Editor's note: We're keeping this post live for the sake of posterity, but since publication, Google branding, search commands, and results may have changed.
I suspect I’m not alone in saying: I’ve never been a fan of the New Google Maps.
In the interstitial weeks between that tweet and today, Google has made some noticeable improvements. But the user experience still lags in many ways relative to the classic version (chief among them: speed).
Google’s invested so heavily in this product, though, that there’s no turning back at this point. We as marketers need to come to terms with a product that will drive an increasing number of search results in the future.
Somewhat inspired by this excellent Pete Wailes post from many years ago, I set out last week to explore Google Maps with a fresh set of eyes and an open mind to see what I could discover about how it renders local business results. Below is what I discovered.
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Basic URL structure
New Google Maps uses a novel URL structure (novel for me, anyway) that is not based around the traditional ? and & parameters of Classic Google Maps, but instead uses /’s and something called hashbangs to tell the browser what to render.
The easiest way to describe the structure is to illustrate it:
There are also some additional useful hashbang parameters relating to local queries that I’ll describe in further detail below.
Some actual feature improvements
Despite the performance issues, New Google Maps has introduced at least two useful URL modifiers I’ve grown to love.
/am=t
This generates a stack-ranked list of businesses in a given area that Google deems relevant for the keyword you’re searching. It’s basically the equivalent of the list on the lefthand panel in Classic Google Maps but much easier to get to via direct URL. Important: am=t must always be placed after /search and before the hashbang modifiers, or else the results will break.
by:experts
This feature shows you businesses that have been reviewed by Google+ experts (the equivalent of what we’ve long-called “power reviewers” or “authority reviewers” on my annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey). To my knowledge it’s the first time Google has publicly revealed who these power users are, opening up the possibility of an interesting future study correlating PlaceRank with the presence, valence, and volume of these reviews. In order to see these power reviewers, it seems like you have to be signed into a Google+ account, but perhaps others have found a way around this requirement.
Combining these two parameters yields incredibly useful results like these, which could form the basis for an influencer-targeting campaign:
Above: a screenshot of the results for: https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+stores+by:experts/@45.5424364,-122.654422,11z/am=t/
Local pack results and the vacuum left by tbm=plcs
Earlier this week, Steve Morgan noticed that Google crippled the ability to render place-based results from a Google search (ex: google.com/search?q=realtors&tbm=plcs). Many local rank-trackers were based on the results of these queries.
Finding a replacement for this parameter in New Google Maps turns out to be a little more difficult than it would first appear. You’ll note in the summary of URL structure above that each URL comes with a custom-baked centroid. But local pack results on a traditional Google SERP each have their own predefined viewport -- i.e. the width, height, and zoom level that most closely captures the location of each listing in the pack, making it difficult to determine the appropriate zoom level.
Above: the primary SERP viewport for ‘realtors’ with location set to Seattle, WA.
Note that if you click that link of “Map for realtors” today, and then add the /am=t parameter to the resulting URL, you tend to get a different order of results than what appears in the pack.
I’m not entirely sure as to why the order changes--one theory is that Google is now back to blending pack results (using both organic and maps algorithms). Another theory is that the aspect ratio on the viewport on the /am=t window is invariably square, which yields a different set of relevant results than the “widescreen” viewport on the primary SERP.
One thing I have found helps with replicability is to leave the @lat,lng,zoom parameters out of the URL, and let Google automatically generate them for you.
Here are a couple of variations that I encourage you to try:
https://www.google.com/maps/search/realtors/am=t/data=
followed by:
!3m1!4b1!1srealtors!2sSeattle,+WA!3s0x5490102c93e83355:0x102565466944d59a
or
!3m1!4b1!4m5!2m4!3m3!1srealtors!2sSeattle,+WA!3s0x5490102c93e83355:0x102565466944d59a
Take a closer look at those trailing parameters and you’ll see a structure that looks like this:
The long string starting with 0x and ending with 9a is the Feature ID of the centroid of the area in which you’re searching (in this case, Seattle). Incidentally, this feature ID is also rendered by Google Mapmaker using a URL similar to https://www.google.com/mapmaker?gw=39&fid={your_fid}.
This is the easy part. You can find this string by typing the URL:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/seattle,+WA
waiting for the browser to refresh, and then copying it from the end of the resulting URL.
The hard part is figuring out which hashbang combo will generate which order of results, and I still haven’t been able to do it. I’m hoping that by publishing this half-complete research, some enterprising Moz reader might be able to complete the puzzle! And there’s also the strong possibility that this theory is completely off base.
