Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Entries Written By Mike Blumenthal
My Review Corpus is Bigger Than Your Review Corpus And Why It Matters
Yelp has obviously always wanted the spot of top dog in the general review world, moving out of their niche in restaurants and large markets several years ago. Google recognized Yelp’s strong position and made a play for them in late 2009. Obviously Yelp felt that their independent position was defensible. At the time, Google’s …
Google Latitude Adds Checkin Offers Nationwide
Yesterday was a busy day for Google local. Google management changes in Local & the Hotpot rebranding made front page news around the web. An announcement that snuck through the cracks was the limited nationwide rollout of check-in offers at “thousands of places across the U.S. using Latitude on the iPhone and Android”. Offers (aka …
Google Hotpot Being Subsumed Into Places
The Lat Long Blog just announced that Google Hotpot, rather than being a separately branded product, will now just be part of Places. It previously was integrated into Places in Mobile but was a stand alone product on the desktop. What this means for the feature set is unclear. Here is the statement from Ron …
Where Does Local Fit into the Newly Organized Google Under Page?
Updated 3:38: Thanks to reader, Matt, for pointing out this BusinessInsider article titled: Marissa Mayer Bypassed As Google Appoints New Head Of Local And Commerce. Apparently Jeff Huber was handed the job and his title has been upgraded to SVP, Local and Commerce and is on par with the four mentioned below. It clarifies that …
What Does Local Product Availability on Google Place Pages Look Like
Yesterday, Google announced that merchants could now include local products directly on their Places Page. This is part of a long term trend to provide significantly more granular and time based information about local businesses on-line. This has long been part of Google’s local vision that has finally materialized in a way that local merchants …
April 1st is NOT the Day to Introduce a Google Maps Based Product
I received the following snippet from Google Alert yesterday and I was forced to do a double take NordicTrack Introduces Fitness Equipment Merged With Google Maps 7:06 pm today NordicTrack introduces iFit Live powered by Google Maps, the first product that merges fitness equipment and Google Maps technology. If you’ve always wanted to run the marathon route …
Google Officially Ends Support For QR Code in Places
Google is obviously moving strongly towards NFC (near field communications) as their technology of choice for closing the loop of the “last mile” in the local link between consumers and Google. They have built the NFC chip into their new Nexus and they are testing NFC in both a payment and POS environments. They used …
Why Sec 230 of the Communications Decency Act Needs Amending
Yesterday, the All Facebook blog published a story titled Family Sues Facebook Over Photos of Daughter’s Corpse. From the article (bold is mine): A couple in New York is suing Facebook after a paramedic posted photos of their daughter’s dead body on the social networking site. Martha and Ronald Wimmer’s daughter Caroline died two years …
Google Maps: Geo Data Quality & Time to Fix
Update 7:30 PM 3/29: Reader Penguinopus reports that Google has fixed the mapping error that was directing folks to drive down an unfinished section of the Intercounty Connector in Maryland. Time to fix ~ 102 hours. (And that was over a weekend). The Baltimore Sun reported on Friday, March 25th around noon that Google Maps …
Responding to Fake Reviews – Return of the Dentist
Earlier this month I ran an article 5 Tips for Responding (or Not) to “Fake” Reviews that described the terrible situation of a dentist whose personal life had become the subject of reviews. When we last left this saga, the dentist was not fairing well in the drama to clear his name. The post generated …
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