Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Entries Written By Mike Blumenthal
Last Week in Google Local
tl;dr: Lots of small updates last week. And soon, very soon I won’t be pulling my hair out. 🙂 The transition to the new dashboard status: Judging by the fact that there were lots of complaints over the past two weeks in the forums about THE EMAIL and that my crufty, 2007 dashboard was finally converted …
One More Reason for an SMB to Engage with Google Plus
Engaging with G+ can seem like a chore to most SMBs who have trouble attracting their local clients to their Plus page. Its main advantage is that Google has integrated it with search, where folks are in fact looking. Google seems to have recently upped the ante in local providing one more reason for the …
Google Testing Moving Directional Local Info Panel Back into Search Results
With the advent of the knowledge graph and the info panel, Google has provided local businesses a lot of territory above the fold. This is true in both the main search results and the area to right of the search results where ads often show. Kerry Fager of Findlaw.com shared this screen shot (IE) that …
New Look for Google Local Search Results
Google is apparently testing a new, cleaner front page layout that will affect both local and regular search results. First reported by Dan Barker on March 5th, Searchnewz is reporting that they will be rolled out. Â I am now seeing this new layout on Safari for Mac. The differences: The removal of the underlines from …
Why You Got the Google Places Email & What You Should Do
Over the past few weeks, Google has been moving a large number of listings from the old dashboard to the new one. Often these dashboards held listings that were claimed into more than one account or had been claimed in multiple ways. When there was a conflict in either scenario Google sent out an alerting …
Google Shuts Down Self Serve Offers Product
Google announced this afternoon that they will be shutting down their Places Dashboard self-serve Offers product. The product was updated with performance based pricing in the fall of last year and given a new interface in 2012 but like the coupon product upon which it was based, has toiled in obscurity. The product and the output was actually quite …
Local U Advanced – March 8th – King of Prussia, PA
Update: 3/3/14: Only 11 seats left. There are only 9 days left until our next Local U Advanced, just outside of Philadelphia, at the DoubleTree by Hilton in King of Prussia, Pa. This year we have limited the total ticket sales (including sponsor seating) to just 65 folks. As of yesterday afternoon there were only …
Consumer Mindshare and Yelp: An Empire in Local Search Or a Wannabe?
Last week Greg Sterling noted: … Yelp and Google. They’re like Spain and Portugal in the 15th Century — rivals trying to carve up the local globe. The analogy seemed wrong to me as Spain and Portugal were to a large extent equal in their strength. I noted in the comments that “I see the …
Have the Hummingbird One Boxes Been Flushed Down the Toilet?
As you know I have been a fierce critic of the bad local results that came out of the Hummingbird update. Search terms that should have returned lists of local businesses would often return a branded one box that often would be complete spam. When it was critical for a client, I reported the bad …
Canadian Dashboards Now Receiving Warning – It is NOT the Canadian Placopalypse
Update Friday 2/21 7:30 PM: Some comments that Google has noted that we care share about the Canadian Places Warning: The February 21 deadline only applies to users to whom Google has sent emails. If a user sees the message in the dashboard (but no email), deep breaths. It will be okay. There is no …
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