The discovery of local businesses suddenly losing most or all rankings for non-geo-modified keywords raises important questions. What Does The September 24th Algorithm Change Mean?
What we’ve seen with this algorithm update is that a local-area shoe store would have experienced a sudden drop of loss for the keyword “athletic shoes.” At the same time, that specific search query will now primarily include national or online-only retailers. A geo-modifier refers to the location portion of a search term or search keyword.įor example, while a national shoe brand may use the keyword “athletic shoes”, a local shoe store in Denver, Colorado may have more luck optimizing for the keyword “Denver athletic shoes”.
When it comes to local SEO, keyword building requires three essential components industry relevance, keyword volume, and location. More About SEO Services What is a Geo-Modifier? For each local domain reviewed, we discovered that the most negatively impacted keywords lacked a single factor a geo-modifier. Regardless of what local industry you review, you’ll find one general theme in the type of keywords that dropped off or were lost altogether on September 24, 2021. Why would Google implement such a drastic algorithm update that negatively targets local businesses? The answer, however, became surprisingly simple once we looked at the bigger picture. On the surface, this may seem generally unfair. When researching these rankings avalanches, we discovered that the changes appeared throughout most local industries. Starting mid-late September 2021, Google released a Core Update that left local rankings experts scratching their heads (and, in many cases, pulling their hair out). Depending on which keywords you’re tracking and how your site is optimized, the current state of your site’s SEO may look bleak. If you’re in the business of local search engine optimization (SEO), you’ve probably noticed that rankings have been especially volatile over the last few months. Update December 16, 2021: Google Confirms Update To Local Analyzing Google’s September 2021 Core Update