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Over the past week, actually, starting since Friday, April 23rd, the BrightLocal tracking tool has been showing very high fluctuations and volatility in the local pack results in Google Maps and Google Search. But the local SEO community is not noticing the changes with their clients.
Here is what the tool shows for the past week or so:
Now, this is really not normal for this tool. Normally the numbers are in the 2 range and green. 6+ is almost unheard of for this tool.
The local SEO community is not noticing this in the field. A Local Search Forum thread has these comments about this over the past few days:
I am not seeing anything with my HVAC client, but their location pages only draw ~4K a month (hoping to improve upon this of course!)
The Flux tool was above six yesterday! However, so far, I am not seeing any major flux with the businesses I work with.
Yeah, same here. Nothing out of the norm.
No noticeable traffic changes for our clients so far, in the travel industry.
I asked the BrightLocal team if there is a bug with the tool and they said they would look into it. It can happen where Google makes some UI change that can impact these tools:
Hi Barry - we're double-checking, but there's nothing to suggest that it is broken. It could be that whatever went on last week with the slightly-above-average flux has reverted, which would explain the big number if rankings are springing back to 'normal'. We'll look into it!
— BrightLocal (@brightlocal) April 29, 2021
So for now, it seems like this may be a false alarm - at least with this specific Google local ranking tracking tool?
Forum discussion at Local Search Forum.
Update from BrightLocal confirms there is a bug:
This suspected bug meant that some keywords were unable to be found on some days, and their subsequent reappearance was causing the daily scores to be inflated.
— BrightLocal (@brightlocal) May 6, 2021
We will be updating the previous week's scores to remove the affected keywords. This should provide a better view of how local rankings have changed.
— BrightLocal (@brightlocal) May 6, 2021
We strive to make Local RankFlux as accurate and as useful as possible and are sorry for any confusion this may have caused. If you have any questions, please contact our support team. https://t.co/G0rtxrzBbh
— BrightLocal (@brightlocal) May 6, 2021
