Study shows Google’s Possum update changed 64% of local SERPs

Study shows Google’s Possum update changed 64% of local SERPs How significantly did the Possum update impact local search results in Google? Columnist Joy Hawkins shares data and insights from a study she did with Bright Local, which compared local results before and after the update.

To those of us who routinely track the list items for neighborhood organizations, it was clear there were monstrous changes on September 1. The SEO people group all in all has been generally close-lipped regarding this colossal upgrade, and I trust this is on the grounds that this overhaul principally affected the Local/Maps query items and not natural.

SERP trackers like MozCast and Algoroo make an awesome showing with regards to of following changes in the query items, yet this calculation redesign didn't appear to have any gigantic effect in the diagrams. I trust that is on account of neighborhood questions that trigger a 3-pack are just a small amount of what these projects track. No doubt, most of the SERPs they track would not contain a 3-pack — and thusly, enormous changes in the 3-pack wouldn't really appear on the radar.
I needed to know precisely the amount of a shake-up this calculation was the point at which it came to simply Local/Map comes about, so I connected with Bright Local to track positioning for our customers. They track both natural positioning and positioning in the Local Finder (the rundown of neighborhood results you get when you click "more places" under the 3-pack). Furthermore, our positioning reports check every day, so it is ready to get any significant changes, paying little heed to the day when it happened.
I requesting that they take a gander at the positioning trackers for 1,307 unique organizations, which were following 14,242 watchwords. At that point we thought about the contrast between September 7 and August 31 (the date before Possum). 
What we wound up finding was that, over every one of the reports: 
9% of the watchwords had the business fly into the Local Finder when they weren't there beforehand. 
11% of the catchphrases demonstrated the business had expanded in position by at least three positions. 
15% of the catchphrases demonstrated the business had expanded in position by one to two positions. 
35% of the catchphrases demonstrated no adjustment in position for the business. 
15% of the catchphrases demonstrated the business had diminished by one to two positions. 
14% of the watchwords demonstrated the business had diminished by more than three positions.

In other words, 64% of keywords saw some type of change.

As we probably am aware, SERPs can change every day without a calculation redesign, however the critical thing to note here is the unfathomability of the change. For instance, 34 percent of the catchphrases saw some sort of huge change, with a "critical change" being characterized as a business moving at least three positions or a business showing up in results when beforehand they weren't recorded in the main three pages (60 positions) in the Local Finder. 

For those of you who like visuals, here is a preview of the Local Finder comes about for "Individual Injury Lawyer Las Vegas." On the left is what it looked like August 31. On the privilege is what it looked like after the Possum redesign. The red bolts indicate how a business fell in situating, while the green bolts demonstrate an expansion in position. The red and green boxes are organizations that either vanished or flew into the Local Finder because of the redesign.

All in all, what now? 

I have spent the last couple of months dissecting many particular situations for organizations to attempt to discover designs in what changed. Some of my discoveries have been incorporated into late articles I've composed (This one demonstrates a few examples, and this one demonstrates a few things that effect the channel).
For the present, it's pivotal for nearby SEO specialists to invest energy dissecting changes to make sense of which Local Ranking Factors changed as an aftereffect of Possum. In this way, I have been understanding that the answers are getting to be distinctly increasingly hard to discover as Google's calculation turns out to be more mind boggling — and it's no more drawn out as simple as "getting the most audits" or watchword stuffing classes, which worked incredibly quite a long while back.