Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Entries Written By Mike Blumenthal
Google as Big Brother in the Forums
As we cede control of public functions to private entities we may gain some functionality or efficiency but we often loose control of other more critical, less commercial aspects of our lives. For example, as we cede control of money, traditionally a public function, to the likes of PayPal or Bank of America in the …
The Review Economy – What is a Positive Review Worth? $3.22
I manage the online marketing for a small insurance company in Bradford Pa, Sundahl and Co. Insurance. While looking at the local search results the other day, I noticed that a local competitor was suddenly showing up with a number of reviews. It surprised me as the insurance market segment and this area of the …
When Will Google Places Fix Reviews?
Reviews about a business are one of the key jewels in the bag of online marketing tools available. Businesses work hard to get good reviews and benefit from the positive word of mouth when the shopping community lauds them. Google has had on-going trouble keeping track of these jewels, losing their own and those from …
Interview with Lior Ron, Hotpot Product Manager
Last week in This Week in Startups, Jason Calcanis had a great interview with Lior Ron (who like hotpot has his name backwards š ),the product manager for Google Hotpot. The interview is interesting, gives insight to the technology and Google’s thinking about its role going forward and its relationship to personalized search. The interview …
New Google Dashboard Analytics Gone Missing
Update : A spokesperson from Google just sent me the following; Just saw your post from today and wanted to let you know that we do have some improvements to the Places dashboard coming, but they may not make it onto Santa’s sleigh for delivery by the holidays. š Google recently pushed out anĀ upgraded Places …
The Rubicon has Been Crossed -Local Pages as Transaction Interface
Yesterday was a seminal moment in Local. It largely went unnoticed but it reflects the rapid monetization of location pages by the major search engines. Bing*Ā announced a number of local, map and mobile upgrades that improve an already good, but under rated and under used product. Clearly, they are battling toe to toe feature wise …
Google Places: Problems in Tag land- Hell hath no fury like an SMB scorned!
For the first time for the SMB, Google is providing human interaction in the form of the Tag and Boost teams. Google, to their credit, recognized the need for both outbound calling and some level of support in the SMB market place. But in an effort to cram every business and every problem into the …
Google Integrating Streetview into Map Search Results?
Yam Regev (PureSheer) sent along this new view visible in Google Maps that moves StreetView front and center in the Maps results. It is not clear if this is a test or not as I was able to see it at work but not at home :
Google Places Upgrades Dashboard Analytics – Is Google Adding a Reservation System?
Thanks to e-mphasis Internet Marketing for pointing out the increased detail that Google Places is now including in the Dashboard Analytics. Google is not only providing a breakout of desktop vs. mobile activity but is showing a great deal of additional detail in the mobile environment. Note the inclusion of “Add as Contact” and “Reservation”. …
Compendium of Banned Words in Google Places – Terms Not Allowed By The Nanny Bot
Google Places has a word filter in place that prevents the use of certain terms and phrases in a listing. It is a particularly “nasty” filter as it doesn’t allow the record to be verified and offers no way of working around the ban other than removing the “offending” word. Even hospitals get swept up …
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