According to a new report from local search marketing company BrightLocal, Google is more generous to local businesses than other search engines. Google, it says, displays more local pack results than Yahoo or bing, and is most confident inn the quality of its local data compared to Yahoo or Bing.

Still, local businesses are being squeezed out of organic positions by large sites, it finds. Search terms with a “Geo-modifier” return “much more” local results.

BrightLocal carried out a series of searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo for a range of keywords covering 7 different types of local businesses in various locations. They analyzed local pack results, large website organic results, and local business website organic results. They also analyzed geo-modified terms versus non-geo terms (such as “plumber chicago” vs. “plumber”) and generic terms versus longtail terms versus product/service terms (“plumber” vs. “emergency 24hr plumber” vs “radiator repair”).

Here’s the chart showing how Google is showing more local pack results for generic terms:

The edge goes to Yahoo for long tail terms:

For product/services, Google once again takes the cake:

As does it with generic keywords + location, long tail + location, and product + location:

You can find the full report here for more analysis on each element of this as well as a look at leisure-based business keywords and how the search engines show results for these.

Images via BrightLocal