Local SEOs Not Seeing Unusual Google Local Ranking Fluctuations

May 3, 2021 - 7:31 am 2 by
Filed Under Google Updates

Google Local Ranking

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:

Brightlocal Google Rankings

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:

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:

 

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