The Google Local SERP Today
Google local SERPs are becoming a festival of "self-preferencing."
The question of self-preferencing by Google, where they favor their own properties over competitors, has come into sharper focus recently as part of anti-trust investigations in the US and DMA compliance hearings in the EU. And we have covered how Google historically leveraged its privileged position to dominate other product categories (e.g, Maps). But I explored SERPs for some new EU consumer research, I was struck by prominence of self-referential elements like People also ask (PAA), People also search for (PAS), as well as various local elements and features.