The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Local SEOs are accustomed to continuous change in the SERPs, but if S.2992, the American Innovation Online Choice Act[1], becomes law and prevents monopolies like Google from preferencing their own assets, we need to prepare for what could be the largest search overhaul we’ve ever seen.
This could be bigger than the day we saw 7-packs become 3-packs. It could be bigger than any of the major updates like Possum or Vicinity. We’re talking about major potential change and new opportunity for local businesses. Just how big might it be? That’s exactly what we’ll be looking at today!
Stats and tests
Per Moz’s most recent study by Dr. Peter J. Meyers[2], when we ran 1,000 search phrases through MozCast, half or which were localized to particular cities, 33% percent of our queries returned a local pack like this one in the SERPs:
If S.2992 should become law, industry experts observe that local packs would likely be one of the widgets Google would be obliged to stop preferencing in their results. And, in April of this year[3], marketers began spotting a test of a very different layout that could signal what local SERPs might look like, post-S.2992.
I haven’t been able to replicate the test myself, but Mike Blumenthal[4] of Near Media kindly granted permission for me to share this screenshot from his excellent piece, A Look at Google’s Local Results without ‘Self-Preferencing’[5]:
Instead of three local results grouped into a pack, this test shows a new widget we’re currently terming a “local card”, interleaved within the organic results. As Mike