Mike Blumenthal

Today Google is releasing of V2.0 of Google My Business API and has just updated their website with new information about the open API. The V1 was originally released in mid October to a limited audience and with a limited feature set. V2 is being opened up to anyone and comes with a number of new …

In this video discussion at the LocalU forum David Mihm, Mary Bowling and I look at how the role of Google Local at Google and where does it fit vis a vis Plus and search. In thinking about the role of Local at Google, going forward we look at a number of interesting recent developments as …

In this video discussion at LocalU , Mary Bowling and I look at how the Google Local Algorithm has changed and how that changes what a Local SEO needs to do to succeed. As a starting point we use an article that Casey Meraz wrote at Moz, called Stop Local SEO Tunnel Vision – Think Beyond the Basics.

With Google having removed the location setting option in search a number of tools and tactics have hit the market to allow searchers to continue to retrieve location based search for areas other than the one in which Google thinks they are located. Here are three that all seem to do the job one way …

Update: As of 12/13 Google has removed ~40 of these listings but somewhere on the order of 20 still remain. I have been in the local space, in one form or another, for almost 15 years. Ten of those focused on Google Local. It is rare that I am shocked by my discoveries much these …

I have just published an article on the GetFiveStars* blog titled: Google Reviews – One URL To Rule Them All where you can read some ideas on picking a single Google URL for an SMB review program: With the recent divorce of Google Plus and Google My Business, they have once again thrown a Google monkey wrench into the …

Today, Google is not showing the local pin next to the web result for searches that return One Boxes. whether brand or key word based. The Knowledge Panel is still returned for the search. The pins were visible yesterday in the main search results but gone today and apparently not visible across the US. I …

Update: Chris Desrochers created an elegant and simple solution via an applet using Darren’s noted parameter. It makes the doing the search relatively painless. Download here. Off and on for the past two months, the search location setting as been disappearing for many folks only to come back again. Today Johnny Niumata noted it’s once again missing. …