Hey, It’s a Blog

Google rolled out a new and improved forum for Places. That would be great and everything, but they decided to completely remove the old forum rather than migrate the old posts to the new system. This is a huge loss to the local SEO community. That forum is full of years of valuable information on Google Places. It's a shame that Google didn't preserve it.

Fortunately, Mike Blumenthal tried to make a copy of it before it disappeared forever. He wasn't able to get everything, but he did salvage a large portion of it. Three cheers for Professor Maps! :)

Here's a link to the Archived Old Google Places Forum.

You can read Mike's post about this mess on his blog, here.

Why does Google display a 7-pack for some queries, and blended results for others?

I was testing out a search query from one of my Local Citation Finder users for 'santa rosa automotive repair' and I came across an interesting case where in one search I would get 7-pack, and then I'd search again and get blended. I've been perplexed about why Google shows a 7-pack for some queries and blended results for other queries ever since David Mihm asked about this on the 2011 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, so I played around for a while trying to identify what might be going on.

I was able to duplicate the results multiple times. If I searched one way, I'd get the 7-pack. Make a slight variation, and I would get blended. The difference in how I searched to get the two variations was so minor, that I was surprised to get a 7-pack on one search, and blended results on the other.

Screenshots with date and time recorded:

Here's the play by play:

Search 1:

• I put my cursor into the address/search bar in Chrome, and I type ' santa rosa automotive repair' and press enter.
• I get a 7-pack.

Search 2:

• I put my cursor into the address/search bar in Chrome, and press enter. Exact same query.
• I get blended.
• Huh?

Search 3:

• I press the back button.
• I type the search phrase into the address/search bar in Chrome again, and press enter.
• I get a 7-pack.

Search 4:

• I leave the search term in the field, and I press the search button on the results page.
• I get blended.

I was able to duplicate these results about 10 times (I was trying to get good screenshots).

Finally, about 4 minutes later, I was no longer able to get the 7-pack. I would get blended results no matter how I searched. So, what's going on here? First of all, I think it's possible that Chrome cached my first query, and that's why searching that particular way continued to bring up the 7-pack. Searching a slightly different way somehow told the browser to run a fresh request from Google's servers. I don't know very much about how Chrome's caching works, so this is just speculation.

Assuming it was just cached, why did I see a 7-pack in one instance, and then blended results a moment later? I have a couple theories, and I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments:

1. Split testing. I just happened to hit it at the right time when they were just switching the test over to a new version.
2. Query volume. Perhaps low volume queries get a 7-pack, and when I was hitting that search term, I just happened to catch it right as it passed the threshold to trigger the blended results.

I'm putting my money on split testing, because I have seen some queries that would definitely have high search volume return a 7-pack. For example, check out these two searches:
http://www.google.com/search?q=seattle+lawyer (7-pack at time of writing)
http://www.google.com/search?q=seattle+lawyers (Blended at time of writing)

Why Google decides to show a 7-pack sometimes, and blended other times is definitely still a mystery, but this is a case that seems to indicate, to me at least, that it's just split testing.

What do you think? Any other theories about what's going on?