In my research thus far, the shorter hashbang combination (!3m1!4b1) seems to yield the closest results to what tbm=plcs used to render, but they aren’t 100% identical.
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The longer hashbang combination (!3m1!4b1!4m5!2m4!3m3) actually seems to predictably return the same set of results as a Local search on Google Plus -- and note the appearance of the pushpin icon next to the keyword when you add this longer combination:
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Who's #1?
Many of us in the SEO community, even before the advent of (not provided), encouraged marketers and business owners to stop obsessing about individual rankings and start looking at visibility in a broader sense. Desperately scrambling for a #1 ranking on a particular keyword has long been a foolish waste of resources.
Google’s desktop innovations in local search add additional ammunition to this argument. Heat map studies have shown that the first carousel result is far from dominant, and that a compelling Google+ profile photo can perform incredibly well even as far down the “sixth or seventh” (left to right) spot. Ranking #1 in the carousel doesn't provide quite the same visual benefit as ranking #1 in an organic SERP or 7-pack.
The elimination of the lefthand list pane on New Google Maps makes an even stronger case. It’s literally impossible to rank these businesses visually no matter how hard you stare at the map:
Mobile, mobile, mobile
Paradoxically, though, just as Google is moving away from ranked results on the desktop, my view is that higher rankings matter more than ever in mobile search. And as mobile and wearables continue to gain market share relative to desktop, that trend is likely to increase.
The increasing ubiquity of Knowledge Panels in search results the past couple of years has been far from subtle. Google is now not only attempting to organize the world’s information, but condense each piece of it into a display that will fit on a Google Glass (or Google Watch, or certainly a Google Android phone).
Nowhere is the need to be #1 more dramatic than in the Google Maps app, in which users perform an untold number of searches each month. List view is completely hidden (I didn’t even know it existed until this week) and an average user is just as likely to think the first result is the only one for them as they are to figure out they need to swipe right to view more businesses.
Above: a Google Maps app result for 'golf courses', in which the first result has a big-time advantage.
The other issue that mobile results really bring to the fore is that the user is becoming the centroid.
This is true even when searching from the desktop. I performed some searches one morning from a neighborhood coffee shop with wifi, and a few minutes later from my house six blocks away. To my surprise, I got completely different results. From my house, Google is apparently only able to detect that I’m somewhere in “Portland.” But from the coffee shop, it was able to detect my location at a much more granular level (presumably due to the coffee shop's wifi?), and showed me results specific to my ZIP code, with the centroid placed at the center of that ZIP. And the zoom setting for both adjusted automatically--the more granular ZIP code targeting defaulted to a zoom level of 15z or 16z, versus 11z to 13z from my home, where Google wasn’t as sure of my location.
Note, too, that I was unable to be exact about the zoom level in the previous paragraph. That’s because the centroid is category-dependent. It likely always has been category dependent but that fact is much more noticeable in New Google Maps.
Maps app visibility
Taking both of these into account, in terms of replicating Google Maps App visibility, here is a case where specifying @lat,lng,zoom (with the zoom set to 17z)can be incredibly useful.
As an example, I performed the search below from my iPhone at the hotel I was staying at in Little Italy after a recent SEM SD event. And was able to replicate the results with this URL string on desktop:
https://google.com/maps/search/lawyers/@32.723278,-117.168528,17z/am=t/data=!3m1!4b1
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Conclusions and recommendations
While I still feel the user experience of New Google Maps is subpar, as a marketer I found myself developing a very Strangelovian mindset over the past week or so -- I have actually learned to stop worrying and love the new Google Maps. There are some incredibly useful new URL parameters that allow for a far more complete picture of local search visibility than the classic Google Maps provided.
With this column, I wanted to at least present a first stab to the Moz community to hopefully build on and experiment with. But this is clearly an area that is ripe for more research, particularly with an eye towards finding a complete replacement for the old tbm=plcs parameter.
As mobile usage continues to skyrocket, identifying the opportunities in your (or your client’s) competitive set using the new Google Maps will only become more important.
Is it accurate to call the modifiers at the end of the URL string hashangs? The "hash" in "hashbang" is the pound character, and the "bang" is the exclamation mark: what you're really describing is just a "bang."
I bring this up not for pedantry's sake, but because hashbangs (of the #! variety) have a specific and important role in SEO; namely, they're the mechanism by which Google is able to retrieve an HTML snapshot of an AJAX page (by substituting the "#!" portion of a URL with "?_escaped_fragment_=").
Aaron, it's a good point & I would defer to a technical expert like yourself as to whether or not the nomenclature is appropriate. I'd actually not come across this URL structure before. Conceptually it seemed the closest to what I was seeing.
