Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Entries Written By Mike Blumenthal
Google Places Testing New Layout
Update: This appears to be a rollout not a test. With all of the system wide quirks of late in Google Places, there has been speculation that the under the hood snafus were a reflection of bigger and more visible changes to come. This screen shot could be one of those changes. Sent to me …
Google Places Search No Longer Showing 3rd Party Review Counts?
Perhaps a small change but in light of the many quirks of late, it could also indicate more changes to come. It seems that Places search results showing in the main search results are now only showing the review count for Google only reviews. Third party reviews, while still linked are not being counted in …
Google Boost Bid Pricing Will Baffle the SMB
Google’s Boost advertising product was meant to be a dead simple way for a small business that had claimed their Places listing, to place a locally highlighted ad onto the front page of Google. It is simple to get started and in some situations, where the targeting is accurate and the price per click is …
Small Business Influencer Awards: Vote early, Vote often and Vote for …..
I was recently honored to have been nominated for the 2011 Small Business Influencer award in the guru category. It is an effort by Smallbiztrends.com to recognize those “organizations and people who have made a significant impact on the North American small business market”. The awards will identify the Top 100 influencers and are decided …
TripAdvisor Sends Conflicted Message: We Can Incent Reviews but Business Can’t
The review world is full of contradictions. Many review sites, TripAdvisor included, have strong penalties if a business is caught incenting reviews. The prohibition makes sense in that an incentive is likely to lead a reviewer to generate a low quality, less than thoughtful review in order to receive the incentive. There is also the …
Pending in Places – A new manual review or a new bug?
For the past 24 hours a number of posters in the forums (and people contacting me privately) have noted that their listings in their Places Dashboard have gone to a “Pending” status. In this post in response to a complaint that all of a users listing had gone pending, Google Employee Brianna noted: Hello, Thanks …
Google Quickly Removes Most Review Spam in Moving Industry – More Remains at Google and Elsewhere
It appears that Google has removed most but not all review spam from the Moishe’s Moving System’s Places page and from many of the other Places pages affected by this scam. On Moishe’s Places page, the spam that remains (besides their response spam) was posted between July 1 and July 3 and seems to still …
Google Places: Reputation Management or Extortion in the Moving Industry?
Most small businesses live in dread of the day when a competitor drops a nasty review on their Places page. Imagine waking up one day and finding 58 of them. That’s what happened to the Place Page for Moishe’s Moving Systems in NYC. For several days in early July they were finding one 1 star …
Protected: Further Reading
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Google Offers Rolls Out in NYC And Promises Expansion to Other US Cities
It has been clear from day one that the Google Offers daily deals were coming to both San Francisco and New York City. We just didn’t know when. THe NYC daily offers started this AM with 3 offers, one each from NYC Downtown, NYC Midtown and NYC Uptown. The deals rolled out in NYC are …
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