Mike Blumenthal

For a company that now professes to be mobile first Google’s mobile review experience seems opaque and not generally accessible. It’s a Google Maps app only affair and if you are an iPhone user you might not know that. But they are making small strides in the app.  I just downloaded a February 26th update …

Google is leaving no stone unturned in their effort to find new ways to 1)show ads and 2)redirect users back to Google properties to see those ads. Brad Brewer of Brewer Digital Marketing originally shared this screen shot on G+ showing the addition of a link to Google’s hotel search from the Knowledge Panel on …

Update 3/5: Dan notes the response he received from support: “We attempted to retain the review itself and could not do so as a “snippet”, though it still stands as a wonderful review for your business. We removed the confusing snippet from your account.” Update 2:27 PM (PST) 2/27: Googler Jade Wang just posted this on …

TechCrunch and SEL are reporting Google testing of  a live chat button appearing on business’s local Knowledge Panel. This program is apparently part of a test with a limited number of businesses. It has been around at least since mid November when an invitee asked me about problems he was having with the test. Here …

Google has just announced a major update to Google My Business that finally rationalizes photos and their use across all of the places where your listing is shown. From the post: Starting today, you can tell us which image you’d like to appear when customers search for your business on Google. Just log in to Google My …

Reviews are hard. Particularly at Yelp. Most Americans have no desire to leave a review. When you combine that fact with fragmented market share and review site policies it becomes even more difficult. Here are some numbers to put the difficulties with Yelp in perspective. Let’s start with emailing 100 of your customers to calculate how …

It’s hard getting any review but it’s particularly hard getting Yelp reviews. They filter many, many more than make it through. I have seen filtering rates as hight as 85% of first time reviewers. Unless the reviewer has either lots of Yelp friends or lots of Yelp reviews, their reviews will be nuked. Yelp, of …

@mblumenthal @serenasaitto I don’t really get why it upsets people. No one is forcing them to pay extra & @Uber is not a monopoly. — Mike Okhravi (@mikeokhravi) December 18, 2014 I have been thinking about this question a lot since receiving the above tweet. Users do have a choice to either use or not …

Google announced today that as of February 16, the City Experts program that encouraged G+ users to become active reviewers will be upgraded and now called Local Guides. The new Local Guides program implements a multi level approach with benefits accruing based on the total number of reviews written. There is even a code of …