Now that the local search industry has decided what to call the newly replaced local carousel results (Local Stack has a heavy lead) I thought it was high time we ran some tests through Usability Hub.
First Study: “Salt Lake City Hotel”
Question Asked:
Imagine you need to book a hotel in Salt Lake City. You go to google and search for “Salt Lake City Hotel” and see the following results. Given this search result what would you click next?
Total Clicks: 100
PPC: 22%
Local Stack: 25%
Organic: 53%
Things I Find Interesting:
1. We are to the age of 100% above the fold ads in some industries. I think we can expect that this will be the future for most industries in due time.
2. Even though organic listings were below the fold they still pulled a majority of clicks.
3. Every Hotel in the Local Stack has paid booking ads on this search result.
4. The display image on the local stack matters. Big time.
Second Study: “Denver Sushi Restaurants”
Question asked:
Imagine you are in the mood for some Sushi while in Denver. You Google “Denver Sushi Restaurants” and see the following search results. What would you click?
Total Clicks: 100
PPC: 0% (There were no ads)
Local: 73%
Organic: 27%
Things I Find Interesting:
1. How little ads there were on this query.
2. That the local stack claimed such a high percentage of clicks without ads.
3. Yelp outperformed Urbanspoon with a lower position.
4. No one sorted by Rating, Price, or Hours.
More Studies
Here is a previous study I was a part of on the local carousel
Also, Here are a couple studies I conducted on non local stacks (traditional map packs) over the summer.
Search Phrase: Burley Lawyer
This study is on a listing that has organic results above the map pack.
and the same search on mobile.
Conclusion
This data is by no means a conclusive click study for all local stacks. In contrast, this shows how diverse each search query can be based on ads, images, intent, etc. If anything I hope this shows you that you should do you own testing on the serps that you care about and that this can be done very easily. The biggest takeaway for me from this (and the previous click studies I have done) is that local is not everything, PPC, is not everything, and Organic is not everything. The combination and importance given to each is important and can create a great local search marketing strategy. Those who only focus on one of the areas are those who find themselves eventually without traffic and without options.
If you enjoyed this then you should check out the upcoming joint conference with Moz and LocalU called LocalUP
Mike Ramsey is the founder of Nifty. He is the author of Winning At Local Search and a former partner at LocalU, which provides beginner to advanced conferences in the realm of local search marketing. Mike founded Nifty in 2009 which has been recognized by Inc. as one of the fastest-growing companies in America.