Want to know what Local Packs are? You’re in the right place. Let’s dive in shall we?
What Are Local Packs
Local Packs are groups of Google My Business Listings that appear on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for search queries with local intent. Two conditions are always true with Local Packs:
- They always show at the top of SERPs ahead
- They always show 3 listings with the rest hidden behind a “view more” click-wall
What Is Local Intent
Local intent occurs when a user searches using geo specific keywords. Examples of geo specific keywords include:
- … nearby
- … near me
- … In {city}
- … open now
These and other geo specific keywords trigger the Local Pack. For example, the Local Packs for “best coffee in Tiburon” and “restaurants near me” are below.
Why Should I Care About Local Packs
People use Google to find businesses near them, plain and simple. In fact, search traffic that includes local intent account for roughly 46% of all Google searches. Queries that include “near me” have increased 17x since 2014. This is largely due mass adoption of wifi enabled smartphones. So if you are a business that sells goods and/or services within a specific service area it would be unwise to ignore the most universally adopted tool for finding what you provide – Google.
How Can My Business Show Up in the Local Pack?
Local Pack rankings are influenced by the search engine Friendliness of your website and, more importantly, your Google My Business Listing. The good news is that most businesses don’t optimize their GMB listings and since rankings depend on the strength of competing GMB listings a significant opportunity exists for you to generate rankings in Local Packs. So the question becomes: how do you optimize your GMB Listing?
You can’t optimize your GMB listing if you don’t have a GMB listing. Create a Google My Business listing if you haven’t done so already. Once created, you’ll want to focus on maximizing performance for the ranking signals considered by Google when determining visibility in the Local Pack.
Local Pack Ranking Signals
There are several Local Ranking Signals. The most influential are:
- Post Quantity
- Post Frequency
- Photo Quantity
- Review Quantity
- Review Response Rate
- Review Response Time
