Recent Changes to Local Rank Tracker Explained

We recently updated Local Rank Tracker. Now you're able to:

• View all your ranking insights in one place, with a sleek new design.
• Compare your website and Google Business Profile rankings at a glance
• Easily understand Local Pack performance and opportunities for improvement
• Get better visibility on which of your website pages are ranking in Organic and Mobile results 

Bottom line: it's now easier to understand your local ranking performance and find insights to help you rank higher. Take a look at this short video to learn more: 

FAQS

Where have the A, B, and C results gone in the Rankings Table?
We’ve updated the way we report Local Pack rankings in the Rankings Table. We now show Local Pack rankings as a separate search result type with its own column. Therefore, we no longer display Local Pack rankings within Organic results using letters to indicate the position.

Why have some of my rankings improved?

If your report was previously set to blended, you may notice that some of your organic rankings have improved for keywords where Local Packs are present. E.g. if you were previously ranking 3C in the Local Pack and 10 organically for one keyword, you will now be ranking as 3 for the Local Pack and 7 organically. This is because Local Pack positions are no longer blended together and counted within the same number.

Why can I no longer see Blended results?

We removed Blended results to simplify how we report rankings. Most customers prefer to track rankings separately for their Google Business Profile and their Website. As a result, your Organic rankings might have gone up. With Blended results, the best position a webpage could have was 4th when a Local Pack was present. But now that Blended results are no longer used, the same page can now rank in 1st position.

Why has my Average Google Position for Google Organic and/or Google Mobile significantly dropped?
This is likely because Local Packs are no longer counted within Google Organic or Google Mobile. Local Packs always accounted for positions 1-3. So, if you were ranking in one of these positions, it was likely increasing the Average Google Position. By removing this, the Average Position is likely to drop as it's only counting the positions of your website.

Will I see Local Pack rankings for both desktop and mobile organic results?

No, we only show Local Pack rankings for desktop results. This is because we already track a lot of data and don't want to make the rankings table too complicated. Typically, Local Pack results are usually similar on both desktop and mobile.

Why am I seeing lower numbers in the Keyword and Positional Movement charts?

The new report only shows Local Pack rankings for desktops, while the old report showed rankings for both desktops and mobile. So, you might notice fewer changes in the number of keywords that moved position and a different Positional Movement number in the new report compared to the old report.

Why am I seeing lower numbers of results in the Positions chart?

As above, mobile Local Pack rankings contributed to these numbers in the old version of this report but this is no longer the case as we now only report on Local Pack rankings for desktops. This might mean that you notice a drop in the number of rankings in the #1 and #2-5 buckets.

Where did Google Maps go?

Google Maps is now replaced by Local Finder, which is associated with Google Business Profiles and is usually activated when a user clicks on a Local Pack result. The Local Finder displays more specific results and provides more detailed information about the businesses.

Rankings in both Local Finder and Google Maps are usually similar. However, Google Maps is primarily used for navigation purposes (such as planning routes and getting directions), while Local Finder is more geared towards helping users discover local businesses (for example, when someone searches for "plumber near me").