Adding to the animal-themed search algorithm updates by Google – Hummingbird, Panda, Penguin – if you haven’t heard, Google Pigeon has arrived. Pigeon is a local search ranking algorithm. Pigeon was released by Google July, 2014. It’s goal was to provide more accurate, relevant and useful search results to users. So how does Google Pigeon change local search?

Pigeon was released in response to the need to separate local search with global search because for local businesses, local search yields conversions. Since the Pigeon algorithm affects both Google Maps and web results, with Pigeon brands are seeing their sites drop in rankings, and drop in the amount of traffic sent their way. Business owners asked “why?” Simple.

Google Pigeon emphasizes the following three areas:
Web ranking signals, also more commonly called backlinks
Physical location of a business
Emphasis on Knowledge Graph results to provide more relevant results
The second point reveals that Pigeon places significant emphasis on the location of a business or brand, and the third point, in keeping with Google’s mission, emphasizes more relevant results to users. This is why Pigeon has changed local search. With Pigeon, Google interprets specific queries as “brand queries” and returns relevant results based on those queries. Google also sees desktop queries similar to mobile queries and returns results based upon location.How Does Google Pigeon Change Local Search?

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