Find How Google Pigeon Update Effects Local Businesses

Presently, Google has released an algorithm update in order to improve the accuracy and the relevance of the search results. The update, which is popularly known as Pigeon by Search Engine Land has now impacted Google’s traditional Google Maps and web search results.

Google Pigeon Update

Google Pigeon mainly ties the results strongly in order to stand standard web ranking signals, which includes ranking signals that analyze the relevance of a page and authority signals. Some of the other Google web search features like spelling correction, knowledge graph and synonyms can impact local search results. Also, Google has improved traditional local signals like location and distance ranking parameters.

Traditional website search ranking signals means that the local directory websites have great visibility in Google’s search results. The local directory sites enjoy excellent visibility and rankings because of the Pigeon update in some search phrases. The directory sites can be structured in such a way that they send naturally stronger signals for non-branded and generic searches like “restaurants in Seattle” or may be “hardware store in Chicago”. They will have more authority because of the links from the other sites.

Google Pigeon has recently resolved issues of public relations. But Google hasn’t made this public announcement official, but a Google statement indicated that Pigeon impacts U.S. searches. Till now, Google has not yet released figures of searches that will be impacted by the update.

Did Google Pigeon Update Affect Your Site?

With the algorithm update, the very first step is to determine whether your website has been impacted. Some of these websites may benefit and some may not experience any change at all. E-commerce sites which are not associated with the physical stores won’t see too many changes.

An algorithmic effect to the performance of your site is usually sharp and sudden decrease or increase on the day of the launch. If you don’t come across this pattern of analytics, then your website is not impacted by Google Pigeon. You should take note of the update date with the gentler trends which can be traced back to this Google update.

You have to monitor your web analytics and search queries and reports in Google Webmaster Tools in order to determine the impact on the search visits. You need to pay close attention to the pages which have gained or lost most of the visits steadily.

You can also easily monitor your ranking tools in Webmaster Tools. Use the Search Queries to monitor Google rankings in order to determine the changes in ranks and also which keywords and pages these are ranking differently. You can also see that some pages fall out from rankings and the others rank much better. You have to analyze the difference in those pages.