Local SEO: Google is going to increase monetization. " Chances are that my two-factor algorithm would rank only car sites in the top 10, but Google knows that many people that type that query want information on the animal. org, which he sold to Moz in November 2012. The shortcoming of this approach is that 1–4 are often hit or miss. You want a great click through rate. TikTok ranking factors. So, generally, more reviews will lead to more rankings and traffic. This year, we're planning something much bigger and, we hope, better. Conduct thorough keyword research. High numerical Google ratings. Also, following the Pigeon update, Moz updated their report for the Local Search Ranking Factors 2014 which has since changed in 2015. 1) The Owner Sets The Review Stage. Domain Authority is based on data from our Link Explorer web index and uses. Celebrate Canada’s Small Business Month! 🍁 Discover what local SEO experts have to say about local pack rankings for: Google Business title. As long as your website itself is linked externally, it appears. Google’s advertising revenue through Google Ads was $209. 5. David co-founded GetListed. You want a great click through rate. STAT SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts. Theory #1: Snippets aren't featured based on organic search ranking factors alone. It's limited but it will show you 10 competitors based on keyword ranking data. STAT SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts. We gather this data to gain insight into the factors that may help—or hurt—a website's visibility in search engines. The author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz. Take a look at the 2014 top 10 localized ranking factors. 1) The Owner Sets The Review Stage. Matt Peters and the Moz Data Science Team measured the correlation between Google +1s and higher rankings. 1 Mobile-Friendliness. With that in mind, let's make sure your site's pages are accessible. Factors 1-47: Statistical Spearman Correlation -0. D) Build your brand's perception, trust, and potential to convert visitors. This is a surprising departure. Obviously, we are now 301 redirecting these links to the new guide. 328 and 0. ; Google’s SEO starter guide, Search Quality Guidelines, and Search Central web. Methodology. To run an On-Page Grader report for a URL and Keyword pairing, follow these steps: Head to the On-Page Grader tool from the Moz Pro menu on the top right or the left hand navigation menu. Searchmetrics recently launched their yearly Ranking Factors Study that bases numbers on rank correlation and averages of top 10 SEO rankings, and this year's analysis shows that content on top-performing sites is much more holistic and less keyword-focused. Prioritizing keywords is a balancing act between many competing forces: relevance, volume, competition, click-through rate (CTR), and more. 13% of consumers prefer smaller industry-specific sites and 4% make other choices of where to read reviews, including Amazon, the Better Business Bureau, AAA and local news sites. David Mihm at Moz, a marketing analytics firm, pulls together the valuable “Local Search Ranking Factors” survey each year to help to demystify local SEO rankings by honing in on the insights. #6 off-site local rankings factor: Quantity of Inbound Links to Domain from Locally-Relevant Domains. As I mentioned above, this list of ranking factors is based on a mix of TikTok-confirmed features as well as unofficial sources and general social media practices. You should identify target keywords, optimize your pages, and craft content that resonates with your target audience. Here's how to rank on Google: Working Smarter, Not Harder. One of the best paths to building a sterling local business reputation is to run. Moz Pro. What sets the local business apart from their virtual counterparts is the concept of proximity. Compare SEO Products See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs. Twenty-two years ago, the founders of Google invented PageRank, and forever changed the web. Next the new Domain Authority incorporates spam detection. Local SEO ranking factors are the parameters Google and other search engines use to determine where a business appears in local search results. Check out these quick and simple ways to get backlinks from high authority sites. 2) Created by David Mihm in 2008, Local Search Ranking Factors is an annual survey of expert local SEOs. We talk about search engine optimization as if there’s more than one engine, but when Google controls more than 90% of the global search market, any discussion of modern SEO has to start in Mountain View. With that in mind, let's make sure your site's pages are accessible. We can see in this chart that Speed Index, despite not being an explicit ranking factor, has a modest improvement in average rank associated. 3. Negative and positive reviews in Google, Yelp, or Bing. Ensuring your images are optimized for search helps the. As “passing” the three thresholds for CWV represents being in the top 36. SHARES. What we discovered was that the most important factors that were correlated with top rankings were high Domain Authority and long-form landing page content. Local SEO employs a wide array of technical and creative efforts to convince search engines that a business should be. User behavior factors. HTTPS as a rankings boost. 