The SEO Weather Report That Actually Tells You What to Do

When I asked Andrew about SERP Summary, he explained it started with a problem he had with Moz's MozCast tool.

"Moz started this thing called MozCast which they called an SEO weather report which basically tracked 10,000 keywords and how volatile they are. You'd see like oh it's hot, it's up or it's cold, it's down. The problem I always had was okay so what do I do with that data?" Andrew explained.

MozCast would say it's hot, Andrew would check his clients and see what's going on. But that didn't tell him what action to take.

He thought they could make a more useful SEO weather report. They had data from a partner called Trellis for rank tracking, and they'd just done a big project in home services building out a taxonomy with hundreds of thousands of keywords.

"I bet we could get all the rankings data, all the SERP data for all these keywords in different markets and have a much more robust weather report. Not only show hey it's hot or cold, but who went up and down and what are the SERP features," Andrew said.

SERP features are things like video in results, local pack, shopping graphs. These go up and down all the time.

Why Keyword-Level Data Misses the Whole Picture

The reason Andrew thought this would be interesting is that tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs let you look at keyword level. You can see who went up this week for "pest control near me" or "pest control in Pleasanton."

But that's not very helpful except for that one keyword.

"What I really want to know is what happened across the entire topic of pest control because it's not one keyword that makes or breaks your SEO. It's like thousands or hundreds, sometimes smaller but maybe even millions," Andrew explained.

It's helpful to see what URLs and domains are growing across a wide variety of keywords in a topic. Then you can reverse engineer your competition that's winning and figure out how to outdo them.

A lot of SEO is basically reverse engineering competition and doing the same thing but better.

His tech team said it would take 30 days. A year later, here it is. That's how it goes with development.

The Data That Changes Everything

Andrew screenshared SERP Summary live on our call. The tool tracks about 100,000 keywords across five cities: New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, and Seattle (or Chicago, he couldn't remember exactly which five).

The first thing that jumped out was Google SERP ownership - meaning any result on page one linking to google.com. In September 2024, it was 44.61%. Now? Only 36.8%.

"This is misleading because Google could have expanded the size of their ads and pushed everything down and this wouldn't detect that. But we thought it was interesting," Andrew said.

The volatility chart shows which weeks had the biggest changes. The week of January 27th was the most volatile they'd seen in the entire time they've been tracking.

Video Is Taking Over Home Services

One of the most interesting trends Andrew showed me: inline video in search results went from 26% in October to 40% now.

That means 40% of all search results in home service keywords show videos. This is a pretty good indicator you need to incorporate video into your SEO strategy.

Andrew shared a story about the dumbest, simplest video they did with a B2B client. They got ranked on page one for a really good term because the video matched the content, it wasn't particularly competitive, and they emailed everybody asking them to watch it all the way through so it got more views than that dry category should get.

"Home services is going to be a little trickier because there's a ton of DIY videos out there. But if you're not if you don't have a video strategy in home services, I think you're way behind," Andrew said.

The Reddit and Quora Takeover

This is where the data got wild. The chart showing top US home service domains revealed Reddit and Quora are the two most popular domains across all the data.

"For those who haven't been paying attention the last year, you shouldn't be very surprised. Reddit and Quora and sites like these have been growing in their presence in Google over the last year and a half," Andrew explained.

I had to ask what's been going on. Why are these platforms dominating?

Google has said they believe personal experience is a key thing people want. They see a lot of demand for people searching keywords plus Reddit - like "best lawn fertilizer Reddit."

There's also a theory that Google did a deal with Reddit to train their AI data. Reddit has natural conversations, and AI needs natural language conversations to get really smart. That combination increased Google wanting to put it in front.

But it's not just Reddit. Andrew's team runs a database query every week, and they found every domain with the word "forum" in it grew at like 1,000% over the last year.

"Google wants to elevate those domains one because they claim they think it's helpful, whether it is or not who knows. But I think two is they want people in those sites interacting so they can crawl it and train their AI," Andrew said.

Forbes Lost Everything

One name that shocked me in the data: Forbes was a top 10 home services domain.

Forbes has no business being a top 10 home services company. But their SEO team is excellent. Several years ago, Forbes sold off the SEO part of forbes.com. Another company creates articles on everything, riding on Forbes' site reputation.

