Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Entries Written By Mike Blumenthal
Google My Business – Let’s Not Stop Here – My Wish List for Upgrades
Google’s recent My Business rollout puts a very strong product in the hands of the SMB – mobile social posting to business pages, additional social analytics, easy to update local information. It finally solves most of the issues that have haunted Local since 2011. If it isn’t obvious I think it is a well done, …
Google My Business – A Brand, A Portal, A Platform – Places Makes it to the Promised Land
Today, Google is rolling out Google My Business – a significant small business upgrade to Google Places and Plus. After multiple years of struggle in upgrading Places and merging local into Plus, Google is finally nearing the point where they have a solid platform addressing the needs of small businesses. My Business is currently rolling out world …
Reviews, Politics and Big Earl’s
OK Big Earl and his staff are cretins. That can be agreed. They have managed, by virtue of being outspoken, bigoted and unthinking, to have put themselves in the middle of a media maelstrom and a subsequent flame war in the world of reviews. The story, first reported by KLTV on May 27th, noted that a …
New Google Direct Answer Type: YouTube Video?
Brian Alaway of Brian Alaway Consulting has spotted what appears to be a new YouTube Video Knowledge Graph direct answer type inserted at the top of the serps. Google has been rapidly adding these direct answer knowledge graph results to top of the search results over the past few months. They have added Menus, Geometry Answers, …
Google Adds Ability to Upgrade G+ Brand Pages to G+ Local Pages
Google has announced today in the forums the ability to upgrade Branded G+ Pages to Local G+ Pages. Read all of the details at the LocalU Blog: Google Now Allows Brand Pages to Become Google+ Local Pages. Additional details: Google For Business Forum post Help Center Files
Google Paid “Dealers Nearby” Appears to Have Gone Live
This is old news to some but interesting to me. Last week, while I was in Hungary, Dr. Pete reported on Twitter that Google’s new paid ads that appear in car knowledge graph panels has gone live. It is a dramatic presentation on the desktop. And even more so on mobile. Will Google soon be …
How Many Businesses Have Verified G+ Pages for Local?
While at SIINDA conference, Google was an obvious point of reference and conversation both in the formal sessions and the informal discussions afterwords. One number that was bandied about was the total number of currently verified local business listings worldwide. While I have no way to independently verify the number of 20 million verified listings, as Google …
Some Thoughts on the YP industry & Google in Europe
I am just returning from the SIINDA conference in Budapest. SIINDA is the newly formed association born out of the combined efforts of the EASDP, the European Association of Search and Database Publishers (YPs), and EIDQ, the Association for the Directory Information. Most of the attendees at the conference were Yellow page companies that were …
Google Bulk Being Upgraded to Google Plus Capability
Nicolai Helling of the United Digital Group is reporting on Google Plus the upgrade of the Bulk Upload to allow multiple administrators. Apparently this upgrade will add full social functionality as well (the link from the help file is currently not working). Manage access to your locations by adding and removing managers and transferring location ownership – New! Make updates and posts to your …
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