33% of companies are not prepared for mobile-first indexing (MOZ, 2020). Matt Peters, new data partners, and over 150 search. Step 4: Now it’s time for the keyword map - the most important part of your SEO strategy. Local guidelines factors. • New domains may be dampened for a few months to help fight spam. Well, if my PMD can secure local rankings outside its own town, then EMDss can do so much more through exact match anchor text. Moz Local Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management. Links – Raw number of links (SEOmoz data) Deep Links - % of root domains that link to content that isn’t home page. 5. But certainly staying around there is a good idea. If you are new to SEO, you can consult a top digital marketing consultant who will create a digital marketing strategy which will keep your rank solidified in search engine results pages. The Ultimate Guide to Local Search Rankings Factors. The result is a more ranking for your business’s website and more targeted prospects visiting your company. #2 Google My Business. The Moz Local Search Ranking Factors does list verifying your listing as #13 for making an impact on ranking in the 3-pack, but this is often because business owners add more data to the listing when they verify it. This is an important finding, as it lines up with what many of us in. On-page and link signals – which collectively include keywords in titles, domain authority, inbound anchor text, and linking domain authority – are the most important factors when it comes to ranking in local search, according to new research by Moz. txt, and basic link metrics from LinkResearchTools. So it’s important to look after areas like: NAP (name, address, phone number) Business listings on Google My Business and Facebook. Moz Local Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management. A few things that made PageRank dramatically. We're going to try and reconcile these two things. These factors include: Proper category associations Physical address in the city of search Consistency, quality and authority of structured citations Consistent and matching NAP. Factors 48-146: Statistical Spearman Correlation -0. 1. Randomly group the pages into the control and variant groups. This study is based on the first 20 organic results for every MozCast keyword (10,000 keywords), on both desktop and mobile, from a suburban location in the USA. But often times it will also rank for other keywords. H1 Tag - Data suggests that the headline is a ranking actor in Google, whether or not it is in an H1 Tag. It’s been quite a while since I first read (and bookmarked) Slingshot SEO’s YouMoz blog post, Mission ImposSERPble: Establishing Click-through Rates, which showcased their study examining organic click-through rates (CTR) across search engine result pages. Finally, you’ll be set up for success with a local SEO framework that you can apply to future local SEO plans, clients, and locations! Define local SEO, and determine if a business is eligible. A keyword included in your subdomain can fetch you higher search engine rankings. This cheat sheet is your fast track to squeezing the most you can out of what. 7) Link building will become more deeply integrated into Local SEO Local Search Ranking Factors 2018 cited links as the 6th most influential local pack factor. Provide value. Learn moreClearly, proximity is a very large factor in ranking those pages. the name of the searcher's current location is found in traditional on-page areas (page title, body text, etc. Make sure your on-site optimizations are up to snuff. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google's ranking algorithm. ) Websites that add new pages at a higher rate may earn a higher freshness score than sites that add content less frequently. Your All-In-One Suite of SEO Tools The essential SEO toolset: keyword research, link building, site audits, page optimization, rank tracking, reporting, and more. Whether you own a brick-and-mortar store or operate within a service area, these powerful local search marketing strategies will help your business appear in more relevant local searches. The definition of link building. The Slingshot study is an excellent example of how one can use data to. 2011 is here, and that means it's time for our biennial search engine ranking factors survey to be renewed. The H1 tag is the only header tag that still shows any potential for being a ranking factor. His annual Local Search Ranking Factors project is among the most important studies of Local SEO. 2023’s Top 7 Local Search Ranking Factors, Illustrated and Explained. CPC pricing is also called PPC or pay-per-click. A) Have the best opportunity to rank highly in Google and Bing. Moz Local Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management. See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs. The following data represents the opinions of our respondents of the various. Factors 147-200: Statistical Spearman Correlation -0. Moz Local Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management. Taking maximum safety precautions, delivering at the curb or the front door, facilitating online purchasing, and experimenting with new ideas are all must-haves for 2021. The author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz. Last but not least on our list of local search ranking factors is the Domain Authority (DA). On-Demand Webinars. Out of all the ranking factors listed, stating your city and state. DmR – Domain mozRank, similar to mR, but on a DOMAIN level. Hello, What are the best approaches to ranking locally. 