Google Is Changing Local Search in Europe : What Businesses Need to Know Now

What is Google changing?

Google is changing how local search results are displayed in the European Economic Area (EEA). For certain local searches, new result sections may now appear that include both local businesses and external comparison and directory portals (see Google's documentation).

For businesses looking to reach new customers through Google, this development is genuinely relevant.

For certain local searches, Google may now display two distinct sections:

Aggregator results come from specialized search services, industry directories, and comparison portals. These providers can supply Google with structured data about businesses.

Alongside these are so-called supplier results. Here, the actual providers or local businesses themselves can appear – for example restaurants, trade businesses, service providers, or agencies.

That means: if someone searches for, say

• "tax advisor Frankfurt"
• "web agency Wiesbaden"
• "TYPO3 agency Frankfurt"
• "electrician near me"

the respective businesses can be highlighted as direct providers alongside classic Google results and directories.

Why is Google introducing these changes?

The background is the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). Large platforms like Google are required to give competing services more opportunities to gain visibility within their platforms.

Google is therefore developing new search display formats specifically for the European market.

For users, this means a wider range of different information sources. For businesses, it means the paths through which potential customers discover them can change at the same time.

Does a business need to register anything with Google for this?

According to Google, no special data feed is required for the new supplier results.

Google can use information already available to the search engine through publicly accessible web pages.

That's exactly why the technical and editorial quality of a business's own website keeps growing in importance.

Google should be able to recognize as clearly as possible:

• Who is the business?
• Where is it located?
• What services does it offer?
• What region does it serve?
• How can it be contacted?

The more clearly this information is available in a machine-readable form, the more easily search engines can match a business to a specific search query.

Structured data is becoming more important

Structured data based on Schema.org can play an important role here.

For local businesses, LocalBusiness or a more specific matching business type is particularly suitable. It can be used to mark up information such as company name, address, phone number, opening hours, URL, and other business details in a structured way.

Specific service and location pages instead of general statements

This development also shows why businesses should describe their services on their website as specifically as possible.

A generic page stating "We are an internet agency" gives Google far less context than dedicated content on, for example:

TYPO3 development, TYPO3 support, TYPO3 updates, accessibility for TYPO3 websites, or TYPO3 agency Frankfurt.

The same applies to other industries.

A trade business should describe its individual services, a law firm its practice areas, and a consultancy its specific areas of advice.

For regionally active businesses, well-built location or region pages can help further – provided they actually contain relevant, individual information and aren't just near-identical copies with the place name swapped out.

Local SEO is shifting toward "entity SEO"

Local search engine optimization is therefore increasingly no longer just about ranking well for a specific keyword.

Instead, Google tries to understand which business stands behind a website and which services, topics, and locations that business is relevant for.

Website content, structured data, business information, external mentions, and industry directories should therefore add up to as consistent an overall picture as possible.

Conclusion

Google is changing local search in Europe. Alongside classic search results, new sections for comparison services and direct providers are gaining importance.

It's still an open question how often Google will actually show these new formats, and what long-term impact they'll have on clicks and rankings.

The overall direction, however, is clear: business information needs to be as unambiguous, structured, and topically clear to search engines as possible.

A technically clean website, structured data, and specific service and location information therefore don't just help with classic search engine optimization. They also create a better foundation for businesses to be correctly understood and found in new search formats – and increasingly in AI-powered search systems too.