Google’s Results Now Highlight Location

Over the past few weeks, you might have noticed a subtle change to your Google search results pages. That’s because Google has tweaked these pages to put greater emphasis on location, which could be good news for real estate agents.

Google’s new emphasis on location involves two changes. The first is simple: your location setting now shows up on the left-hand panel of your search results. “With this new display you’re still getting the same locally relevant results as before, but now it’s much easier for you to see your location setting and make changes to it,” Google says.

“If you’re planning a trip to Hawaii, you can change the location to ‘Honolulu’ and start exploring the [weather], [hotels] and of course the [beaches],” Google explains. “The location you set can be as specific as a particular zip code or as general as an entire country, but more specific settings generally lead to better search results.”

The second change is the addition of a new option to filter search results and only show places. “We’ve clustered search results around specific locations so you can more easily make comparisons and decide where to go,” Google states.

To get a clearer idea of how this would work, let’s run through an example of someone searching for Australian real estate agency LJ Hooker. They load up google.com.au, type in “LJ Hooker”, and realise that Google is showing results for Sydney when they actually want information for Newcastle.

All the user has to do is click “change location” on the right, type in Newcastle, and the results are updated.

Next, this home hunter can get even more location-specific results by filtering by “places”. Now they see a list of results with Google Maps’ pins that link to Google’s Place Pages.

This is all good news for real estate agents who have plenty of information to their Google Place Page, as it means that page is now even more visible to potential clients. For those agents who are yet to update their details, this is one more reason to log in to Google, update your Place Page, and ensure your business looks as professional as possible.

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