You’ve probably seen the blog posts about Google’s new attempt to cash in on yet more space on the first screen view of results for any local search.

While this won’t impact on the traffic for some businesses, notably those relying on purchase-related search terms, it will have a significant impact on any sites vying for the increasingly lucrative local market regardless of whether you’re a local carpet cleaning firm or a local directory publisher.

Because now most local searches will produce not one, not 3 but 10 - yes, that’s 10 - Google Local results. At first thought that may seem like a good deal for the smaller businesses in the area that don’t have such as great online presence (or any!). But from the tests I’ve done it’s looking as though Google is almost spamming its own Local listings. Most of the searches I’ve done that produce the “10 Pack” as it’s been dubbed actually only display 3 or 4 businesses in the Local results, it simply repeats the same one several times in order to take up the 10 spaces (and effectively rob other organic listings of roughly 2 or 3 slots, depending on your screen size and resolution settings).

So what you get now is 2-3 PPC listings, then 3 organic listings and then the 10 pack
OR
3 organic listings, then the 10 pack and then however many more organic listings can squeeze in before you have to scroll down.

There’s no point whining about it because, as we know, Google is God and can do whatever it likes. So you just have to deal with it. The trick will be to ensure you’re always number one. The first organic search result will always be seen on any conventionally sized monitor even with Googles 10 local listings butting in. On large monitors or certain resolutions the first 3 organic results will be visible. But that’s as good as it gets.