Mike Blumenthal

Google has broadly pushed the new location dashboard to almost all accounts. And in doing so seems to have finally provided a near real time notification for (the long missing) Questions and Answers. The new location dashboard, using a card approach to highlight important activities and calls to action for a given listing, was first …

In November, Google announced the limited availability of a new “UI for Google My Business to better allow users with multiple listings to view and edit their information“. Google noted the following about the new view: What’s changing User’s will no longer need to switch between card and list view within their dashboard, all users, …

In the conversation on my article about the divorce settlement between G+ and Google Local, Maurice Smit made this comment: People sometimes ask me why Google can’t do certain things. There is a misconception that the people at Google are so savvy that they can do almost anything. As local marketers we know better, don’t …

The estrangement and ugly divorce of Goggle Local from G+ is finally, finally ending with the mop up of the last remaining remnants of the marriage; those many, many G+ Local Pages that got created in the wild passion of their joining. What always seemed like an unnatural union started going south in 2015 or …

LocalU has decided to extend our Early Bird pricing until 3/16. Previously set to expire on 3/8 – the special $699 pricing is available to everyone until 3/16/2018 at midnight.  If you’re bringing a group of 3 or more, you’ll receive an extra $50 off per ticket – lowering the price to just $649 per …

Google, in going way back to the future, appears to be rolling out the ability of a business to enter a business description that appears in their Knowledge Panel. Dave DiGregorio pointed out on Twitter that there are already help files in place.  And he shared the various screens. Anyone else seeing the "From The Business" section …

Reviews, reviews and more reviews. Jason Brown of ReviewFraud participated in an interesting investigative news report on fake reviews. He wrote about it on his blog: Bulletproof Digital busted selling Fake reviews to NBCLA.  Here is NBC Southern California report: Who’s Really Behind Fake Online Reviews? Jason also covered an interesting story in the review space …

Here are some articles that I have recently penned or collaborated on this past week: Google Q&A: Google’s Newest Knowledge Panel Feature That You Might Just Hate (or Love) – My recent research into the visibility and impact of Google’s Q & A feature and a plan to cope with it. Unpacking the Increasingly Complex Local …

Google has added (or has the intention to add) direct notifications of new questions appearing on the Knowledge Panel of local businesses. The option (pre-selected) is available in the settings preferences panel for any location. That being said, I have the settings on but I have yet to receive notifications of questions that are being …

I love local and I love LocalU Advanced. We have scheduled our next events for Austin. We will be doing an SMB event there to help fund Celia Bell’s training foundation on April 11th and on the night of the 11th and the day of the 12th we will be doing a full day Local …