It seems to be a consistent bang, number, letter combination that Google is using here. (!1s, e.g.) Bang-Alphanumeric?
I think Aaron is technically correct but you're not massively wrong, I got corrected by my brother so also learned the hard way #!
The hashbang URL structure seems to be really interesting. With Google being a greatly user opinion driven company, I can see some of the new features that most people find bad withdrawn or modified in a good way soon enough. Also, the new Google Maps is only going to get better with time, so keeping in mind the advantages it brought along currently, especially the "by:experts" parameter.
After all, if you don't want the new Google Maps or just need the old version for faster operation in a particular time, "?output=classic" is always there for you.
We share the same view.
Thanks David. Knew you had something about this coming out and was interested in reading what you'd found.
I'll be doing more testing now with this ammunition at hand.
All your tests above were for KW only. The algo for KW only searches has always been different than the one for city + KW. The algo for "Seattle Realtor" is easier to reverse engineer. I have that one tested and figured out.
But the algo for KW only, "Realtor" with search location set, has always been tougher to figure out.
So my guess is that if you did more testing that includes city directly in the query like: "Seattle Dentist" it would be much easier to figure out correlation and match the SERPs.
There was a hack published at my forum for checking to see if a listing had a local penalty to determine if that's why it was missing from the "pack." That's one of the main issues in Steve's post you linked to above. I think I found substitute way to test for local penalties - but I'm also going to test some of your parameters to see if I can find any strings that work.
Thanks for sharing your research David!
Yep, the geomodified searches were much easier to replicate. In the interest of brevity, I didn't feel it was essential to include them in this post :)
thanks David for sharing it with us, i did not know about it before, superb post
Thanks for this initial research, David!
To be honest, I had heard complaints from more experienced SEOs/marketers than I about the new Google Maps (and noticed some less-than-stellar changes myself) but haven't totally understood the technical differences until now. Seems to me Google's axing of the tbm=plcs URL parameter may have been intentional: they seem to love to make life harder on us marketers whenever we find little tricks like that.
After playing around with the new URL parameters (the hashbangs, etc.) it's difficult to see how one would replicate the results tbm=plcs would populate. Looking forward to see if anyone comes up with something though!
Great stuff, David...! The new Maps is definitely throwing us a curveball and we hope all our rank-obsessed (i know, i know) clients keep their panic to a minimum as we transition.
Minor update: the "am=t" argument now wants to live at the end of the URL, and Maps actually will rewrite the URL to put it at the end if you insert it before the hashbang/bangalpha arguments. Still true that if you put it before "search|place|dir" it breaks the result and you get an empty page.
These are some really excellent features that will help finding people the best and the most appropriate stuff. Now If I assume the examples, there is a need of some strategy to rank under these specific searches. I think here Schema tags will work a lot.
This was really interesting. Some of the features included in Google maps really makes things so vivid. However for viewing the classic we can just manipulate the URL to ?output=classic. Thanks For sharing.
I also use the old Google Map its kinda slow on my end. Nice tips David for the url parameter to view the old map, what I am doing when I am on the new Google map is just click on the tiny question mark icon at the bottom of the map and select classic view.
Thank you for digging into the data of Google maps. I actually don't mind the new Google maps, but it is somewhat difficult to use and explore the features.
Very helpful in understanding some of the quirks in Google Maps. Now to see if I can find a way to help rank my page better. Keep bringing the great info!
I am still not convinced by the new look, or even the much important issue that google promised to make google maps rendering faster and it is stil very slow.
what about the filters google used to gave when searching for a hostel?
sometimes others use google maps in better ways than google:
https://www.hostelbookers.com/results/loc/dd/dst/1/arr/2014-07-15/ngt/2/ppl/1/map/
and what does google gets in return? I mean it would be great that google ask the users of google maps database to give back some useful information to google so google gets a much more complete product. It could affect the relation between google and the users of google maps database, but there are ways to avoid the conflict.
and waht about the missing of "my places" support?, is there a pool for google maps users satisfaction on this?
and last, why does google prefers to use two type of pages to show google maps results? the text view with the list of places and the map on the right side is almost as the view we get when we search directly on google. So it is actually double work, and useful information like route alternatives is now on another page, which is also slowing the service.
Don't mistake my comments, new google maps looks great and since the first appearance is getting free of many bugs, but it seems all about looking great, I don't understand why is it the main strategy for some google products?!
Such a great IT company has been plagued of the lots of commercial ideas, some of them even commercially wrong, when was the day that stockholders profit was more important than changing the world with the best search engine!.
