Google Local Filler Content Is Poor UX and Needs Improvement
Have you ever sent in a school assignment full of ramblings.
Thinking your instructor wouldn’t notice that you hadn’t read the prescribed book?
I admit that I once helped my younger sister
meet a word count requirement by using analogies like
“waves smashing against the rocks of hardship” when she, for some reason,.
Skipped reading The Communist Manifesto in high school.
She received an A on her report, but it isn’t the grade I would give
Google when there isn’t enough information to properly complete local packs,
Local Finders, and Maps.
In response to significant local inquiries, the appearance of irrelevant listings:
It makes it excessively difficult for searchers to locate what they are looking for.
It makes it more difficult for relevant firms to compete.
Creates the misleading appearance of a
plethora of local resources, resulting in a poor UX.
Today, we’ll look at some original data to try to quantify the scope of the problem.
And see what Google and local businesses can do about it.
What’s meant by “local filler” content and why is it such a problem?
The screenshot above shows
the local pack results for a
Specialized search for a gastroenterologist in Angels Camp, California.
Google has jumbled together results that are
two-thirds unrelated to the actual purpose of my query.
Because I am not searching for an eye care centre or a pediatrician.
The third result is superior, although
Google had to go around 15 miles from my selected search city to obtain it.
Because Dr. Eddi is, at the very least, a gastroenterologist.
It’s a little disappointing to see Google allow the one accurate specialist to be outranked.
By two random local medical firms, maybe because they’re closer to home.
It clearly won’t do to have an optician or a pediatrician counsel with me on gut health,
And the issue becomes even odder when we go to the local finder.
Only two of the twenty results
Google has gathered to make up the first page of the local finder are gastroenterologists,
lost in the weeds of podiatrists, orthopedic surgeons, general MDs,
and a few clinics, with no clarity as to whether their presence in
the results relates to having a digestive health specialist on staff.
None of the gastroenterologists mentioned are in the town I’ve chosen.
The relevancy ratio is rather low for the user, and it creates a frightening atmosphere
for competent practitioners who must be located in all of this muck.
You may have read my previous posts about
local SEO attempting to create an online mirror of real-world communities.
That is the ideal: providing towns and
communities with an outstanding digital reference guide to local resources.
However, when I verified with the real world (calling medical practices in the area),
I discovered that there are no gastroenterologists in Angels Camp,
despite Google’s results implying that there should be.
According to residents, you must either go 25 minutes to Sonora to visit a
GI doctor or drive one hour and fifteen minutes west to Modesto for adequate treatment.
Google has partnered with AI,
but the current state of search leaves it up to my human intellect to recognize
that the SERPs are making hollow promises and
that there are no GI docs at Angels Camp.
If I were thinking about moving to this neighbourhood and wanted to be close to specialists,
this is what a neighbour, primary care doctor, or local business group would tell me.
But Google informs me that there are more
than 23 million organic options related to my needs,
as well as hundreds of local company
listings that are so near to my purpose
that they deserve to be at the top of 3-packs, Finders, and Maps.
The most tangible outcome for the Google user is
that they would likely feel unnecessary weariness while wasting time on
the phone phoning irrelevant doctors at a time when
they are in desperate need of assistance from a qualified specialist.
As a local SEO, I’m conditioned to look at local
company categories and can almost instantly sort out superfluous material
as a result, but is the ordinary searcher noticing
the shortened “eye care cent…” on the preceding listing?
Since Google opted to hide listing categories years ago,
they almost likely aren’t utilizing a Chrome plugin like GMB Spy to view all of them.
On a more philosophical note, my problem with local SERPs
that are comprised of useless filler material is
that they present an inaccurate image of local bounty.
The job of local companies (and local SEOs!)
takes on new significance when they provide and promote vital local resources.
Google’s false representation of plenty may,
inadvertently, lead to popular indifference.
The truth is that the United States is facing a severe shortage of doctors,
and anything that does not reflect this reality risks undermining public action on issues
such as why our country, unlike the majority of nations,
does not make higher education
free or affordable so that
young people can become
the medical professionals and other essential service
providers we unquestionably require to be a fun place to live.
When local businesses (and local SEOs!)
supply and promote essential local resources, their role takes on new meaning.
Inadvertently, Google’s misleading depiction of plenty may lead to public apathy.
The truth is that the United States is facing a severe shortage of doctors,
and anything that does not reflect this reality risks undermining public action on issues
such as why our country, unlike the majority of nations,
does not make higher education free or affordable for young people so
that they can become the medical professionals
and other essential service providers we unquestionably require.
Just how big is the problem of local filler content?
If the SERPs behaved more like people, my search for “gastroenterologist Angels Camp”
might provide anything akin to a featured snippet indicating,
“Sorry, our index shows there are no GI Docs in Angels Camp.”
You should search in Sonora or Modesto for the nearest options.”
It would not have resulted in the current predicament of, “Bad digestive system?
The present results imply that you should see an eye doctor.
I wanted to know how big of a problem this has become for Google.
