Google has been removing the call button from local packs dramatically over the past year. This study of 2,580 search results showed that only 510 had a call button. This means, 4 out of 5 searches in the map pack have no call button.
"People talk most about": In several examples, this is just a straight-up list of exactly three menu items. For one spot, it was literally just: omakase, sake, nigiri. "People love to order": This section gets a star icon and goes deeper than just listing names. It includes brief descriptions of specific dishes, like noting a Michigan Roll has a "generous portion of tuna."
Just a couple of months ago, Google had ads on the local pack for less than 3% of tracked keywords; now it's up to about 22% of tracked keywords. This was data posted by Joy Hawkins on X she got from Places Scout. Joy wrote, "Just had Places Scout re-run the data to see how this looks in January so far (we're tracking across 1200 mobile ranking reports). The increase isn't slowing down yet."
Google will stop showing the business short names on Google Business Profiles in Search and Google Maps. The short name will still work, if you have one, but going forward, the link in your Google Business Profile will no longer be displayed to you or searchers.
The fake or incentivised reviews identified were removed. If we continue to find fake or incentivised reviews that attempt to increase your star rating, this may lead to restrictions being applied on your profile.
There has been an uptick in complaints from businesses around Google local reviews disappearing or being removed. We had something similar last October and it was fixed in December and now I am seeing more complaints about reviews going missing. There are many many threads with complaints about this across the Google forums and in the Local Search Forums - I'll embed them below.