Have your Google Places search results been erratic lately? When Google released an update to its local search algorithm on (or around) July 24, named “Pigeon” by Search Engine Land analysts, it dramatically affected a number of industry verticals.

Our SEO analysts looked to BrightEdge’ Data Cube before and after the Pigeon update (June through August), analyzing all U.S. desktop queries for which Google displayed Google Places (the “local pack”) results in its SERPs, bucketing those queries into industry groups (verticals) based on their keyword structure.

BrightEdge’s analysis found that Google is displaying local pack results for 11.26 percent fewer queries overall. BrightEdge Cube data also confirms that real estate queries experienced a dramatic decrease of 63.45 percent in their appearance rate in Google Places results.