Using the search keyword “gastroenterologist” and each of the locations,
I examined the local packs in 25 towns
and cities across California with vastly varied demographics.
Took note of how many of the results returned were in the city
Had chosen in my search, and how many included
the term “gastroenterologist” as their major category.
I even gave Google an edge in this test by including entries in
Google’s wins column that did not include
gastroenterology as their major category
but did have some form of that term in
their business title (making the specialty obvious to the user).
Google offered 42 percent of the information in
local packs that had no clear relationship to gastroenterology.
To be honest, it’s a startling figure.
Consider how many tiresome, useless phone calls patients
may be made in search of digestive health
advice if over half of the practices listed are not in this field of medicine.
In my tiny sample set,
I observed that larger cities produced the most meaningful findings.
Smaller cities and rural regions have significantly lower relevance rates.
Meanwhile, Google is more precise
when it comes to delivering results inside the city of the inquiry.
The problem is that what appears to be a win
for Google here isn’t truly a gain for searchers.
In my data sample, where Google
returned accurate results from my stated city,
the entities were frequently not GI physicians.
There were times when all three results were
correct about the city,
but none of them were correct about the specialty.
In reality, there was a one really strange example.
Aside from welders, keep in mind that our original Angels Camp
example illustrated how a searcher seeing a pack with filler ads in it and going
down further into the Local Finder results for assistance may wind up with even less relevance.
Instead of two-out-of-three useless local pack entries,
they may wind up with two-out-of-twenty worthless
listings, with relevance relegated to obscurity.
Of course, filler listings aren’t limited to medical fields.
I decided to conduct this small poll because I had seen how frequently,
in category after category, the user experience is less-than-ideal.
What should Google do to lessen the poor UX of irrelevant listings?
Keep in mind that we’re not talking about spam here.
In Google land, that’s an entirely different headache.
In my data, I found no instances of spam.
The welder was not attempting to pose as a doctor.
Rather, it looks like Google is favouring location terms above goods/services keywords,
even when it makes little sense to do so.
To enhance UX, Google should create logic that
eliminates very irrelevant items for specified head keywords.
What are the chances that this logic will work?
1. Google might depend more heavily on its categories.
Returning to our initial example,
where an eye care centre is a top-ranked result for “gastroenterologist angels camp,”
we can utilize GMB Spy to see whether any of the categories selected by the company is
“gastroenterologist.”
Of course, Google can see all of the categories,
and the absence of “gastroenterologist”
among them should be a strong “no”
vote on providing the item for our query.
2. Google may cross-reference the categories
with the frequently overlooked business description.
Again, there is no mention of gastroenterological services.
Yet another “no” vote.
3. Google may do sentiment analysis on an
entity’s reviews to see if they contain the search keyword.
There are several references to eye care,
but there are none to digestive health in
the body of the reviews.
Yet another “no” vote.
Google may cross-check the supplied search terms against all of
the information gleaned through crawls of the entity’s website.
This action should establish that there is no evidence on-site indicating
Dr. Haymond is anything other than an ophthalmologist.
Then Google would have to perform a calculation to reduce the significance of
So,the location (Angels Camp) based on an internal logic that specifies
that a user looking for a gastroenterologist in a city would prefer
to see gastroenterologists a little farther away t
han seeing eye doctors (or welders) nearby.
As a consequence of our question,
this would be another “no” vote for inclusion.
This action should establish that there is no evidence on-site indicating
Dr. Haymond is anything other than an ophthalmologist.
Then Google would have to perform a calculation to reduce
the significance of the location (Angels Camp)
based on an internal logic that specifies
that a user looking for a gastroenterologist in a city would prefer to see gastroenterologists
a little farther away than seeing eye doctors (or welders) nearby.
As a consequence of our question,
this would be another “no” vote for inclusion.
5. Finally, Google may compare this crawl of the webpage to their overall web crawl.
This should serve as definitive proof that
Dr. Haymond is an eye doctor rather
than a gastroenterologist, even though he is in our preferred location,
and provide us with a fifth “no”
vote for putting his listing up in answer to our question.
The web is huge, as is Google’s work,
but I believe the answer to addressing this sort of filler material is for
So,Google to depend more on its understanding
of an entity’s vertical and less on its location.
A diner may be ready to substitute tacos
for pizza if there is a Mexican restaurant
a block away but no pizzerias in town, but
the same rationale should not apply in these YMYL categories.
When Google’s existing reasoning informs
them there isn’t a good solution,
it’s fairly unusual for them to block local
results from displaying at all.
It’s easy to argue that fixing the filler content problem requires
Google to increase the number of results
for which local listings aren’t displayed.
However, I do not believe this is an
acceptable option because
the user would frequently view irrelevant organic entries instead of local ones.
Conclusion
Society wants accurate search results supplied by diligent providers,
and rural and urban regions require equal quality standards
and a more sophisticated strategy than a one-size-fits-all approach.
Too frequently in Local, Google fails due to a failure to recognize real-world realities.
Let’s hope they start using their abilities to their best.
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