Increase of Rank for SABs?

[Adam Di Frisco]

Is anybody else noticing an increase in rank from Service Area Businesses hiding addresses? Over the last month or so I've seen competitors from various locations and industries popping up into the top of map packs. I was wondering if one of the recent Algo updates may have impacted this, as I don't ever remember these specific competitors (or any SABs honestly) ever doing this well.

 

[JS Girard]

Historically, this has happened mostly because hiding an address would get around filtering problem, causing the business to reappear in rankings. Recently, it's been more likely that hiding the address would destroy your rankings due to any of various bugs (Kansas bug, SAB move bug, SAB punishment bug...).

There are several other reasons that could be involved. Exemples in decreasing order of likelihood:

• A reweighting of existing ranking factors
  • e.g. last springs when they reweighed how much effect on ranking secondary categories are allowed to have
• a new ranking factor we're not even aware of
  • e.g. opening hours recently were just added as a factor
• some adjustments to keyword intent analysis, which occur almost every time there is a major algorithm update
  • This is usually diagnosed by looking at the verticals involved, but seems unlikely here given the variety in your keywords
• A fix on the SAB move or SAB punishment bug would also explain this
  • I'd be extremely surprised if this were the case!

 

[JoyHawkins]

I checked a few of our clients that are SABs. Not seeing anything major compared to October.

Are their hours different than yours?

 

[Adam Di Frisco]

I checked a few of our clients that are SABs. Not seeing anything major compared to October.

Are their hours different than yours?

Interesting, okay thanks for checking Joy! Hours are a little all over the place for the SABs in my screenshots. The first one I looked at "BAM!" open 24 hours... as I went down the list, some were open an hour or two longer some an hour or two shorter. I'll certainly keep an eye on that and keep you all updated if I see anything else.