Organic Local Results in Google Now Grey Pinned Instead of Red?
For a little less than a week, Google Maps have been showing a Grey balloon instead of Red for organic local listings.
I tried a few searches on Google using Mozilla and Chrome, and it’s true, you do see the Grey pins or balloons as you may call them! Well, looking up some popular Google forums, it seems Google is testing this as a new feature.
Check out the screen print of the searches. The organic results to the left, have little grey pins for local listings.
There are a lot of speculations going around about this. There are no specific details from Google regarding the change to a grey pin, except that they are “testing” something new.
Well, the red pins have been a Google Maps’ thing. It’s almost like a trademark or a brand identity for local listings. Plus, as research shows, red color is always used for visual effects as regards to attracting the attention of passersby.
It really worked well with organic local listings! Red colored pins did exactly what they were intended to do – grab attention of searchers and increase CTRs for website owners optimizing on Google Maps for local listings.
Google’s local listings now with the grey colored pins have created some doubt in the minds of site owners optimizing for local markets. They think that it will definitely affect their CTRs (Click Through Rates).
Although there are no clear explanations for this particular change, I really think there would not be such a serious impact on CTRs for local listing, a little drop might be expected, there really should not be any reason to panic.
Well, these are all speculations; let’s wait until we get some official feedback from Google.
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