2. Consistency of NAP (name, address and phone) information among online directories is the number 2 ranking factor in Google’s map results in search engine results pages, referred to as the Snack Pack. Google holds over 85% of global desktop search traffic and gets billions of searches per day. In this brand new Whiteboard Friday, Russ Jones discusses the theory behind those ranking factors, and gives us some improved definitions and vocabulary to use when discussing them. From optimizing your on. Moz Local Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management. So if you put that little caption down below, underneath your image, that can actually help with the Image Search rankings. Using Moz’s ranking data on over 200,000 domains, combined with multiple. 12. Your All-In-One Suite of SEO Tools The essential SEO toolset: keyword research, link building, site audits, page optimization, rank tracking, reporting, and more. 1. Moz Links API Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links. org, which he sold to Moz in November 2012. Site Speed. Moz API Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links. There are two main search ranking factors, in the end. Spam factorsOff-Page Local Search Factors. As this is still a significant-ranking factor. Local SEO. Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials. So let's talk about the first six ranking factors that fall under the category of content. Today I am going to share some of what I found. On average across all industries, site-wide conversion rate for a website is around 2 percent (the donkeys), while conversion rates for the top 10 percent of websites (the unicorns) get 11 percent and above. Both mozRank and PageRank (both academically and in the real world) have very few pages at the top (mR/PR 10) and many, many pages at the bottom (mR/PR 1). 328 and 0. In the early days of search when relevance algorithms were rather weak, many folks used “double dashed” domains because they were cheap to buy, and easy to rank. We have review factors at 15%, links at 16%, on-page factors at 14%, behavioral at 10%, citations at 11%, personalization and social at 6% and 3%. There are three major options you can choose from for active location data management: 1. Although not a traditional inbound link profile to analyse, Wikipedia's inbound links do highlight a number of interesting factors relating to natural links: Link authority is spread, but typically weighted towards the lower end of the scale, both for PA and DA, but particularly for PA. . Download the report for further analysis and view the numbers in the light of how Google might adjust proximity based on new factors like curbside pickup and local delivery. #4 Reviews. This year, for the first time, Dr. We did that using Moz's Link Explorer and in this year's study, we looked at the largest data set yet — 27,000 queries. While this doesn't seem like a huge numbers, the articles that qualify can see a significant increase in traffic. Raise your local SEO visibility with easy directory distribution, review management, listing updates,. If we look at the top 15 Local Pack/Finder ranking factors, we can see fewer review-specific signals have made it into this list as of 2023. What we are saying is brand activity and promotion, among other things, support organic rankings. 10. 15. On-site SEO (also known as on-page SEO) is the practice of optimizing elements on a website in order to improve search engine ranking and visibility. STAT SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts. So let's dive into that. 2. #7 Search Personalization. On-Page Optimization. Miriam Ellis, a Mozzer and a Top Contributor here, just did an awesome illustrated guide to the top 20 Local SEO factors over at Moz. Because the update was never officially confirmed by Google, local SEOs have been left to hypothesize. De-indexed: Refers to a page or group. So, generally, more reviews will lead to more rankings and traffic. In that document, and in many places where local results are analyzed, it's clear that getting your business/website into. Grading yourself. This year’s survey hit us with a big. In addition, to review quantity, Google also appears to look for specific keywords written into reviews as a ranking factor. The results this year come from two sources - the opinions of SEO professionals via survey AND a broad correlation analysis of Google's results. Moz Data Power your SEO strategy & AI models with. The 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors survey is in! See what the top experts in the field of local SEO have to say about what's affecting rankings most and. GMB-specific features like Google Posts, Google Q&A, and image/video uploads are. Colan is the VP of Local Search at Sterling Sky Inc and started in the local SEO world back in 2010. edu, or any other pieces