GOOGLE LAUNCHES NEW PIGEON UPDATE — how does it affect your website?

A few days ago Google pushed out a new and major algo update for local search (which industry's leading SEO resource "Search Engine Land" called "Pigeon" update). There aren't many details disclosed about the so-called Pigeon yet, but webmasters report considerable changes in their local rankings over the past few days.

To make sure you've got all the freshest information at your fingertips, we've put up this short compilation to explain what "Pigeon" is, how it affects your rankings and how to adapt your SEO strategy for the changes.

So, what do we know about the "Pigeon"?

Google confirmed that the update started to roll out on July 24 for US English results, and it's not yet known when the update would roll out more widely in other countries and languages.

The aim of the update is to provide a more useful, relevant and accurate local search results. And unlike Penguin and Panda updates, this is not a penalty-based update(aimed at cleaning the SERPs from low-quality content), but a core change to the local search ranking algorithm.

Now, to give you a better idea of the update, we've tried to outline all the changes going on (both those claimed by Google and noticed by webmasters) and give some advice for website owners who've been affected. Read more at http://www.link-assistant.com/news/google-pigeon-update.html?utm_source=email&utm_medium=broadcast&utm_campaign=pigeon-29072014