All posts by Mike Blumenthal

Google+ Local

Why a Business Should Always Add Photos to their Google Plus Page for Local

6 Comments

Todd Mintz highlighted this search result a few days ago on Google Plus. It so clearly illustrates why a business should take the time to fill out every aspect of their Google Plus Local profile, add at least one post AND add some photos of their choosing.

If you don’t the borg’s machine will vacuum up whatever it finds and will show what it thinks is relevant; like this photo from one of the business’s wordpress content sub directories on their website.

Screen Shot 2014-02-19 at 10.42.24 AM
(Click to view larger and you will see what appears to be someone smoking a humungous doobie)

Their Google+ Local Page, while claimed, is devoid of any content or photos. If they had added at least one photo and noted it as a profile photos it is likely that Google would have shown it instead: Continue reading →

Local Search

Which Sites Do Consumers Use to Find a Local Business? Why YP.com is Facing Headwinds

26 Comments

Updated 2/18 with regional and urban data.

On January 20th, I  completed a consumer survey (n=~2500) asking: Which of the following on-line sites have you used regularly to find local businesses? The obvious winner was Google with the YellowPages.com making a surprisingly strong showing.

In a recent article by Greg Sterling, YP.com noted that they were going to compete directly with Google and Yelp as a general purpose directory.

On the surface the results show that YP.com is a contender in people’s minds as a resource for local discovery, with marginally more mindshare than Yelp and roughly the equivalent of Bing & Yahoo combined. In this survey it would even appear that almost 1/4 of the US internet adult population, in choosing none of the listed sites, would possibly be possible targets for YP.com as well.

Screen Shot 2014-02-17 at 7.53.20 AM

However when you dig into the details of the survey YP.com’s problems are much deeper than they appear on the surface. The headwinds that they face may make the goal of competing with Yelp and Google unrealistic.

Continue reading →

Google+ Local, Reviews

Reputation Management Dilemma – The Review From Hell

15 Comments

This post recently showed up in the forums:

Link to your local Google+ page
Business name (as it is in your account): Bakersfield Funeral Home
Business location: 3121 19th Street, Bakersfield, CA 93301, USA
Business telephone: 661-871-8080
Business category: Funeral Home
Website: www.bakersfieldfuneral.com

An ex employee is trying to hurt the business after being fired for unprofessional misconduct. They made a fake google account and posted an abusive comment on our google listing and Google+ business page. Can you remove the comment and block his IP address from posting on our listing and Google+?

I followed the link to the local page and found this devastating (and only) review:

review-marijuana

He is in the funeral business so the obvious advice of asking your clients for additional reviews seems to be (wildly) inappropriate. “Gee I know that your loved one just died but if you were happy with the funeral would you mind leaving us a review?” or “Rate your funeral on a scale of one to ten, ten meaning you are willing to leave us a review.”  A clear non starter.

The only idea that struck me as reasonable was to encourage the businesses he does business with to add reviews from the G+ Pages per this David Mihm suggestion.

As Miriam Ellis noted to me in an email: Okay – that is truly terrible! Kind of made me wonder, if this is an ex-employee, if they actually made all of these details up or if any of it was true. 

Which is exactly the problem with this sort of review (assuming it is by an employee). It leaves the impression that it could possibly be true which really complicates the matter. Because of the way it was written it is very unlikely (although possible) that it would be removed by Google. If it is a fake employee review then the ex-employee really knew how to write it in a way that would be convincing.

Let’s assume that it is an employee. And that it is untrue.

What would you would suggest?

Is there a possible response that can be crafted to the review? What would it be?

Is this the rare time that legal action might be recommended?

Google+ Local

Google Local: Hummingbird Diarrhea Persists 6 Months On

18 Comments

deadIn local, Hummingbird has produced a number of terrible search results. With its obsessive preference for brand as a search result, even when a searcher is obviously looking for a range of businesses, the algo often still returns but a single spammy result. I guess I am lucky that there are so many colorful synonyms for feces.

Today, Conrad Saam of Atticus Marketing, noted one such low quality website that Google is highlighting with these type of crappy results.

The search for Dui Attorney Los Angeles led to this search result and the website that Conrad wrote about. As these results have been reported Google has been manually deleting the results.

