Google's Frankenstein Update

[CyberClick]

Wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the latest evolution of the Google Places listings into the main results.

I have one website in particular that has always been a clear #1 for natural search AND a clear #1 for Google Places. The website is the main website for a national company with a 50 year history and offices in every state.

Now, instead of holding the natural #1 Google has modified the listing into a Search/Places hybrid (Frankenstein) listing which ranks lower down below some poor quality sites and even a PDF which now ranks #1 .

Looking at the results, I expect it will only be a temporary change but perhaps someone else is experiencing a similar issue.

 

[CyberClick]

http://dejanseo.com.au/google-update-may-2013/

Some additional information

 

[James]

Interesting case that is for sure, If this specific PDF is still ranking in two weeks I would roll out your own version of the PDF to combat it.

The PDF in question does have some positives working for it:

- It has around 6 external links.
- It is quite detailed and related to the keywords in question.
- The root level domain for the PDF is quite strong, its also internally linked.

Some negatives:

- It is a piece of content from 2010 so that does not make sense in terms of freshness.
- Its interesting why they are ranking a PDF over a website, clearly Google feels that this is what they should be showing users for some outlandish reason.

But that been said recently for a VERY highly competitive term a new website blog post was ranking from 2010, this piece of content was "Tips for the specific keyword" Google randomly decided to show this result for around 2 weeks in position 5 and then it was removed.

So report back in 2 weeks and see if this pdf is still here.