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When looking at the carousel for restaurants Houston, or colorado springs restaurants, etc. I am not getting a price, ratings filter. I am using Chrome, have extensions off, etc. Not in a non-personalized search, logged into Google as one of my accounts.

Someone else on different machine next to me (they are both MacBook Pros though) is getting the ratings filter.

Anyone else seen this?

Thanks

Well done Miriam and I love the fact you can state you looked at the data and you decided that it said.... ? 
I wholeheartedly agree with your conclusions. It is truly becoming mind boggling. Even beyond the Yelp piece and the carousel. We tell clients the same thing you do, NAP consistency, reviews, videos, photos, etc. for local. When we look at verticals where the 1,3,7 pack still applies, I crack up. 
I see sites with no site, no verification, and and a link by Google to no real G+ page ranking in the 7 pack in fairly aggressive verticals. How does that make anything Google has ever said about what they want make sense?

So, where it leaves me is still looking and understanding that as we are growing and changing so is Google. My fear is they forgot the very salient thing you mention here which is good UI/UX. Person after person I speak with outside of SEO, etc. are telling me they do not like having to go to Google to click on something they think is what they want only to find they are on a site where they are in need of making a query. Hopefully, we will wake up in a month or two and it will have been changed.

As soon as we have our data compiled (thanks to great paid interns) and we have parsed the data, I will post a blog on what we found regarding directories and organic listings. Hopefully, I can be as brave as you if the results show... nothing really pertinent.

Best

So, what do we know?

We know that there are carousels for Hotels, Restaurants, and, I can get it for "gas stations 77077," but not for service stations 77077 or for gas stations with city name or gas stations 77024. Yes, they are testing some things out. The way I came up with gas stations was thinking about what do people typically need right now and would search from a phone. (No results with restroom and zip or city

I do think the bigger question is this: What is the reason for this type of play versus what they have with "places?" My thought is that it is revolving as always around monetization and Wall St. When you look now at any reasonably local oriented search it is rare you see less than 50% directory listings on page one and often it is 70 or 80%. The one I have looked at the most is Yelp, and when you look, they are running Google ads on their sites so it would make sense re revenue, to ensure they get better ranking. Yes, I know that is not supposed to happen that way, but as the saying goes, "perception is reality to people." (or something like that).

Now, when we look below the carousel for restaurants, we see one directory after another. We do not see restaurants. Imagine if we searched on book stores and that is what we got or anything else that is not as easy to scrape content, plug into a directory, and then start going after all to advertise in order to influence where you are listed. With those other queries, you get a series of book stores in the organic and local because that is what you are searching for.

In talking with people and showing them the organic and the carousel, most say the same thing: I do not like searching for something, clicking, and then having to search on some other site. So, the big question is: Is google making a mistake with this move? Do you really want to search on gas station and then get: mapquest, gasprices.mapquest, angieslist, houstongasprices, yelp, loopnet, etc.? I, personally, do not.

If you notice how the older demographic is going more and more to Bing, you have to ask yourself if any of it is driven by the huge change in the Google search experience? IMO, the worst thing you can do if you are trusted is to do something to lose that trust. If Google is losing people's trust, that could be very painful for them.

Lastly, anyone who reads anything by me knows I am not a "Google Hater." I am far from it and I laugh at those who are. First, Google created a new way for a lot of people to make money and create jobs. Second, if you don't like change, well...go see a psychiatrist because life changes every minute. So, this is not a rant against Google, it is the curiosity of a searcher, a searcher for many things.

Thanks Miriam,

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Well, that was quick. I shot him an email and asked him to see if he could recreate the search result.

He gets a ratings and reviews filter still. I have attached a screen shot.

Sorry I had given it a good answer and it shows as answered.

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OK, that is officially funny.

My VP was sitting next to me with his MacBookPro 15 and I had a 17. Both with Chrome, same wifi, etc. He gets it and I don't. I am hurt by that Sergey and Larry!

Thanks for checking in with me on it. When or if we can recreate it, I will send you the screen shots.

Best,