Problem is the results still seem to be widespread on high value terms. And they show up even more frequently when the searcher location is set to a given local market.

The marketing on the website that Conrad mentioned may be horrible and even deceptive. Its still must be generating a fair number of calls for the lawyer given Google’s willingness to show this type of result front and center on their front page for high value search terms.

Screen Shot 2014-02-12 at 1.35.44 PM

Google+ Local

Yahoo and the “Everybody but Google” Realities of Local Search

18 Comments

yahooLast week Yahoo announced their Yelp review partnership with a great deal of fanfare and bravado. Putting on a happy face is standard fare in these sorts of situations and Yahoo is no exception. The press ate it up and we saw headlines like: Yahoo-Yelp Partnership Another Bold Move for Marissa Mayer

But the reality is that Yahoo hasn’t really had the lights turned on in local for several years so this announcement that effectively kills their review business should come as no surprise. This recent move was foreshadowed by their rollout of the Yext based Localworks service last year.Given that Yahoo has had so little presence in local search for the past few years it will have little impact one way or the other on most small businesses looking to search for customers. But the move does reflect a deeper reality of local search.

I see it as part of a larger trend where companies like Yahoo have essentially finally realized the futility of their local effort and have exited what was traditionally the local search space. It has become a two part world: Google and everyone else. Most of the “everybody but Google” (EBG) crowd  finally recognize that they can’t individually compete (or even survive) head on with Google in this space. Now they are starting to protect what small part of the market they have left with these sorts of sharing deals while they figure out how to compete going forward.

The reality is that these sharing deals could have been made from a position of greater strength several years ago and would have freed precious capital and development energy. At the time of the Bing search takeover at Yahoo, I suggested that Bing should consolidate their local search as well to attempt to achieve some scale. It obviously didn’t happen. A number of years ago I was involved in an effort to get these other players like Citysearch to participate cooperatively to gain economies. It wasn’t going to happen even if they had to cut off their noses to spite their faces.

The original model behind local search was that each directory site would allow for an SMB to claim their listing, contribute some current information to the local search results. This would form the basis of a relationship between the SMB and the directory leading to future sales opportunity.

Turned out that it was expensive for the directories to manage this process. More importantly it was difficult to gain any ongoing relationship with the SMB in a way that secured enough (or any) revenue to cover those costs. Companies often leveraged these businesses listings in SMB antagonistic ways to garner some profit.  Or resorted to strong arm sales tactics. A few figured out  a niche from which to eek out enough income to stay in the listing game.

But competing for every small business listing on a world wide (or even country wide) scale against Google  has become a non starter for most of them.

Last year Marissa Mayer, in recognition of this fact, noted: “I really do love [local], but it requires a deep investment, a lot of energy and time to build terrific listings. We already have some products in this area. They’re good at the moment, but it’s hard to take that next step. We don’t expect to make changes in the short term. It’s not an area where we’re going to make significant investments right now.”

In this new realty of the EBG world, listing management is often being outsourced to Yext (Yahoo, Mapquest, Local.com) and review content is being outsourced to Yelp (Bing, Apple, Yahoo).

Even so, there is no indicator that this outsourcing will guarantee their survival let alone their thriving in local search. This holds true as much for the licensors as the licensees.We can only just imagine that Yahoo figures out a successful way to reenter the local market place in a successful way in the future that benefits the small business and themselves. And creates a meaningful marketing platform that is a win-win-win – for the searchers, the business and for Yahoo.

Here’s hoping.

Google+ Local

At Local U: How Should You Market Your Google + Page?

1 Comment

Recently Anikait Chavan commented on an old post where I minimized the idea of link building to an SMB Google+ Page for local. With the many changes that has taken place with Google Local, his comment motivated me to revisit the idea of exactly how your Google+ Page for Local should fit into an overall marketing plan for your business at the Local U blog.

Essentially the new Google+ Page for local can perform a number functions that can potentially benefit your business.  Some of these are significantly more cost effective for a business than others. Which of these should be prioritized for your business?

Read my thoughts: How Should You Market Your Google + Page? You Shouldn’t. You Should Market Your Business

Google+ Local

Knowledge Graph Dropdowns & Crowd Sourcing the Future on Twitter

4 Comments

On Friday Sebastien Socha alerted me to the fact that Google was now including inline Knowledge Graph Dropdowns in general and local search results.