"Forbes.com is such an old strong domain it can rank for pretty much anything in Google if you put content on it. Over the last several years they've been building like best landscapers in this city type stuff and it works," Andrew explained.

That worked until someone made a big stink about it on social media and in journals. Then Forbes got knocked down through something called the site reputation abuse algorithm update.

Andrew thinks they cleaned up their act and are coming back, but over the last year they were one of the most popular. Now? Forbes is the biggest loser in the data.

The Winners and Losers Over Time

The tool shows winners and losers over any time period. Reddit is the biggest winner, and this is true across every category - not just home services. Reddit's the fastest growing website on the planet over the last year.

Quora as well. Checkatrade (another find-a-contractor site), Angie, NerdWallet, Just Answer.

Biggest losers? Forbes, Architectural Digest, Amazon, MarketWatch, Yelp, BobVila.com, This Old House, USA Today, Today's Homeowner.

But the real power comes when you drill down into specific categories. Andrew showed me pest control data. Quora is the biggest winner for pest control specifically.

"This would be an excuse to go to a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs, pop in Quora's domain, and start filtering it by pest control queries. See what Quora is ranking for," Andrew explained.

He pulled up a Quora thread live: "Is it worth spending money on your pest control services?" If you're Terminix or a national brand and you have a social media person, you might want them popping in here putting their point of view. This thing is probably getting thousands of views a week.

How Local Businesses Should Think About Reddit and Quora

I had to ask the practical question: does it make sense for a normal local business - maybe doing a million a year - to work on Reddit and Quora?

Andrew sees these platforms showing up for local queries all the time. He tested live: "best landscapers near me." Sure enough, discussions and forums showed up. A San Jose thread appeared even though he's 30 minutes away in Pleasanton.

"If they had a Pleasanton thing, my guess is they would be showing a Pleasanton thing," Andrew said.

But you have to be careful. You don't want to be perceived as spamming these communities - you can get bounced quickly. That said, tons of people spam them anyway.

"For your average small business owner, it's not worth spending too much time unless you see it's a really good search query and you think you can add value to the conversation and not just be like hey hire me," Andrew explained.

He shared an example of a plastic surgeon on Real Self (a community for cosmetic surgery) who said most of his business came from answering questions about how long it takes to recover from a nose job. He'd spend time in threads chiming in, and inevitably someone in the UK would see it and want to talk to him because he's the expert.

The Data Every Wednesday

Right now you can sign up to get updates at SERP Summary. Andrew's threatening to send out a little data update every Wednesday.

"I don't want to bury people's inboxes. I just want to be like hey here's two things we noticed over the last week you may want to look at," Andrew said.

His daughter, a high school senior doing an internship, is building out the keyword set for another vertical. They're deciding between healthcare, automotive, or financial services next.

The Job Posting Hack That Fixed Rankings Overnight

For the local marketing secret section, Andrew shared something I'd never heard anyone talk about.

Interactions with your Google Business Profile dramatically affect your rankings in the local pack. He had an attorney in the Bay Area who signed a contract on Wednesday. On Friday, the attorney asked "what did you guys do, my rankings are back?"

Andrew hadn't done anything. He hadn't even sent an invoice yet. The only thing the attorney did was put up a help wanted ad.

"He probably put up a help wanted ad in his city. Probably a lot of people looking for jobs, so they probably went to Google, searched his business name, and clicked on his Google Business Profile. He probably got like 500 applications, and I'm guessing these are all local people because they had to be in his office," Andrew explained.

That was enough to boost rankings.

"My secret is for now at least, even if you don't have a job opening, post a job opening. Make it like you have to be in the office and you have to be local. You will get a lot of people clicking on you," Andrew said.

The same thing works with reviews and events. Andrew had a client with an event where 100 people went to their office. The next day their rankings were way up. Half the people probably did a Google Maps thing to get there, which is abnormal. Google's like "well these guys are really popular."

Andrew's been meaning to study whether popular restaurants on DoorDash rank better in Google because all the DoorDash drivers are going to that restaurant.

The International Results Nobody Expected

One surprising finding from SERP Summary: when they first got the data, they had a bunch of UK, Australian, and Indian sites showing up in US results.

Andrew's team thought it was wrong and needed to be cleaned out. Then they realized it's accurate - Google is showing the wrong countries.

