Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Entries Written By Mike Blumenthal
RSS Feeds To Google’s New Places Support Forum Courtesy of Barry Hunter
Barry Hunter, Top Contributor in the Google Maps & Places forums and Maps expert, took the matter of the missing RSS feeds for the Places forum into his own hands and crafted these feed URLS. All Topics in Google and Your Business Forum Topics in Need advice? Topics in Technical issue? And these feeds should …
Google Updates Blended Display on Desktop AND Mobile
At the end of February I reported that Google was including both rich snippet reviews AND authorship images and links in blended results on the desktop. At the time these features had not appeared in the mobile results. Starting yesterday Google has once again updated the Blended display on the desktop to not show …
I Can See the Future of Your Reviews – New Google Places Comic by Margaret Shulock
Here is the second comic in the Google Places False Negatives Series from Margaret Shulock. Google’s update on reviews was the inspiration for this comic. The snippets to share this and the previous cartoon on your site is below. “I Can See the Future of Your Google Reviews”by Margaret Shulock is licensed under a Creative …
411Locals On the Warpath?
411Locals is one of the more aggressive local seo firms in both their pre and post sale tactics, aggressive to the point of absurdity. This recent poster on my blog explains his experience with them. If true it should be illegal but like in the case of the computer repair shop in Phoenix there is …
Google Places Transitioning to New Support Forum – Removing All Previous Posts By Thursday
Google has started the final transition to the new Google Places Forums. When Google says shut down, they mean shut down. They will be closing down the current Places forum and taking all of the existing material off line. All existing posts will be redirected to the home page of the new forum by Thursday …
The Google Places Guidelines Enforcement Plan
Wanting to get across the point that SMBs need to read the Google Guidelines in a recent seminar, I worked with Margaret Shulock, a nationally syndicated cartoonist who lives down the road, to develop this comic. If you would like to share this with your readers please do. Over the next month I will be …
Google Updates Places Time to Live for Dashboard Data
The last 3 or 4 months in Places have been quite erratic. Some data that had been posting from Places in moments had gone to weeks. It seemed that things like descriptions could take 6 to 7 weeks. Google has just announced a new speedier update cycle of “usually a few days” for most data …
Google Places: Review Bug Or New Link to A Google Property?
Frequent contributor Plamen has pointed out a new “behavior” in how Google is handling the main search display of new Google reviews showing up on the Place page; adding a link to the location in the “around the web” review section. Whether this is a bug or one more way to insert another link to …
Mid-Altlantic Innkeepers Conference Keynote
Monday, I am presented the keynote, Google is From Mars and You are From Venus – Or how I learned to stop worrying and love Google at the Mid-Atlantic Innkeepers Conference in Williamsburg. It was an incredibly well run and fun conference. Meeting with both aspiring and successful bed and breakfast owners was educational and inspirational. Although I think …
Local University Spring 2012 Series – Open For Business
The staff at Local U have been hard at work putting together the Spring conference schedule for Local University. We are particularly excited to announce the first Advanced workshop for SEO professionals and experienced local search marketers that will take place in Seattle on June 7. Never before have so many Local Search experts been in one room at …
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