Besides the fact that it provides mostly irrelevant, distracting. repetitive and non specific Wikipedia type results to very specific queries, I saw it as an annoying addition to local search with little of value for the searcher or the business.

Here is an example of the search result. Note that the Ikea Knowledge Graph drop down link with exactly the same, limited content appears above the fold twice as does the Yelp Corporate information panel.  Given that the card is static, after you have clicked it once, you know all you need to know – never click again.

Screen Shot 2014-02-09 at 1.18.47 PM

I didn’t have time to write about it at the time, so when Cyrus Shepard tweeted it, I retweeted his image.That led to a lively discussion about the present and future of Google with @CyrusShepard, @MikeGracen, @JohnAndrews & @SEOAware (Melissa Fach).

I am reproducing it here because it says so much about us as SEOs, Google, our fears, the present and the possible futures we all face. And it says a lot about how Twitter can sometimes be very enjoyable. Continue reading →

Local Search

Yelp’s 2013 Results and the Headlines that Weren’t

8 Comments

Yelp announced their 2013 “earnings” last week. I am continually shocked by the rosy headlines and the lack of due diligence often present in the reporting.

Some of the more egregious examples of uncritical coverage:

Some were more neutral but still carried an uncritical tone or hints of positive results.

Few if any of the headlines that I found were critical with but one exception.

Here is a chart showing Yelps Revenue Growth compared to Expenses over the past 5 years. I am having trouble seeing a reason for optimism. This has been the same story for many years. See for yourself.

yelp-rev-v-ex-v1

I would suggest that the headlines should have been:

  • Yelp Reports 5th Consecutive Annual Loss
  • Yelp reports 20th Sequential Unprofitable Quarter
  • Yelp, No Profits in Sight as Expenses Rise as Quickly as Income

I think they all must have failed to read Yelp’s forward looking statement buried at the bottom (embarrassingly formatted exactly as on the report).
Continue reading →

Google Places (Maps & Local), Google+ Local

New Flow for Google Places/G+ Page Creation

10 Comments

Googler Jade announced in the forums that newly created Google Plus Pages for local will be visible immediately upon creation. This should make the process more obvious to new businesses claiming in the dashboard.

Hey guys,

A few changes to page creation are rolling out gradually today –

If you’re creating a listing in the new Places for Business dashboard, now, you won’t have to wait to complete PIN verification before you can see the +page, for most businesses. Just follow the link from your dashboard to see the new page. You will be able to use Google+ social features on this unverified page, but please note — you still need to complete PIN verification before the page will start showing up in Google Maps and across other Google properties.

If you’ve got an unverified local Google+ page (made using Google+ in the local business/place category), then we still encourage you to PIN verify this page so that it can start appearing in Google Maps and across other Google properties.

If you’re creating a local Google+ page (using Google+ selecting the local business/place category) for a business that we think is already in Google Maps, then you may need to go through both PIN verification and our admin request flow before you can manage the page.

Thanks,

Jade

 

 

 

Google MapMaker, Google Places (Maps & Local)

Oh Where is Washington, NC? How to Fix a Google Map Error

4 Comments

atlantisEgregious mapping errors occur a lot less these days on Google Maps. While roads are still being lost or misnamed in New Jersey, we have seen no lost towns and misplaced communities like we saw in 2009 and 2010. And truth be told the problem with roads in New Jersey may be just a reflection of some larger ground truth.

But when serious mapping errors do occur they are still painful and negatively impact the businesses involved.  I recently received this email from a forlorn innkeeper, Beckie Sipprell in Washington, NC:

Hello Mike,

Lisa Kolb at Acorn suggested tha tyou might be interested in a dilemma that we have in Washington NC. The town of Washington NC, not the County. That is the issue. When someone puts in Washington NC Bed and Breakfast or restaurants what shows on Google Maps are places in Washington County NC…and no one seems to know how to undo this.

If you have any magic in this department please pass it on to us. I am at a loss. Thank you for any help you might give.

I asked Dan Austin for a MapMaker perspective on the problem and whether anything could be done.

Here is his response (once again chock full of useful tidbits if you run into this issue).

Yes and no.

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