The Google Local Results are called a variety of things – the Maps Results, the 3 pack, the Snack Pack, the Trifecta, you name it. They are constantly changing. On November 22, 2017, a significant change took place affecting personal injury lawyers.

Please keep in mind this could all be a test or an error or change tomorrow.

“X” Accident Lawyer no longer triggers local results, but…

Search terms which used to trigger local results included terms such as:

  • Cityname Car Accident Lawyer
  • Cityname Truck Accident Lawyer
  • Cityname Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

These now get organic results. In some cases, a featured snippet is available. Here are some examples of local “accident” terms getting featured snippets.

Now, here are plenty of terms which DO get a local pack still:

  • Cityname Car Injury Lawyer
  • Cityname Truck Injury Lawyer
  • Cityname Motorcycle Injury Lawyer

In fact, just adding “injury lawyer” to anything brings up a local pack, even “grocery store injury” or “hotel injury”:

Actionable Advice

I would give this a few days and see what happens. We are 36 hours into the change and I’m already seeing volatility. This could all be a fluke or a test which could be quickly reverted.

If the local pack does not return, it will be time to restructure local pages and gear them towards obtaining what many call “ranking in position 0”, which is obtaining a featured snippet (aka Answer Box). I have helped people obtain hundreds, if not thousands of these and am the featured snippet expert. I’ll have a comprehensive and detailed how-to article going up online shortly which I will link to from this article. A few of these guides already exist, but the one I am putting out will be significantly better and more accurate. There is a LOT of bad information out there about featured snippets, and unfortunately most of these guides have been written by people with a fascination of search results rather than experience with search results. These types of guides do more harm than good.

Len
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On November 24, 2017   /   SEO: Local Search   /   Leave a comment

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