The biggest search engine, Google has just launched a new product that is yet to get an official title. Presently, it is known by different nicknames which are – Google Local Business Cards, Business Cards, Google Post Business Cards and more. In this blog, this new product is termed as Local Business Cards. The service, being in an early testing phase, with selected businesses and Google refers to it a podium that enables the content of a brand to get around Google’s traditional ranking, and feature directly on the first page of search engine results.
Local Business Cards are mechanized by Google Posts however, the information on them is at google.com/posts. As such, they are referred to as Posts. They were first proposed in January 2016 when they appeared as scrollable cards at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs), and allowed verified users to publish text, video and pictures directly.
Below are the formats that are displayed on the search engine result pages.
- The Knowledge Graph– It provides information on popular search terms such as Wikipedia or IMDb while Local Business Cards source from a brand.
- Google Carousel – It denotes images of popular items chosen by Google’s algorithm, than direct source with Cards.
- TheLocal 3-pack – It reveals popular local businesses that are related to a search term. The content is being displayed in the form of excerpts from the website rather than published for SERP visibility. Besides, Google’s algorithms help obtain better ranking when compared to Local Business Cards.
- Google AMP– It provides scrollable cards on the search engine result pages that are graphical, loads quickly and have mobile links to published content on a website.
Different method of indexing
Google’s algorithms have an important part in the above display formats, however the site of SERP content may change. According to the experts at reputed SEO agency, it has been suggested that Local Business Cards are an early indication of Google’s attempt to remove the importance of links when ranking the websites. As Local Business Cards do not depend on traditional index, this might be an example of Google’s ranking depending on popularity of sites as per user opinions and patterns.
Who will benefit with the new product
The mobile-optimized sites are likely to attain success with Local Business Cards. Google should have strong connection between mobile and local behavior since they display the results for accomplishing local goals on mobile than desktop.
Possibly, the biggest beneficiary is the SEO company that possess the capability of creating good quality content. This helps build online presence of a brand. Updating the content on a daily basis will satisfy specific local user intent to build the presence. Posting multimedia content to your business website and on Google+ page are some factors that helps decide who will get Local Card real estate on the search engine results page.
SEO agencies will be the biggest beneficiary. With Google My Business, accepting a service that pumps important data into the SERPs is easy for businesses and drive immense growth in the Local SEO industry.
The companies that can create strong relationships with customers, employees and industry will be able to get benefit with Google’s new podium.
The final group who will gain benefit is Google itself. They are actually providing companies a great opportunity to show their content on the first page of search results and encouraging brands to compete with one another.
Both SEO services and content marketers will be spending more time and resource in Google. Thus, the more effort any brand puts in delivering high-quality content, satisfying the algorithms, posting on Google+, uploading on YouTube, and optimizing for search engine’s mobile standards, the less time they will probably spend on their competitor sites.
In addition, the content on the cards is not indexed and as such, other search engines are not able to crawl it. Google is considering itself to be the only host for Card’s content even though it is shareable on social networking websites.
