Google Local Results Drops “More Results Near…” To “Improve” Local Search Experience

Google has quietly dropped yet another search feature; this one is related to local search results within a search on Google.

Google has removed the “more results near…” link on local search results for queries with local intent. For example, if you search for [pizza] on Google.com, Google will show you local businesses selling pizza to consumers, as well as webpages, videos and so forth on pizza. This is part of the universal search initiative from 2007.

Since then, when Google showed local listings in the organic search results, Google would show a “more results near…” link under the local search results. When a searcher clicked on that link, Google would take the searcher to more results for that match directly in Google Maps / Local.

Now that link is gone. Why is it gone? Google’s Jade Wang said in a Google forum thread, it was removed to “improve the local search experience.” She said this in response to the complaints about its removal:

We’ve seen some questions about the small update to local search user interface on Google (removal of “More results near…” link) —

Thanks for your feedback about the small update to the local search user interface on Google. This is one of several updates we’re working on to improve the local search experience, with the goal of more seamless exploration of places and more integration of local data. Stay tuned for more updates soon.

This change comes after several other recent changes and feature reductions to the Google search product, including:

• Google Downplays Google+ With Updated Authorship Snippet?
• Google: We Removed Instant Previews Over Low Usage From Searchers
• Google Adds Green Arrows To View Cache, Similar Pages & To Share Results On Google+
• Google Pulls Related Searches Filter Due To Lack Of Usage

For more user interface changes and tests, see our Google user interface category.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.