It seems that Google hasn’t completely abandoned the 7-pack after all. Google is still using the 7-pack to display search results on tablet users.
It also shows the old style with complete info, including full address, phone number and link to Google reviews.
This uses the A/B/C style of pins we have seen most recently with the brand packs.
Something else interesting is that the results don’t match up. What we see in the 7-pack is slightly different when you compare the identical search on desktop and click through to the more results. So if users are trying to track their positioning and see how close they are to getting in the top 3 might want to check tablet results rather than relying on the expanded results on desktop.
For comparison of the ranking differences, here is the desktop version of the same local search (all examples were done while logged out).
The fact that Google seems to rank them differently is pretty interesting, and there is no clear reason for the differences when comparing it to tablet. So local SEOs will definitely want a tablet so they can get a more accurate picture of site positioning when trying to make it into the 3-pack.
Showing the 7-packs appears to be pretty consistent behavior for all tablet searches where there are enough results to populate the 7-pack.
H/T to Donna Duncan in this comment at Moz.
Jennifer Slegg
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