Google Possum: why your local ranking changed on September 1

The local search community has named this update Possum, and the name is apt: a lot of listings that seem to have died are only playing dead. Comparing rank tracking data from the last two weeks of August with the first two weeks of September, five patterns stand out.

Filtering by shared address and affiliation. Google has always filtered duplicate results in the local pack, usually when two listings shared a phone number or website. The filter now appears to work on physical proximity and affiliation as well. Two dentists in the same medical building, two insurance agents who share a suite, or a law firm and its individual attorneys at one address will frequently show only one of them in the pack. The others still exist and still rank, but they are hidden behind the one Google chose to display.

Businesses outside city limits gained. For years a business with a mailing address just across the city line struggled to rank for searches that included the city name, even if it was closer to the center than competitors. That handicap has been eased considerably. Many businesses in suburbs and unincorporated areas have seen their first pack appearances for the main city term.

Searcher location matters more. Results for the same query now vary noticeably based on the physical location of the person searching, even within one city. Rank tracking from a single point, or from a tool that defaults to a city centroid, tells you less than it did a month ago.

Keyword variations diverge. Searches that used to return nearly identical packs, such as "plumber chicago" and "chicago plumber" or "plumbers in chicago", now often show different businesses. The local algorithm appears to be treating word order and modifiers more independently.

The local filter is separate from the organic filter. Listings whose websites were previously held back by organic penalties or duplicate content issues have in some cases reappeared in the pack. The local results seem to be calculated with more independence from the main organic ranking than before.

Rank drops in local search are rarely what they look like. Run this sequence before touching your Google My Business account, your website or your citations.

1. Check the listing is live. Sign in to Google My Business and confirm the listing is verified, published and free of suspension notices. If it is, this is not a penalty.
2. Zoom in on the map. Search your main term on Google Maps, find your area, and zoom in two or three steps. If your business appears once you zoom, it is being filtered at the wider view, not removed.
3. Search from more than one location. Use a tool that lets you set the search location to specific coordinates, or physically search from several points in your service area on a phone. Record what you see at each point.
4. Compare query variations. Check the city-plus-service phrasing, the service-plus-city phrasing and the "near me" phrasing. Note where you appear and where you do not.
5. List who shares your address. Pull up every business at your street address and suite number on Google Maps. If a competitor in your category is there, you have found the most likely cause.

The filter is the hardest of the three changes to work around honestly, and most of the aggressive workarounds will cost you later.

Start by making your listing the one Google prefers to show. Among listings that compete at the same address, the displayed one tends to be the one with more reviews, more complete information, a more specific primary category and stronger signals from its website. Completeness matters: hours, photos, a description, a correct primary category and secondary categories that reflect what you actually do.

Choose your primary category carefully. Two businesses that share an address but use different primary categories are much less likely to be collapsed. If you are a family dentist and the practice down the hall is an orthodontist, each of you should be in your own category, not both under the generic "Dentist".

Check the categories and details on the competing listing too. If a listing at your address is a duplicate, closed, or misrepresenting its category, suggest an edit through Maps. Do not try to claim or report a legitimate business.

Make the website behind the listing stronger for the location. A dedicated page for the location, with the exact name, address and phone as they appear in Google My Business, local content and reviews, gives the local algorithm something to rank.

What not to do: register a virtual office or a UPS Store box down the street to get a second address. Google's guidelines prohibit it, the listings are increasingly being caught, and a suspension removes you entirely rather than filtering you.

Businesses with several locations, or several professionals at one location, are affected most, and the right structure depends on the type of business.

For separate physical locations, each location should have its own listing with its own local phone number, its own page on the website and its own set of citations. Shared tracking numbers across locations are a common reason two listings get treated as one entity.

For practitioners at one address, Google's guidelines allow individual listings for public-facing professionals such as physicians, attorneys, real estate agents and financial advisors. Give each practitioner a distinct primary category where that is accurate. Expect that the practice listing and the practitioner listings will often be filtered down to one in a wide-area search, and decide which one you most want shown. Many practices now direct review requests to the practice listing for that reason.

For departments inside one business, such as a dealership's sales and service operations, separate listings are allowed, with separate categories and ideally separate phone numbers. Again, pick distinct categories.

The way most businesses measure local visibility stopped being adequate this month. A weekly rank check from one location for one phrasing can show a catastrophic drop that your customers never experienced, or a healthy position that only exists at a single map coordinate.

Track at least three phrasings per core service. Track from at least three points across your service area, including one near the edge. Record pack visibility separately from organic position. Watch calls, direction requests and website clicks in Google My Business Insights, which reflect what people actually did regardless of what a tracker shows. Those four numbers together will tell you whether the change cost you business or just changed a report.

We start with discovery: a listing-by-listing audit of the business and everyone sharing its addresses, multi-point rank tracking across the real service area, and a review of citation consistency and the location pages on the site. From that we plan the category structure, the listing hierarchy for practitioners or departments, and the review and content program that makes the preferred listing the one Google shows. Build covers the Google My Business cleanup, the location pages and the tracking setup. Then we improve on a monthly cycle, because local results are still settling and will keep moving. The work connects growth, brand, web and technology: the listings, the site that supports them, the consistent naming across the web and the reporting that shows what changed.

A representative engagement is the real estate work we did with a brokerage that had several agents working from one office, each with a listing, and a brand listing competing with all of them. After a local shake-up, the office effectively vanished from pack results for the city term. We rebuilt the structure so the brokerage listing carried the primary category and the bulk of reviews, gave agent listings distinct categories where that was accurate, built out location and neighborhood pages on the site, and set up rank tracking from points across the metro area. Pack visibility for the brokerage returned within weeks, and the leadership team gained a report that reflected what buyers were actually seeing.