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Local Pack Headers: Curious, Overlooked Clues to the Mind of Google

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9 Local Search Developments You Need to Know About from Q2 2022

The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Which local pack element is hiding in plain sight, has no industry name despite being present in at least 33% of SERPs, and has curious behaviors which, up until now, have been little explored?

It’s the thing I’ll call “local pack headers”, after informally polling my peers and confirming that the local SEO industry has never really dubbed this bold, ubiquitous feature which headlines local packs:

Right now, you’re probably thinking, “Oh, yeah, of course I know what those are, but I’ve never really paid much attention to them.”

At least, that’s what I thought when my honored colleague, Dr. Peter J Meyers, started looking at these with me recently. So, we decided to pull some data and see what we could learn from it about what Google is doing with these big headers, and we found some surprises and a few takeaways I’ll share with you today. After all, the better we know the local SERPs, the smarter we can be at strategizing for our clients.

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Methodology

Using MozCast, we pulled in data for 3,392 queries with local packs (derived from 10,000 total queries) to discover original data on the incidence and behaviors of local pack headers, comparing query language to SERPs in a spreadsheet. We combined this with manual lookups of 50 search terms to further observe Google’s handling of this element. Your results may differ based on location, language, and device.

What we learned about local pack headers

Here’s a simple rundown of our three overall findings.

1. The diversity of unique local pack headers is enormous

1659359623 417 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

Out of our 3,392 searches, nearly 2,000 of the headers were unique. As local SEOs, we are so attuned to thinking in terms of standard Google Business Profile categories, it feels a bit surprising that a search term like “50th birthday party ideas” generates a unique local header that isn’t something like “party store” or “amusement center”. You can see familiar categories like these right there in the pack shown above, but the local pack header very often captures the search language rather than the associated category. Nearly two-thirds of the time in our data set, what Google showed as a header was totally unique and not like any other result term within our experiment.

2. The semantic relationships underpinning local pack headers are wild and wide

Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

Only 40% of the time, Google exactly matched the local pack header to our query language. I included in this segment queries and results that were identical except for some small difference in punctuation like “Arbys” vs. “Arby’s”. 60% of the time, they instead mapped our query to a different header they believed to be relevant. In other words, six times out of ten, our search for something like “baby stroller” didn’t result in a mirrored header, but rather brought up a header like “department store”.

What was especially mysterious to me while doing this research was the seemingly random way in which these semantic relationships are operating, and I’ll share just a few illustrative examples.

Why, for instance, does my search for “adopt dog” generate a local pack header for “animal rescue services”:

1659359624 22 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

But my search for “adopt bunny”, which is something you can also typically do at an animal rescue, receives an exact match header:

1659359624 144 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

Why does my search for “mop” generate an exact match header:

1659359624 894 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

But, as if it exists in some utterly different commercial reality than a mop, my search for “broom” earns the “in-store availability” header:

1659359624 600 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

Similarly, why does Google highlight the “in-store availability” of a desk:

1659359624 541 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

But for a couch, you’re on your own calling up “furniture stores” to see what’s in-stock:

1659359624 624 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

Why do my searches for “karate”, “wing chun”, “aikido”, and “jiu jitsu” all bring up the “martial arts schools” heading:

1659359624 81 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

But my “tai chi” query is met with an exact match heading, instead:

1659359624 769 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

Things get really wild once we start searching for something to eat. Google believes that my search for “jasmine tea” will be best satisfied at a grocery store:

1659359624 935 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

But if I want pickles, I deserve a header of my own:

1659359624 898 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

Meanwhile, if I look for “tacos”, Google maps that to a header for “Mexican restaurants”, and if want “pho” Google maps that to a header for “Vietnamese restaurants”, but Google doesn’t seem to believe my search for “spaghetti” is closely tied to “Italian restaurants” and, instead, shows me an exact match header, followed by a pack full of…Italian restaurants:

1659359624 841 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

Why do “pants” exist in “clothing stores” but “t-shirts” exist on their own? Why do “tomato seeds” bring up “garden centers”, but “petunias” have a pack of their own? Why does the search engine know the “in-store availability” of “vinegar” but not of “BBQ sauce”, which gets its own heading?

Suffice it to say, Google’s handling of all this is weird, and suggestive of an underlying semantic logic that often defies description. I’d like to offer a simple explanation, like “these headings stem from primary GBP categories”, but any effort on my part to prove something like that has failed. The language is often quite distinct from category language, and for now, the best I can offer to do is break the local pack headers down into rough types…

3. There are at least five types of local pack headers

These are the five basic buckets into which most headers fit:

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  • Branded — searches for something like “Chuck E. Cheese near me” receive a “Chuck E. Cheese” heading on the packs.

