Google has recently introduced a feature called Google Local Carousel. This feature displays local image-based search results in a simple overview consistent with online trends. This is a great addition to local search results and easy to optimize.
What is Google Local Carousel?
Google Local Carousel is quite literally a line of images found on top of all search results that moves much like a carousel; hence, the name. Currently the industries affected by Carousel are travel and hospitality, restaurants and entertainment, with plans to expand to others in the future.
Your local search results looked similar to this before Carousel:
Now they look like this (snazzy):
Today, when searching for Best Movies 2013, the carousel shows images and titles with the option in the top right corner for further filtering your search by Genre and Year. For restaurants, it provides the name of the establishment and ratings based on Google reviews.
A search for any hotel would supply us with information about the hotel on the right side of the screen that is pulled from Google Plus/Pages and information such as, Name, Address, Business Hours, etc. The horizontal display also helps to feature more local results in one view instead of forcing users to scroll down. It’s important to note that, all Carousel results are followed by regular organic search results (links).
How to take advantage of Google Local Carousel for your business:
- Encourage website visitors and clients on and offline to leave you reviews on Google Plus, as this drives more clicks to your search result. Digital Marketing Works (DMW) has conducted an extensive study showing that reviews are the most important factor in deciding what to click on in search results.
- It’s ever-important to use high quality images and videos to showcase your expertise online. This can and will help you stand out from the other local companies displaying in the local carousel results.
- Keep your pages up-to-date and provide unique, fresh content on a regular basis that helps your customers find you when they do local searches.
- Engage on Google Plus and polish your presence on Google Places. Without these steps you’re leaving it up to Google to provide information about your business based on automated queries to your website.
How does this affect my business?
Thus far, Carousel has been mainly affecting US-based businesses and is slowly beginning to expand through different business verticals. At this time, this change has not directly affected traffic in any major way; however, it’s better to prepare for it now and beat your competitors to the punch.
In case you have questions about how you can implement these changes feel free to contact us at Spark Internet Marketing.
