Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Entries Written By Mike Blumenthal
Amazon “Misappropriates” News Cycle (Oh.. and $61.7 Mil of Tips)
Last Tuesday, February 2nd, was a big news day for Amazon. Everyone read the headlines that Bezos was moving on up to Chairman of the Board in the 3rd quarter. The stock market responded positively and the news of the change and the story gained widespread traction with Google showing 44,500,000 articles on the topic: …
Google Testing (or Rolling out?) New 3-Pack Carousel
Downdated 6/22: This was reported by Barry Schwartz as first spotted in November by Velentin Pletzer and seen off and on in June by tl;dr Marketing. The current widespread visibility implies that this might be the rollout and not a test. Over the weekend, my mobile devices are all seeing a new 3-pack with a carousel display …
Google Maps Updated to Include Black Lives Matter Plaza
As noted by John Gruber, sometimes the pen can send a mighty message. Or rather in this case, a paint brush. Yesterday (Friday), The Mayor of DC declared part of a street that runs near the White House “Black Lives Matter Plaza”, inaugurating the new plaza with giant yellow letters and a brand-new street sign. …
The World’s Best Bialys and Local Search’s Worst Nightmare – Robots.txt
Update 6/14: Google has now started to index the site. As of now there are two of about 20 pages that have been indexed. Update 6/12: Good news. Kossars have fixed their robots.txt file and removed the disallow function that prevented Google from indexing them. Onward and upward. User-agent: * *************************************************** I was thinking about New …
Google My Business Websites Pass 36 Million Created – Why Should You Care?
Google My Business Websites, first released publicly in June of 2017, has passed 36 million sites created and continues on a strong upward trend. From the beginning, GMB Websites has seen strong growth, passing a million sites built within the first 6 months and really taking off, passing 10 million sites built, by the fall …
Google Rolls Out Business Provider Plan to Replace Trusted Verifier Program
Google has begun rolling out their Business Provider program to replace the Trusted Verifier Program that was recently terminated. The Business Provider program is designed to let organizations like Chambers of Commerce or banks with small business clients facilitate a Google My Business Verification for their members or clients. Groups or organizations share business data with …
New Google Local Discovery: Search by Photos
On mobile, Google is showing a new image based search interface. It is currently a supplement to the 3 Pack for local keyword searches and it shows local results visually based on an image matching the search query. The new mobile focused search method does not yet appear on the desktop. It is not clear …
Google Local Tests Continue With New CTA and Related Searches
I seem to be hooked into Google’s test servers these days as I am seeing a lot of tests that include the good, the bad and the very ugly of local search tests. As well as the occasional WFT? In this most recent test, Google has taken the larger call to action and the suggested …
Want to Protest SeaWorld? Visit their Knowledge Panel for Details
We have long noted that you rent but don’t own your business profile at Google. As Tim Capper has previously pointed out that is no more true than with the careless scraping of event sites that Google pulls off to add events to local search results. You do though, just have to wonder when the …
Google Local Testing Splitting CTA’s From Main Business Profile on Mobile
Google always tests a lot and for some reason I have been seeing a number of these tests on one of my accounts on my iPhone. Changes in the layout of the mobile branded result were spotted by Joy in June. Here is another albeit an obvious test as I am only seeing on one …
© Copyright 2021 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.