It just strike me that they cannot see that this cannot hold, is it the long term of the users benefit or the short term of the stock holders?, I thought it was about the long term of making the must of the information on internet available to everyone, and following this principle stock holders have to make profit on long term value, not on a few nice selling looking products. At least that is what I think for a company that we all thought was making this a "better" world.
It did change the world for much of us, but now this image is almost gone... and maybe it will just became another MS but, the IT industry will continue to refill the gap of what people are still looking for, and maybe they would not forget when they had the chance to make something really important and then they change it for a couple of millions.
I seem to continually need to update my URL for Google Maps on each client site. It seems hard to avoid having a 301 URL redirect. How much time should I devote to keeping the URL exact?
Well, its good to know that the new Google parameters are valuable. With the descriptions on each of the features, it becomes easy to craft a campaign that would align with real search.
One point to be noted in this article is that Knowledge Graph still plays a significant role in helping to decide the perfect use or search with the New Google Map.
Yes, we should stop worrying about Google Maps because the URL parameters are gold.
David..Thank you for such invaluable insight into some of the mechanics of the new Google Maps. This information is interesting and anecdotal to us SEO's/Online Marketers. However, I feel that until we can get end users (our target customers and clients) to behave in such a way that we can exploit these learnings and align them with user behavior, this is all just nice to know.
Am I missing something here? How is this hashbang information useful as a way to better help potential customers find our business using Maps or to show our clients that they have a strong presence on local map queries?
Hey Brad,
Thanks for commenting. I see a number of applications as far as helping clients get better visibility based on the results of these parameters -- seeing which businesses rank well, where, and for what terms should inform any competitive research strategy IMO. Not to mention the ability to circle/follow/retweet Expert Reviewers :)
Yes, I agree on being able to target exposed Expert Reviewers, similar to Followerwonk for Twitter for outreach and relationship building.
As far as seeing which businesses rank well, where and for what terms, this seems like a fairly easy task for one business location. However, is it scalable? I manage over 900 business locations and simply cannot spend so much time discovering which parameters work best for each location and then associated local competitors, centroids and terms. any suggestions there?
Brad, at least from the mobile centroid perspective, I would think you might be able to start with a few popular landmarks around the cities in which your 900 locations are located. Find those centroids once and you wouldn't have to find them again. You could then autogenerate the results that mobile users performing searches at or around those landmarks would see, and track those at scale.
I agree that predicting desktop centroids would be an area ripe for future research.
I completely agree with your points about new Maps vs. old. It's interesting to see Google's pride in speed in search (showing the fractions of a second the search took...that's been there forever) yet in products like G+ and Maps that clearly isn't a priority at all--at least with new Maps (I'll say the old Maps was pretty fast to react to scroll/zoom compared to Bing, Mapquest, etc.)
And thanks for the tip on swiping to get the other listings in the app, I had hit a wall there a number of times.
It's brutal that you have to resort to knowing the URL parameters for some of these features. Especially the by:expert...that'd be an amazingly useful button to have.
Great post, David. Thanks for the mention.
The elimination of the lefthand list pane on New Google Maps makes an even stronger case. It’s literally impossible to rank... businesses visually no matter how hard you stare at the map.
That's a great observation. In an instance like that, where results are dotted around and not necessarily clustered in one location (such as a city centre), it's less of an issue of 'rank' and simply an issue of the searcher's location. If your business is near the searcher, you have more of a chance of being visited, because it'll be more convenient for the searcher to visit you than to travel across town (unless there's other factor at work, such as price and reputation).
I guess it's the don't-build-your-business-in-the-desert analogy - being in a location close to where your searchers are located is bound to help significantly, especially these days.
Great article! I want to explore the city expert thing more since I am a city expert myself and could easily test any theories regarding it. I'm a part of a community with all the other experts and I just asked them some questions because I don't really understand why Google shows the experts label in this search screen, yet not beside the review anywhere on the actual listing. Seems really inconsistent. Also, reviews from experts don't show up higher or first or anything so I'm not really sure what role they play but definitely want to find out.
Insightful! Knowing these tips help our local search marketing without a doubt! David, may I ask you question regarding Google map, our business has an outdated address in Google, whenever our brand keyword searched, that outdated address will show up. I have already suggested an edit to that address to Google long time ago, still I cannot see an update by Google. Is there a quicker way to get my business address changed in Google? By the way, we forgot the Google plus account password in order to claim our business ownership. Thank you in advance!
Great! now Google map is viewing a pictures, i thing that's old, by the talking about URL parameters and search query its easiest way to search the location on map.