Mike Blumenthal

Bill Slawski of SEO by The Sea and I have been having a discussion about whether the technologies and strategies that he outlined in his Google Local Patent Summary were enough to allow Google Maps to be accurate. Bill sent me a long list of reasons why Google Local could not be accurate. Up until …

In early September, Bill Slawski wrote a great review/summary/analysis of Google’s Local Search Patent Application. I reread it over the weekend* and felt the surge of epiphany flow over me as I recognized the theoretical underpinnings of Google Local search results. As Bill noted, Google Local is a “structure generation engine” that collects information from …

From Google Maps Help: We’re testing a new feature, click to call, on Google Maps. Click to call gives you a fast and easy way to speak directly with businesses found on our maps. The following are a few frequently asked questions about this feature:  How does it work? When you click the “call” link …

From the jotpsot.com press release: We’re writing to let you know that Google has acquired JotSpot. We believe this is great news for our users. More importantly, we want to reassure you that you’ll continue to have uninterrupted access to your account. Both Google and JotSpot are committed to supporting our customers, and we understand …

Greg Sterling found an ad today for 877-520-FIND that took him to http://www.520find.com/. He looked for but couldn’t find any ownership information. Other than a reference to LanLogic on the terms of use page. While the facts of ownership may be cloudy, there are several things that are clear: 1)The service works very well. I …

Curiouser and curiouser as they say. In a recent search in Google, the organic search results showed a link to the same search on Google Maps. This is an interesting way for Google to promote users accessing Google Maps but I have not seen this behavior very broadly. In fact I have never seen if …

About a month and half a go I spotted a trend that is interesting: The top three local listings on the Google Organic results page and the top three listings in Google Map are often not the same. This has implications for both optimization strategies for Google Organic AND going forward for the directory assistance …

Google’s voice driven directory assistance has removed the 877-GOOG-411 number and now automatically forwards any calls to that number to: 877-520-FIND. It is interesting that Google has not publicly acknowledged that the experiment is theirs and that the phone number has been changed to further distance themselves. Perhaps they didn’t want to seem like they …

In early October I wrote a post about achieving a “an automatically expanded Plus Box” for a client on a valued search phrase (Vacation Rentals Ellicottville NY) BUT having the url Google had associated with the listing pointing to their competitor. After postulating conspiracies and incompetancies on the part of all but myself I determined …