Category Archives: Local Search

General information about Local Search techniques, technology and trends

Local Search, LocalU

The Best Advanced Local Search Conference EVER

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Featured Keynote by Wil ReynoldsOk. So I am a little biased.

But that being said, last year’s spring Local  U Advanced was one of the most educational and fun events that I have ever participated in and we are bringing it back east. There was more of everything that I love about our industry: more great local content, more great local speakers, more great sharing than I had ever experienced. It was collegial AND educational. And plenty of great food and refreshments.

This year the content is all new & we have TWO great keynotes. David Mihm, Aaron Weiche, Ed Reese, Mary Bowling, Will Scott (sans rant), Mike Ramsey and myself will all be there. And  the great networking and mixers will continue to be incredible as well.

What:

LocalU Advanced: Philadelphia. Wil Reynolds of SEER Interactive and Joel Headley of Google have agreed to keynote the event. Wil’s advice on Real Company Sh*t for Local Companies promises to be incredible and you will gain new insights into how Google local really works from Joel. If his talk in NYC last fall in any indication, you will learn about the whys and wherefores of Google local at a whole new level of understanding

When:

March 7 evening and March 8th all day

Where:

Valley Forge DoubleTree by Hilton just outside of Philadelphia. We are offering a special group rate (Group name: MidAtlantic InnKeepers) of $129 for your hotel stay.

Check out the full agenda on our EventBrite page, and save $100 of the $899 with our EARLYBIRD discount code!

OK. I may be biased but I even after I strip out my self serving pride, I think its going to be a great event. Hope to see you there.

Google Places (Maps & Local), Local Search, What's New & Important

Hummingbird, Local Knowledge Graph & Shitty Search Results

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Screen Shot 2013-09-28 at 9.59.58 AMThe big news earlier in the week was Google’s announcement of the Hummingbird search algo upgrade. InformationWeek noted that “the Hummingbird update expands Google’s use of its Knowledge Graph”.  Local search results were some of the first entities moved to the Knowledge graph and displayed as knowledge graph results. For me there are thus two questions.

Does Hummingbird affect local search results?

Are there any indications of a decline in local search results quality?

The answer, at least as far as I can tell, to both questions seems to be yes.

According to Danny Sullivan, Google started using this new algo “about a month ago”. Moz pegged the rollout at around August 20-22. For the most part this change went unoticed in both local and universal search results. But there was one big change in local that Linda Buquet has covered quite extensively that she first wrote about on August 24th. The timing and results, I think, are not coincidental.

Linda titled this one exactly right: Attack of the Bad Google Local One-Boxes!

What is the attack of the Local One-Boxes? A number of broad head searches like “Buffalo NY Diamonds” or “Denver SEO”  are returning (usually) a single branded, spammy local result. Google seems to have dug into the wayback machine to have pulled out these totally inappropriate results. (Note: as Linda said below it may be necessary to set your location to the same as the geo phrase to see these. That isn’t always the case but it increases the likelihood of surfacing them).

Essentially it appears that Google has once again conflated these head terms with what they suppose to be a branded search and have surfaced spammy pinned local results that we thought had long ago been buried. Hummingbird has worked surprisingly well as demonstrated by the lack of complaints. It is interesting that a problem thought solved long ago would trip it up.

For example if you search on the phrase “Buffalo NY Diamonds” it surfaces a second listing for a local jeweler at the same address that was created long ago for the purpose of keyword spamming “marketing” in local. The problem of Google showing a single branded results was first spotted years ago. It subsequently lead to a spate of one box spam and then, for the most part, squelched by Google. For whatever reason, these spammy local knowledge graph entities seem to have made a come back.

The timing and nature of the results makes me believe that we are seeing “the Hummingbird effect”.

Screen Shot 2013-09-28 at 9.36.57 AM

When was the last time that you saw a local result for a spammy local SEO listings? The answer: December, 2009. They seem to have returned.

