Google Pigeon
Google Pigeon is the name SEO writers gave to a 2014 change to Google's local results, which tied them more closely to its web ranking.
Google Pigeon is the nickname for a change Google made to its local search results in July 2014. Google never named it. Search Engine Land called it Pigeon, and the name stuck. The change tied the ranking of local results more closely to the signals Google uses for ordinary web results, and changed how it weighed distance and location.
For local businesses, it meant that the strength of your website, and of the sites that talk about you, started to count for more in the local results and on the map.
What people noticed
The coverage at the time reported that local directory and review sites gained ground in the results for local searches. For a café or a plumber, that made a good listing on those sites more valuable, alongside a good Business Profile.
Today Google describes local ranking in its own words: results depend mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. Prominence takes in reviews and how many websites link to your business, which is the Pigeon idea in plain language.
Local answers on AI platforms
The same pattern shows up when people ask AI platforms local questions. To recommend a bakery in Bath, a platform that searches the web reads directories, review sites, local news and the bakeries' own sites. Being described well on those pages is what gets you named.
For example, if three of the five pages an answer reads for "best coffee shop in Harrogate" are review sites, and Fernhill Coffee's Harrogate shop has a handful of reviews on one and none on the others, it's likely to lose out to the café that's well reviewed everywhere.
In AnswerOrbit
Pick a city for a market, where the platforms allow it, to see answers the way someone there would. Sources then shows which directories and review sites the answers read, and the Gaps tab shows where competitors are named and you're not. See Settings and Sources.