently (last 90 days or so) that a lot of big terms are not consistently returning local packs. It varies based on the day and where you're searching from, but the general pattern is that there are a lot less 3-packs than there were before."
She shared a few examples, let me share one of them for a query on [philadelphia car accident lawyer].
It use to show a local pack, here is the before screenshot:
As of late last week, it no longer shows for this query:
When I change the query to [nyc car accident lawyers] I currently do see the local pack. It is like some location + queries no longer trigger the local pack, all of a sudden.
Others in the thread said they noticed the same issue. Sarah Blocksidge wrote, "We've noticed local packs drop off (and back on) for general terms like SEO, marketing, SEO agency, SEO company, etc. in the past few months for sure." And others also posted in the thread noticing this.
Here are some tweets about this:
I have not returned any local packs all day today no matter what I search. Including near me searches. I'm definitely not a fan. pic.twitter.com/FqXt5llHNc
— ClaudiaT (@ClaudiaTomina) May 12, 2023
We've seen this too in our research. I think it's driven by EU "anti-self-preferencing" regulations that prompted experimentation with alternative local SERPs.
— Greg Sterling 🇺🇦 (@gsterling) May 12, 2023
Most of my clients' GBPs saw a 10-20% decrease the last 4 weeks.... glad to know it may not just be us. You're on to something here @JoyanneHawkins
— Angela Zade (@arzade) May 11, 2023
I’ve definitely seen this happen over the past few weeks, especially with our law firm clients. Glad other folks are experiencing this!
— Katie Stone 🖤🤍💜 (@KatieStoneSEO) May 11, 2023
So something seems to be up and we are not sure what.
If you check the Google Business Profile performance reports, you may notice this in a bigger way.
Forum discussion at Local Search Forums.
Update: RankRanger is showing a big decline in local packs on desktop:
As is well known, in many local service queries, businesses have a really tough time competing with aggregator sites so Google is unlikely to do away with, or significantly reduce, Local Packs in the long term.
— Tzvi Barish (@tzvibarish) May 16, 2023
According to Rank Ranger data, big drop on desktop, not on mobile. pic.twitter.com/O2wsZ4uMzs
Here is the desktop chart I generated from RankRanger:
While Semrush and Mozcast are not showing big drops.