of link bait from Moz besides the first one below. The MozBar is a free SEO toolbar that will easily show you the canonical tag on any given page. On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals. 5. Domain Registration yup also play its role a bit in an inch ranking better. Here are some general local SEO ranking factors: Google Business Profile (GMB) for business owners Address of point of Google search A physical location in your city. proper schema markup. Last year, Bing’s Duane Forrester wrote a post called “ How to Build Quality Content ”, and in it he referenced something called “dwell time”: Your goal should be that when a visitor lands on your page, the content answers all of their needs, encouraging their next action to remain with you. txt file is used to restrict search engine crawlers from accessing sections of your. This one is relatively easy to prove. 6%. SEO Learning Center. Part 1: On-page factors. Ditch Commodity Content for Proprietary Research. . Mobile Search Ranking Factors (Clue - One Normal SEO Factor is Missing) On-page SEO. We present the average score across all responses. The first is title. gov, . Discover how proprietary research can set your content apart and elevate your brand while building your pipeline. In this course, you’ll dive into the pillars of local search - proximity, relevance, and prominence - and learn about local search ranking factors. Technical SEO includes things such as: keywords in page titles and title tags. " Backlinks are important to people moving around the internet and to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If you're having trouble getting your local business' website to show up in the Google local 3-pack or local search results in general, you're not alone. Additional Articles on Local SEO. A local business citation is anywhere on the web your business is listed that mentions your: Business name;. David co-founded GetListed. The highest-rated factors in our survey had average scores of 7-8 with less-important factors generally ranging from 4-6. Social signals are a ranking factor (and apparently a strong one at that) These findings come from a study by search and social analytics company Searchmetrics aimed at identifying the key factors that help web pages rank well in Google searches. SEO Ranking Factor #1 is Satisfaction. This is an important finding, as it lines up with what many of us in. Copied! Read Next. along with RankBrain’s machine learning ranking factor incorporated in 2015, also throwing in the growing popularity of voice search — natural language is. Domain Registration for longer period is a bonus but these are factors that push up your rank an inch. 4d. Moz Local Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management. The Professional's Guide to SEO: A strategic approach to link building. However, Google’s John Mueller has said “ domain age helps nothing “. If a good Local SEO was willing to fully audit the business for him or for your agency, they would likely uncover a number of things that need to be addressed to clean up the way the business has been marketing itself and put it on a clean track. Moz API Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links. How important are the following ranking factors in generating local- specific search results? Rank from most (10) to least (1) important. “What the world needs now, is love, sweet love. Social shares figured into Moz's Search Engine Ranking Factors 2015, albeit as a low factor: "Always controversial, the number of social shares a page accumulates tends to show a positive correlation with rankings. 8. R LRD - Number of Linking Root Domains to the DOMAIN. Whether they call it StaticRank (Microsoft's metric), WebRank (Yahoo!'s), PageRank (Google's) or mozRank (Linkscape's), some form of an iterative, Markov-chain based link analysis algorithm is a part of all the engines' ranking systems. Local Search Ranking Factors: Explore all the signals Google uses to rank local businesses. 2023’s Top 7 Local Search Ranking Factors, Illustrated and Explained. Here’s my shortlist of factors that Google is likely to use in their calculation: The average PageRank of an author’s content. keyword-rich alt text and tags. Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO. A lot of this lesson refers to our Local Ranking Factors. The ultimate SEO goal is to provide the basic policy to optimize websites, in order for the latter to succeed in higher and better related rankings in the search engines, as well as better. Case Studies Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success. 161,437 followers. That is: Is brand or branding a ranking factor in Google search engine? Look, I think, to be fair, to be honest, that the technical answer to this question is no. Search engines work through three primary functions: Crawling: Scour the Internet for content, looking over the code/content for each URL they find. uses the analogy that links are votes and that those pages which have more votes have more. For each client who asks you how to rank beyond their physical location, there will be a unique answer. Takeaways. H1 Tag - Data suggests that the headline is a ranking actor in Google, whether or not it is in an H1 Tag. Really well laid out. 5. B) Earn traffic from social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, etc. Creating your Google+ Local page for your local business is your first step to being included in Google's index. 