Not Again: Google Maps Ranking in Organic Search Results

I know I’ve been a pretty touch critic of Google lately, but I continue to see search results in Google that I don’t agree with. So, of course I’m going to bring it up. I recently wrote about the fact that Google’s maps results were showing up for a particular search query, antique auctions northeast Georgia. That search query is Google’s custom maps, created by users. I can potentially see the benefit for showing that in the search results.

But this one is different. Google is indexing (and ranking) their own maps results. As if someone searched for that query on a map. And for this particular example search query:

18300 West Alameda Parkway Morrison, CO 80465

Google’s maps is showing up #1 for that search query. That’s an address. Rather than show the actual map of that address, and maybe even showing the actual business at that address, Google ranks their maps page #1, as in the number one position. Numero Uno. Not the business, which happens to be Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the maps URL is #1.

Here’s what I’m seeing:

For this particular search query, I would fully expect a map, as in a graphic of the location.

I don’t think that showing search results, maps results, in Google’s organic search search results is helpful. As you might recall, I pointed out a while back that Google was showing Bing’s search results in their search results. So how is this different? I mean, is it okay for Google to show their very own pages, essentially search results of maps, in their search results?

As a user, I’m searching for an address, so wouldn’t it be more appropriate to show something like this?

But instead, for certain addresses, Google isn’t showing a map–they’re ranking their maps URLs in the top position. You can find plenty of other examples of this if you use this search query:

site:https://www.google.com/maps/search/

There are over 14,000,000 (fourteen MILLION pages) indexed in Google of their maps locations. Oh, by the way, just looking through those search results, they’re not very well optimized, and they don’t really comply with SEO best practices. The have the same title tags on many pages, and the meta description tag is the same. And it appears that that section of the site has a Google Panda problem.