"Every time over the last decade when I was looking up something for gardening, I wanted to buy something, almost always the top results were UK sites. I have no idea why," Andrew said.

The Rapid Fire Insights

Biggest misconception about local SEO? That it's pay-per-click. People still confuse SEO and PPC, especially small businesses. Or maybe the misconception is that it's smoke and mirrors - that consultants are handwavy, not transparent, trying risky techniques or not trying at all.

One surprising thing SERP Summary revealed? All these international results showing up. That Reddit and Quora dominate home services. That Forbes got crushed. But Andrew's favorite was inline videos growing - it made them push clients harder to do video.

If you could fix one thing about the Google algorithm? There are technical things that happen to sites that are impossible to fix. Like a Yellow Pages company in Australia where Google showed their "escorts in Sydney" page for "electricians in Sydney" queries. There's nothing you can do - you have to wait for Google to fix it. Andrew wishes you could push a button and Google would trust you're fixing obvious stupid things.

Favorite SEO tool besides SERP Summary? SEMrush or Ahrefs - they use them most for third-party tools. But they built their own tool called Squirrel, a Slack bot connected to Google Business Profile and Google Search Console. You can ask it things like "tell me how many of these pages are indexed" or "alert me when Google automatically updates my GBPs." They're working on putting an AI layer over it so you can query in natural language.

He also mentioned NAP Hunter, a free Chrome extension. You enter your business name, address, and phone number, and it runs a bunch of Google queries in tabs showing all results. It's useful for finding old phone numbers or addresses you need to update.

My Main Takeaway

The biggest lesson from talking to Andrew is that local search has fundamentally changed in the last 18 months, and most people haven't caught up to what the data is showing.

Reddit and Quora aren't just growing - they're dominating. 40% of home service search results now show inline video. Forbes went from top 10 to biggest loser after the site reputation abuse update. Every domain with "forum" in the name grew 1,000% last year.

Traditional publishers and directories are losing ground to community-driven content. Google wants natural conversations to train their AI, so they're elevating platforms where people actually talk to each other instead of reading corporate marketing copy.

For local businesses, this means you can't just focus on your website anymore. You need video strategy or you're way behind. You need to be aware of where conversations are happening about your industry - Reddit threads, Quora questions, local Facebook groups. Not necessarily to spam them, but to add genuine value when there's opportunity.

The job posting hack blew my mind. Post a help wanted ad requiring people to be local and in the office, get 500 applications from people clicking your GBP to find you, and watch your rankings jump. Same with events - get 100 people to your office and half will use Google Maps to get there, triggering ranking improvements.

SERP Summary gives you data you can't get anywhere else. Instead of looking at one keyword at a time, you see what's happening across entire topics. You can spot local competitors growing in your market and reverse engineer what they're doing. You can see which SERP features are expanding and adapt your strategy accordingly.

Andrew's been doing this for 20+ years and he said if you asked him 10 years ago, he'd say it's all about SEO. Now? Get traffic from Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, SEO, pay-per-click, newsletters, YouTube. Organic search keeps getting pushed down page one. You need to diversify.

The landscape is changing faster than ever. Google's algorithm updates are more volatile. The week of January 27th was the most volatile they've ever tracked. What worked six months ago might not work now. What stopped working two years ago might work again after a core update.

Testing is mandatory. Andrew allocates hours every month for clients to test new things - like figuring out how to get into those logo grids Google shows for certain queries. You have to be willing to experiment because the game is changing weekly.

And the fundamental truth Andrew emphasized: a lot of SEO is reverse engineering competition that's winning and figuring out how to outdo them. Tools like SERP Summary make that possible at scale across entire topics instead of one keyword at a time.

Want to learn more from Andrew? Visit localSEOguide.com and hit the contact form. Find him on LinkedIn or Bluesky. He's speaking at LocalU Advanced on March 26th, Localogy in Columbus on March 23rd, and BrightLocal's SEO for Good. Check out SERP Summary to sign up for weekly data updates. Try the free NAP Hunter Chrome extension to find old phone numbers and addresses that need updating. Andrew's also working on a big study with SEMrush tracking millions of local map results over time - spoiler: links seem to help.

Listen to the full episode to hear more of Andrew's insights on SERP data, Reddit's takeover of local search, and the tactics that actually move rankings in 2025.