65% of review writers have left negative reviews after experiencing bad or rude customer service, and an additional 28% say their negative reviews result from businesses failing to resolve their complaints at the time of service. Moz API Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links. Tools: Check your PA with Link Explorer. User behavior factors. Spam factors Off-Page Local Search Factors. Each keyword had a CPC of over $8. STAT SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts. According to the Moz search ranking factors survey, title tags, also known as heading. 24. His annual Local Search Ranking Factors project is among the most important studies of Local SEO. Start With A Mighty Seed. The SEO fraternity, including Moz’s expert. 3% for Speed Index. The image above recreates a diagram in Google’s own Quality Rater Guidelines, illustrating why Apple the brand is the answer most searchers expect. This is something that used to exist in Google SEO decades ago with the meta keywords tag. On the other hand, with over 200 ranking, it's likely you'll find the effect of any ranking influence to remain quiet small. Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey Moz - Local Search Ranking Factors Study 2018 - Local SEO |. GMB signals now make up 25% the local pack/finder pie chart. This year's survey allowed for a higher level of response granularity as it allowed contributors to rank all 149 possible factors that could impact search results. 2015 Ranking Factors Expert Survey. 86% of the search engine market ()The #1 result in Google gets approximately 32% of all clicks ()49% of marketers report that organic search has the best ROI of any marketing channel (Search Engine Journal)Organic search results that rank. Among agency marketers, 83% said their budget has been cut due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while 63% of non-agency marketers said the same (MOZ, 2020). Finding Diamonds in the Google Rough. Kick off your research process with a tool like Keyword Explorer . . In the 2013 survey, 10% of respondents said their company spent $50k+ per month on link building, so it appears that the upper limit to link building spend may have decreased slightly across the industry. Moz API Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links. This means that smart local SEOs will double down on their organic skills and start pursuing relevant links for their clients with professional, organized strategies and good tools. org, which he sold to Moz in November 2012. Open an incognito window and see your updated position. Search intent is simply a term that describes what the user is trying to accomplish with a search. The big story this year is Google My Business. His annual Local Search Ranking Factors project is among. From the research shown earlier, we found that websites with the top search rankings had TTFB as low as 350 ms, with the higher ranking sites pushing up to 650 ms. Be The Last Click. Just like local businesses, online-only brands strive to convince Google that they deserve to be prominent in the SERPs for relevant searches. March 2016: Google Senior Search Quality Strategist Andrey Lipattsev confirms that content and links are the first and second greatest ranking factors. Of that 500ms, a roundtrip network latency of no more than 100ms is recommended. This year, Moz surveyed over 150 leading search marketers who provided expert opinions on over 90 ranking factors. Searchmetrics recently launched their yearly Ranking Factors Study that bases numbers on rank correlation and averages of top 10 SEO rankings, and this year's analysis shows that content on top-performing sites is much more holistic and less keyword-focused. SEO practitioners optimize websites, web pages and content for the purposes of ranking higher in search engines, like Google. The image caption. Compare SEO Products See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business. See full list on moz. Detect Intent: Form & Function. The Moz Story Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company. Your All-In-One Suite of SEO Tools The essential SEO toolset: keyword research, link building, site audits, page optimization, rank tracking, reporting, and more. If you want to rank for anything that's even remotely competitive, the chances of finding a website ranking without external links is very rare indeed. Audit in. 4. What is link equity? Link equity, once colloquially referred to as "link juice," is a search engine ranking factor based on the idea that certain links pass value and authority from one page to another. 2. It typically leads to gradual increases in positive brand mentions, search rankings, traffic to your site, and conversions. txt. I'm thrilled to announce that after months of hard work, SEOmoz's biennial Search Engine Ranking Factors is finally launching. A total of fifteen brands saw some visibility in the top 10 local finder results over the. Here’s how to fight well: 1. Moz API Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links. Compare SEO Products See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs. The full results of this year's Local Search Ranking Factors survey are in! Moz's director of local search strategy, David Mihm,. Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials. 1. Launch and market the page. Optimizing for "near me" searches is important and it falls right in line with some of the tactical advice. Moz DataInbound in the app ecosystem comes in many different flavors, including search, social, top charts, web-to-app, and more. So what is good content? Miriam Ellis, a Mozzer and a Top Contributor here, just did an awesome illustrated guide to the top 20 Local SEO factors over at Moz. 2. Website owners should explore ways to improve their TTFB. Robots. Read the article. When creating this map, we cluster keywords (put related keywords into groups), so we know exactly what pages to create in terms of landing pages, blog articles, services pages, or collections and products. To face off with Google’s local spam, earn/defend the rankings your business needs, and help clean polluted SERPs up for the communities you serve, here are my best links for you: Simple Spam Fighting: The Easiest Local Rankings You’ll Ever Earn. Technical SEO is still an important Google ranking factor. The first page of Google's search results seems to have gotten smaller over the years – the top and bottom of the page are often filled with ads, the local 7-pack was trimmed to a slim 3. As with the 2020 and 2021 Local Search Ranking Factors surveys, social signals aren’t included in the 2023 results. High numerical Google ratings. Local Search Ranking Factors : Explore all the signals Google uses to rank local businesses. Click Analyze. The study consists of two parts: a survey of professional SEOs and a large correlation study . Query Matching in the Domain Name. David co-founded GetListed. 3. This year's panel of experts possesses a truly unique set of knowledge and perspectives. Google’s local finder results are paginated in sets of ten. In our report on the Impact of Local Business Reviews on Consumer Behavior, respondents cited the star rating as the most important component of reviews:He has created and promoted search-friendly websites for clients of all sizes since the early 2000’s. This near-annual survey was first created by David Mihm over a decade ago, and polls around 50 local SEO experts, asking for their opinions on which activities and factors impact local. David co-founded GetListed. By Miriam Ellis, Local Search Marketer at Moz, 1st Nov 2023. He is a contributor to Moz’s famous Local Search Ranking Factors survey and is a former Google MapMaker Regional Lead. Moz API Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links. " But doing it right is easier said than done, and doing it effectively as an art. ”. Robots. Moz Local Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management. g. (1). In-depth articles. According to the Moz study referenced earlier, personalization signals make up 9% of SEO ranking factors. Theory #1: Snippets aren't featured based on organic search ranking factors alone. Or, in certain cases, a penalized domain may carry the penalty. The biggest on-page factors that affect search engine rankings are: Content of Page The content of a page is what makes it worthy of a search result position. Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials. It still does exist in YouTube. Businesses should give more emphasis to these signals as they determine local search results. Tonight I will be mostly reading. 14 to -0. 1. Our study used quadratic mean calculations on the Spearman correlations. The many goals of this form of promotion can include improving customer. Moz API Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links. STAT SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts. 31x. You can look in Google Search Console and see click-through rates. However, when you see best-online-seo-company. Conversely, when fewer people compete for a keyword, the easier it is to rank for. The process works like this: Collect a SERP on day 1. Moz Links API. Here are the results that we saw for that evaluation: This shows that Moz DA and PA are both better predictors of ranking position than the total link count. Improved Engagement ("Long Clicks"): almost always a positive sign from your users, and often an indicator of quality as well as being correlated with future visits. Matt Peters and his data science team. In addition to on-page ranking factors, there are a few off-page optimization ranking factors that can help signal to Google your website is relevant for local search. After Page Authority, a URL's. Indexing: Store and organize the content found during the crawling process. 1. com (US). Let's first put to rest the idea that H2 through H6 carry any weight at all with search engines. 3% of URLs by that metric, we can compare what ranking difference is associated with being in the top 36. And local search results actually fall into two categories — the Local Pack (also called Map Pack) and the local organic listings. “Possum” is the name given to an unconfirmed but documented update which appeared to most significantly impact Google’s local pack and local finder results.