  • Commercial container terms — many searches for specific products and services get headlined by phrases like “grocery store”, “department store”, “chiropractor”, “legal firm”, “plumber”, etc. Whether you’re searching for “vacuum cleaner” or “back pain”, Google will frequently associate your search language with some overall container business type. Sometimes, these terms will exactly match regular Google Business Profile categories, but many times they don’t. For example, my search for “vacuum cleaner” generates a pack that is labeled “vacuum cleaner” rather than the standard category “vacuum cleaner store”.

  • Commercial exact match terms — as we saw above, Google will often exactly match the header to product searches like “pickles” or “spaghetti” and they will do this to service inquiries, too, like “tax preparation services”.

  • Informational — as in our “50th birthday party ideas” example, Google can take an informational query like this and map it to local results, whether they are commercial like a party store, or civic, like a local park. Informational queries can either result in exact match headings or in headings that don’t match but have some presumed implicit relationship.

  • Actionable — the “in store availability” label reads like a local justification along the lines of “sold here” and “in stock”, but this most actionable CTA isn’t obviously linked to the presence of justifications. For example, here is a search I do from time to time for “accent chairs corte madera” to keep an eye on what Google is up to:

1659359624 907 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

As you can see in the above screenshot, all three of the entries in the local pack feature the “sold here” justification, but the local pack header is in the “commercial exact match” bucket rather than earning the “in-store availability” headline. Even the presence of “in-stock” justifications does not necessarily prompt the “in-store availability” header to appear:

1659359625 963 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

What can you do with what we’ve learned?

Do you ever get the giggles when reading headlines raving about how smart AI and machine learning have made search because you’ve seen so much proof of the opposite? Do you ever give a sigh when a developer claims a machine is now as intelligent as a human (and secretly wish these folks would set the bar higher to like … a dolphin or something, given abundant evidence of the evolution we humans need to go through before we can be pronounced intelligently self-sustaining)? With that in mind, let’s take a second look at 50th birthday party ideas:

1659359623 417 Local Pack Headers Curious Overlooked Clues to the Mind of

I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure whether Dr. Pete or I would want to spend our august semi-centennial celebrations at Cucu’s PlayHouse or the other entries here which reviewers are praising as great fun for little kids. Maybe? I’ll have to ask Pete, but in the meantime, this local pack presents dubious evidence of Google’s smartness in associating a 50th birthday parties with:

  • Review justifications talking about “kiddos” and “sons”

  • The primary category of “language school” (albeit, that would make a fun party for philologists)

Google is, I suppose, trying hard with “party store” and “amusement center”, but the overall relevance leaves something to be desired here.

The truth is, search technology is barely out of kindergarten, and the local businesses you market are going to have to help it learn its ABCs. That’s why studying an overlooked element like the local pack headers could be a competitive advantage for you. Try this checklist:

  1. Run your core searches and see which local pack headers are coming up for each term.

  2. Have you optimized for those header terms on relevant pages of your website? No? Do it.

  3. Are you writing review requests in such a way that they generate review justifications that contain those header terms?

  4. Are you listing products on your site and Google Business Profile and via Pointy so that Google knows that a header they are using matches something you’ve got? Not yet? Better do that, too.

  5. Do you have any gaps in your GBP categories that could be filled with missing categories you are seeing reflected in the packs associated with certain headers? Add them!

While I can’t prove that fields and features like categories and justifications are part of the underlying semantic mapping going on that is informing how Google is filling up packs under these vastly diverse headers, what I do know is that literally anything you can utilize to signal to Google, “hey, I’m relevant” is worth considering. Let Google know you’ve got the pickles, and the accent chairs, and the solution to back pain, every possible way you can.

Today, I’ll leave you with a sentiment I heard expressed by multiple speakers at MozCon 2022 (video bundles coming soon!) that has stuck with me. Presenters urged attendees to ask the question,

“What is search for me today?”

The barrage of SERP features is so bewildering, my colleagues at Near Media are comparing Google’s results to Las Vegas, and you have to be intentional about making time to actually sit down and study all the shiny, but sometimes not too bright, objects that are representing the businesses you market to the public. Things constantly change in this interface, and you’ve got to look at what search is for you (and your customers) today, and then look again tomorrow to see if some big-pixeled promotional element like a local pack header is actually hiding right under your nose.

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In today’s case, we’ve got a feature that’s as large as the sign on a mall or the label on a package that is signaling to us how Google is struggling, succeeding, and failing to match intent to their assets. And since those assets also happen to be yours, your awareness and experimentation belong here. If you decide to do your own study of the local pack headers and end up detecting new patterns that we haven’t covered here today, @ me on Twitter and we’ll keep learning local together!



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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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