Mike Blumenthal

In 2013, with the loss of Places Search, I wrote a post titled Is Google Debranding Local? where I posited that Google was deemphasizing Local as a consumer facing brand. I also noted that Google would make sure that local would “persist as a service feeding critical contextually relevant data to the many current Google …

Michael Wallace (@LocalGladiator) of Ethology has alerted me to a new, shiny interface for the Google My Business Locations (i.e. bulk) dashboard. Announced in the Help Files with the interface conventions detailed here, the interface appears to improve what has been a product frequented with bugs and inconsistencies. Google has now posted in the forum as …

Google Collections was introduced on May 4th, one week ago. As I noted at the time there were three constituencies that needed to be addressed for it to be successful; Content Creators & Curators, Content Consumers and of course Google themselves. And as I pointed out, Google’s marketing would be the difference. Google will obviously …

Update: Google has posted information about this service in the forum.  Google has started rolling out the ability for searchers to directly book a table, order or make an appointment via mobile Google search and Google Maps. Previously there had been links to some of these services like OpenTable but now the user can complete …

This Google MyBusiness forum post, pointed out by Joy Hawkins, shows the far reaching impact that local search robo callers have in poisoning the industry. It is amazing to me 1) that we allow our regulatory environment be so lax that these scams continue (ah isn’t laissez faire capitalism grand?) and 2) that Google has …

Rumored for the past several weeks, Google+ has just rolled out a new Google Plus feature – Connections, a feature that allows a G+ persona or page to curate G+ posts into targeted & topical sets. Collections is available on Android and the web, and iOS is coming later. For Android users, make sure to update …

I just posted at Local U that Google has confirmed the removal of the links to 3rd party review sites in the Local search results.

Billion Dollar Bully, “a documentary on marketing giant Yelp and their $3.6 billion racket against small business owners”, has reached its Kickstarter funding goal of $90,000. To read more about their plans for finishing the film visit their website. You can see the documentary trailer here.  The “Yelp is an extortionist” meme is one that continues …

Amazon has been moving steadily into local via their numerous local marketplaces; home services, same day product delivery, restaurant takeout, grocery deliver and hotel bookings.  Today they upped their hotel booking game with the rollout of Amazon Destinations as part of local.amazon.com. The website doesn’t go for the every hotel in the world approach of TripAdvisor and is focused …

There probably isn’t an image of your business that gets seen more by potential customers and searchers than your Google My Business profile image. There isn’t a single image that has more impact on searcher’s behaviors. And there isn’t an image in the online world that is harder to “get right.” Read my thoughts on …