Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Entries Written By Mike Blumenthal
Google Rolls Out Broader Marketing of Helpouts
Google Helpouts, a G+ based product “that enables individuals and small and large businesses to buy and sell services via live video” first came to light in early August. It is a fascinating product that creates a video based marketplace that allows local trainers, national support personnel and consultants to engage a much larger market. …
Microsoft Buys Nokia – What will become of Navteq/Here?
Microsoft bought Nokia today for $7.2 billion dollars. Nokia, you will recall, bought Navteq in 2007 for $8.1 billion in what was hailed at the time as pivotal move by Nokia into location based services. But as Horace Dediu pointed out, by late 2012 Navteq had been losing about $1 billion a year for Nokia …
Yelp: When the Hard Sell Goes South
Greg Sterling wrote last week about the on-going resentment that SMBs display towards Yelp. It seems to me that the intrinsic contradiction of selling low value, high priced ads against reviews that many businesses dislike, creates an inevitable conflict and distrust. But when you add high pressure, hard sell techniques to the mix it becomes a …
Google+ Pages for Local – Which One Is It?
Google is slowly moving towards a G+ local world where there will be two types of G+ Pages for local; claimed and unclaimed. There will be subtle differences between the claimed pages depending on owner configuration (social or no, video or no, owned by a person or a company) but all G+ Pages for local …
Google Now Auto-Merging Google+ Pages Into Google Places Dashboard Listings
Updated 6:30 am 8/21 First spotted on Linda Buquet’s forum earlier today on Monday, Google has announced that they have started auto-merging G+ social functionality into basic (upgraded) Dashboard listings. Here is the Google announcement (bold is mine): Starting today, some pages managed in the new Google Places for Business dashboard will be automatically upgraded …
LocalU Advanced – NYC September 30 – Early bird Discount Ends in 5 Days
Even though it seems like summer will never end, September is rapidly approaching and with it the next Local U Advanced. It is being held September 30th in conjunction with SMX in NYC. Ticket sales have been brisk and only 14 remain, so if you are thinking of joining us, you might want to buy …
Google Places Guidelines No Longer Prohibit City in Your Category Field – Should You Add It?
Joy Hawkins of Imprezzio Marketing, alerted me to this post in the Google forum where a business noted that the Google Places for Business Guidelines do not prohibit the use of city in the category field . Apparently Google has recently changed the Google Places Quality Guidelines and removed the prohibition against the use of geography …
In Search of The Purchased Google Review. Yours for $1.40 ea.
Last night I went in search of the purchased Google review. I was curious what the high ranking results were for phrases like buy Google reviews and how much a review would cost. Far and away the most compelling was from the number 1 ranked exact match domain: buygooglereviews.com. Reviews started at $2 each when …
Google Continues Test of Local Call-Out Box
Phil Rozek of Local Visibility shared these two screen shots of a Google test that highlights the sitelinks display on a branded local search with card like outlines. The treatment, first spotted by Moz on a local search in late July, has evolved from a single box around the complete result to a number of …
Google Rolling Out Review Distribution Charts for G+ Page
Update 6:45 pm: Google has confirmed the review distribution is going live and will be visible across all browsers and desktop machines shortly. It also appears that only listings that show Stars are seeing the distribution graph. For the most part that results when a listing has at least five reviews. Although in rare cases …
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