How To Disable Google Place Search

Update: Nov 9th, 2010

The hack described below no longer works. I’ll continue to look for another way to disable Place Search, and view the old version of Google’s SERPs.

About Google Place Search

Google announced the launch of Place Search yesterday, featuring Google Places listings much more prominently in SERPs when Google interprets your search as local. While SMB owners may reap some traffic benefits, the collective groan from SEOs for vertical directory sites could probably be heard around the world. According to the official Google Blog, the Place Search feature was slated as a rolling release over the course of several days.

As an SEO at a niche directory site (Caring.com), I started using the test URL provided by Google to document before and after screenshots for various local keywords:

http://www.google.com/search?q=tampa+assisted+living+facilities&esrch=LocalMergeImpl::Experiment

Unfortunately, the new feature rolled out to my local datacenter and/or IP today, and I thought the old version of the SERPs were gone and lost forever.

Simple Hack: Disable Google Place Search

Not so. A simple modification to the original test URL still delivers the old-school SERPs. Just add &esrch=LocalMergelmpl to any Google search URL:

http://www.google.com/search?q=tampa+assisted+living+facilities&esrch=LocalMergeImpl