How Do Google Maps Updates Improve Your Search Traffic?

Google Maps is an integral part of Google’s behemoth ecosystem. It has become one of the most essential apps on our phones as well as an important traffic driver for local businesses, says Optimise London, a PPC Agency in London. Google Maps contains a lot of innovative, advanced technologies and Google constantly updates the platform so that it is always functioning at full force. But if your site or Google My Business Listings aren’t optimized properly, these updates can come with a cost to local business owners.

How Google Map Search Result Updates Work

Google Maps looks through information on the internet via indexing. This essentially means that it looks for specific words and phrases that then get categorized into a hierarchical way so that it can find a way to interpret it. This is one of the major technologies that Google Maps uses to find out more about your business. SEOMechanic, suggests using Google Webmaster to help you understand how Google goes through your information on your website, etc. This will also help you understand how your site gets traffic and how people get to your site.

Moz Local (https://moz.com/products/local) is a site that will help you analyze your page and tell you what is right and wrong with your site so that you can improve how Google works with your site. Their algorithm is a great way to see how Google Maps Updates effect you.

What Is The Google Pigeon Update?

Google Pigeon (https://searchengineland.com/google-makes-significant-changes-local-search-ranking-algorithm-197778) is part of the end of the pipeline. It mostly deals with local search results. It works very similarly to how traditional searches are done using ranking signals. Back in the day, Google used a concept called “centroid” for business. By doing this, Google ranked businesses that were closer to downtown areas or areas that were in the center of cities higher than others. Sometimes they even ranked businesses higher that weren’t even near downtown areas.

But Google Pigeon changed the algorithm a little bit. In this way, the search engine would use distance and location to rank parameters to find the best search results. The algorithm and the way it is able to interpret data and provide better search results have been consistently improved on, even to this day. The ability of phones, computers, and tablets of today to provide GPS location has improved the way the search engine can give accurate retail locations that are the closest to your current location.

Behind Google Maps Technology 

Google Maps has been able to elicit images from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat 8 satellites to improve the quality of their platform. According to Google, they are expecting to be able to start using USGS Landsat 9 Ground System soon to enhance the quality of the image capacity of their platform as well. All the information that Google uses is available to the public. In this way, Google is able to join scientists, researchers, and environmental groups to improve the data that is provided by NASA and the USGS to improve their mapping technology. The search engine itself has provided over a petabyte of information to Google Maps. 

Frequency of Google Maps Updates

According to AndroidPit, Google is very secretive on how often they update their features. But it is commonly known that areas that are busier and may possibly be subjected to more changes over time, will get updates more often. For example, central metro areas in the United States, like New York, Chicago, and other big cities, will get updates every week or so. But rural areas in places that have small populations will not be updated for years.

Follow Your World is an app that you can check if you are a small business owner and see how your location is changed. You can also track how Google Maps updates your business location. You can also find out when Google’s Streetcar team will come around to take pictures of your business. For example, Google will be in Florida from March to June this year.

Improve Your Google Map Results

Hopefully, now you have more of an understanding of how Google Maps is able to change the ability of your business to generate leads and more business. But if you want to find out more about how Google Maps helps to improve your site, then you can go ahead and implement some of these tips.

• You need to sign up for Google My Business. This way Google has the most up to date and correct information about your business. It will let you manage your local business’s Google profile. You can see different reviews, updates, and traffic.
• Google Maps is location-specific so you need to make sure it has the correct NAP for your business. NAP stands for name, address, and phone. Google uses this information to match with other site information that uses your NAP information. You want to make sure that these multiple sites have the same consistent data.
• Google Maps is a great way to see how your business is doing and especially how to improve your business just using a computer. If you are a retail space, then Google Maps is a lifeblood to how you will succeed. People won’t be able to try your product if they don’t even know you exist. 
• Content is king, it has always been that way since the World Wide Web first was created. Google wants to make sure that your business is doing well so that it can suggest you to their users. By just updating and adding more content, you will make it so that there are more backlinks from other sites and will improve your search rankings. This can come in the form of blogs, images, videos, etc.

So after implementing these tips, the next time Google Maps updates, you can be ready for an improvement in your search traffic!