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Google Places (Maps & Local), Google+ Local, Local Search, LocalU

LocalU Odds and Ends

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Local-Advanced-U_180x70Lot’s has been happening at LocalU. We have an advanced LocalU coming up Monday in NYC that has just 5 seats left. If you do sign up be sure to use the discount code WS-LUA10 for 10% off. If you are already signed up be sure to reach out to me and introduce yourself.

We will be announcing our (very busy) winter & spring speaking schedule shortly and it looks like we will be in Dallas, Springfield (MA), Valley Forge, Harrisburg and hopefully the Cupertino area (and perhaps a few more places as well). We are now scheduling for May and the fall of 2014 so if you are interested in having us come to your city, let us know.

We hope to have our full video tape of the LocalU advanced session in Seattle available for purchase shortly and some other cool content as well. We will keep you posted.

We have been busy at the LocalU blog as well with some great articles over the past few months that you might have missed:

Where Should a New Business Create a Listing: Google+ Page or Google Places for Business Dashboard? - Mike Blumenthal

The Real Truth About SEO & Call Tracking - Mary Bowling

Is Your Website Ready for the Holidays? - Mary Bowling

What Kind of Google+ Page Is It? – A Visual Guide to Google+ Local Pages - Mike Blumenthal

How Long Should Your Business Description Be in the Google Places for Business Dashboard? - Mike Blumenthal

Have You Tried Google Support for Local Lately? - Mary Bowling

How To Segment Local Search In Google Analytics (with Free Dashboard!) - Ed Reese (I particularly like the free dashboard that Ed created that gives some incredible insights into where your local visitors are coming from. And what is better than free?).

There will be light postings next week due to travel. I hope to see you in NYC next week.

 

 

Local Search, LocalU

Local U Advanced – NYC Sept 30th

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Fall has descended (and I am riding my bike in 40 degree temperatures ….brr) and our SMX Local U Advanced Workshop is only 11 days away. We have sold 75% of the available tickets so there are only 14 left. If you are thinking of coming now is the time to sign up.

If you do sign up be sure to use the WS-LUA10 discount code to get a 10% discount. Learn more at the SMX site.

Wondering what goes on at Local U Advanced? Here is a video that we filmed in Seattle last June that will give you a sense of it.

Local Search

Top Local SEO Myths

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Phil Rozek has just published a great piece at his blog: Top Local SEO Myths. Phil asked me and 9 others for 3 myths about local marketing. Never one to be shy, lack for things to say or follow instructions I sent along four. Here is a sampling of my responses:

Myth One-

When you verify your listing data in Google (Places, Places for Business Dashboard, Google Plus) you are claiming your page.

Fact: Google views local as a syndicated service that uses local data stored in and retrieved from a canonical record in their Knowledge Graph. The data that you provide to them is stored in that record along with data that they get fromMapMaker, Community Edits, third party sources, web scrapes of your website etc etc etc.

The data that your provided them may or may not be considered the authoritative data in this scenario and the page that you thought you owned may show data that they think more trustworthy than what you provided.

Google will take any of the authoritative data that they have in this canonical record and show it where they think it makes the most sense. Some will show on the front page of Google search results, some will show on the Google Plus Page for your business, some will show in Maps, some will show Glass. What shows is determined by them.

Moral: Your local data is seen in Google’s main search results seen many orders of magnitude more often than your data shows on any other Google local output. In fact it might be more than the total of all of the other views in their other products and services. Thus you should focus on what your data looks like there.

You own nothing in this environment, least of all “your page” at Google.

 

But I was just one amongst many. There were also some incredible contributions from
Darren Shaw - Whitespark
Mary Bowling – MaryBowling.com
David Mihm – Moz
Don Campbell – Expand2Web
Greg Gifford – AutoRevo
Andrew Shotland – LocalSEOGuide
Mike Ramsey – NiftyMarketing
Linda Buquet – Local Search Forum
Adam Steele – LeanMarketing

And of course Phil. Regardless of Phil’s incredible command of the grandmother guilt tactic (But it will only take 5 minutes), the article makes for great reading.

