Unnatural flip of Google local results

Question

For many years I have been helping companies gain a better presence though legit methods though on page optimization to fating up the pages to give Google more indicators and the visitors a more rich experience.

This week I'm completely mind blow to what Google has done to a local search result and I just don't know what to say to my client because I have no idea why its happened, it looks like a manual adjustment to the LOCAL SERPS.

It may help if I explain whats happened, this is not a natural shift in results but a completely drastic flip of results.

I'll try and explain by using an example as for NDA reasons I can't disclose any information.

Basically this is last weeks result (ones with letters are the first 7 results that are returned that a have Google maps/Places presence). All sites that end with ingo are a set of groups and another set is ending with uffa - to illustrate a completely shift.

1. Gumtree
2. Checkatrade
3. Dingo - (A)
4. Lingo - (B)
5. Bingo - (C)
6. Singo - (D)
7. Gingo - (E)
8. Yingo - (F)
9. Hingo - (G)
10. Muffa
11. Puffa
12. Duffa
13. Suffa
14. Ruffa
15. Tuffa

That was last week and here's the shocker, it now looks like this: Now this week:

1. Muffa - (A)
2. Puffa - (B)
3. Duffa - (C)
4. Suffa - (D)
5. Ruffa - (E)
6. Tuffa - (F)
7. Gumtree
8. Checkatrade
9. Dingo - (G)
10. Lingo
11. Bingo
12. Singo
13. Gingo
14. Yingo
15. Hingo

The 'Ingo' sets are completely different sites and are fairly high quality sites, the sites that are now displaying are much less quality, very thin and so on. I've tested in multiple browsers, cleared cache, and even used various of other devices such as phone on a different IP to see if Google is caching the results, sadly its not because I got some online friends to confirm.

So has anyone heard anything official, in the past week or month that could have this huge effect, its not a nature shift in rankings, you just don't get 9 sites lose their rank and have the bottom half of the page become the new leaders.

I'm actually really annoyed about this because its a waste of hard work if Google are not going to return the sites that deserve returning.

Answer 1

Without seeing actual results my best guess is unnatural links were found in and to these sites.

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