Is Google Doubling Down on Local? Yes. Now What

Tl;dr Has Google finally committed to Local? Has Local finally been elevated to the big leagues within Google as a starter instead of being relegated to filling the role of pinch hit competitive enhancer? Is Local receiving both the financial support and more importantly front page Google love that it needs to really succeed. It would …

Continue reading

Exploring Oddities of Reviews from the Web with Joy, Sergey & Priya

Conversations with Joy Hawkins, Priya Chandra and Sergey Alakov surfaced some odd behaviors with the new “Reviews from the web” Knowledge Graph feature. These 3rd party reviews were sometimes appearing and other times not when the Knowledge Panel was displaying. After some testing, I determined that the specific query and its degree of relatedness to …

Continue reading

Google Updates Mobile Rich Snippet Display with Pricing Information

In addition to the release of Reviews from the web and new review rich snippet guidelines (again), Google has simultaneously updated the display of mobile organic review rich snippets with more space and additional pricing details. H/T to Aaron Weiche, the CMO at GetFivestars. Although Jared McKiernan of ParkWhiz asks some interesting questions:

Continue reading

Yelp Review Summaries Back in the Google Knowledge Panel

I am not sure whether this message has been approved by Jeremy Stoppleman but at least for now, with the new reviews from the web announced yesterday summaries now showing in the Knowledge Panel, Yelp is back. For those of you that don’t go back to the “early” days of Google Local, it would seem …

Continue reading

Updated Google Schema Review Guidelines for Local Businesses

Review rich snippets are a powerful local markup type but they have been open to abuse and misuse. Google with release of their critic review snippet extension has also significantly updated their rules for Local Business‘s use of review rich snippets on their website. IN typical Google fashion, the new rules while adding additional use …

Continue reading