Google Helpouts, Local Search

Does Google Helpouts Indicate a New Direction For Local Transactions?

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Will Google Helpouts replace the Business Listing Places Page G+Local Page G+ Page for Local as the transaction platform for local commerce?

What is Helpouts you ask? It is a (not so) secret Google project that turns Hangouts into a commerce platform/marketplace  “that enables individuals and small and large businesses to buy and sell services via live video”.  According to TechCrunch who broke the story last week about the product:

With the capacity to connect merchants and consumers on both an immediate and scheduled basis, .. the platform will allow sellers to .. take advantage of reputation management, scheduling and payment features, while offering robust search and discovery tools for consumers.

Google has also apparently partnered with a number of brands during internal testing, including One Medical Group, Sears, Weight Watchers and Alliance Frances, for example. At launch, the platform will also reportedly include an array of individual merchants and instructors as well, from yoga gurus to fitness teachers — all of whom will be able to offer both free and paid services to consumers via Helpouts.

According to our sources, with Helpouts, Google is looking to remove some of the barriers that have traditionally stood in the way of the seamless delivery of live services. For example, using Helpouts, a Spanish tutor from Argentina could offer language training to students in Japan, while a Yoga instructor in New York would be able to provide classes to a stay-at-home mom in Wyoming and an appliance repair shop could walk a customer through fixing a broken fan in their laptop — with an Internet connection being the only requirement.

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Does this product indicate a totally new direction for Google in local? By leveraging their Hangouts product and going after the trainer, consulting, support niche with a marketplace, they are able to refine and develop local tools like scheduling in a market that is underserved while using technology where they have a technical lead (Hangouts). As Ted Paff of Customer Lobby, pointed out, this learning on the part of Google could lead to their very disruptive engagement in a number service businesses that need low cost scheduling and easy to use CRM. This would all be happening on top of G+ and not the local business page.

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Local Search, LocalU

Next LocalU Advanced – NYC September 30

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Update: We have just learned from the folks at Third Door/SMX that we can offer a discount for your admission. The code WS-LUA10 (case-sensitive) provides a 10% discount off prevailing rate.

We just finished up a LocalU Advanced in Seattle and the feedback was great. It seems to early too be talking about the next one but here I am talking about the next one because the early, early bird special is ending in less than a month. Hope to see you there.

September 30th Local University Advanced will be held the day before SMX East 2013 at the Jacob Javits Center in NYC.

Whether you run an agency that serves brick-and-mortar businesses, work in-house for a large brand or Internet Yellow Pages publisher, or are trying to find the hottest opportunity in the bloodiest of all bleeding edges in search marketing, you won’t want to miss Local U East.

 

Pass Options Super Early Bird
Ends Jul 27		 Early Bird
7/28 – 8/24		 Regular Rate
8/25 – 9/30		 On Site
With All Access Pass $795 $895 $995 $1,095
Workshop Only $895 $995 $1,095 $1,195

 

These sessions will be action-packed, presented at an advanced level and feature ALL of the most up-to-date information about what’s working and what’s not in Local Search Engine Optimization.

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Google Places (Maps & Local), Google+ Local, Local Search

Is Google Debranding Local?

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Screen Shot 2013-06-16 at 10.26.40 AMLocal, like many developments at Google, has always been many things; a brand (G+Local, Places), a product (Places Search, the +Local App) and an internal & external API service (local data in Now, Earth or 3rd party products).

And as David Mihm has pointed out, Google’s branding of local has always been muddled and caused confusion in the market place. But now it would appear that the confusion will someday end and that both the local brand and the forward facing search product (Places Search) are falling by the wayside.

Local will persist as a service feeding critical contextually relevant data to the many current Google products that use local data and the many that are likely to be coming rapidly down the pipeline.

Local as brand & product – a History

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