PIGEON changes the positioning rules that have been common in local searches to make them more similar to global positioning rules.
In other words, this means that the position will, from now on, be determined to a greater extent by domain authority, backlinks and all other factors typical of global SEO.
What can we do to solve it?
If your positioning has suffered a sudden drop in recent days, it may be that the SEO characteristics of your website have fallen behind your competitors.
Conduct intensive research on the competition to find what characteristics of their organic positioning (Backlinks, content...) make the websites with the highest visibility stand out from the rest.
Local directories are key to climbing the rankings
If we look at the first searches Special Data after the update, sites such as Tripadvisor , eltener , 11870 or Yelp in the case of the United States, have acquired or should acquire great importance, to the point that it may be the case that the page of results is completely occupied by the best-known local directories.
What can we do to solve it?
Although the number of clients you get through your website is small, the situation can take a turn if your potential clients start finding you on these pages.
This aspect makes it crucial to build a strong presence on the leading directories that your target audience visits.
Find the most influential local directories in your target audience
There are several SEO tools that could be useful in this regard. An example is Rank Tracker , with which you can find the 10 best sites for each of your keywords in the Keyword Difficulty table section .
If you then select the History Records option , you will be able to detect if any premises have disappeared from the results page.
Analyze how the rankings vary for your different ads
In this way, we will make sure we know what should be our priority in terms of updating content, greater number of opinions...
ADVICE:
Add all your business ads to Rank Tracker as Competitors . This will allow you to keep track of all your rankings alongside your main business.