Mike Blumenthal

With the rollout of the new grey pin local search results, Google has continued to increase the amount of information from your Places page that is visible in the main search results. This is particularly true with the new Branded One Box result. Google is prepared to turn over to your company the better part …

I was struck by the obvious similarity between the visual aspects of the new Local OneBox and the Google test of the Sources display first spotted by Cyrus Shepard. Google has been on a tear of late in local to gather photos and display them on your Place page. One assumes that this effort is …

Two weeks ago there were numerous reports of new pop-ups on the Places page to ascertain from visitors the accuracy of a business location, the website associated with the listing, and the quality of included photos. Shortly there after it became obvious that Google was starting to once again actively allowing users to edit every …

I was surprised to learn that Dependable Locksmith, raided in late 2009 by the Feds and sued by the attorney general in Missouri earlier that year , was still in business and still using their “standard” business model of bait and switch. It does not speak well of our regulatory or legal environment that known crooks and charlatans with …

Updated: 10:30 pm Update: 3:00 am Update: 11/2 11:00 am Minor Update: 11/3 8:00am Google has upgraded their local search results and the Grey pinned results are now live. Note in the screen shot that the branded One Box search now shows up to 4 5 images or a streetview and 2 images, although it …

For a more detailed analysis of this change see:  Grey Pinned Results Now Live Since Nyagoslav of Optilocal first spotted the grey pinned local results a week ago, there have been a number of other sitings of the change in the wild. There is still a fair bit of variability in the layout and arrangement …

Oh Samantha you naughty vixen you. You get outed in Philadelphia dinging lawyers with fake reviews. Little did I know that you were a serial offender.  Triangle Direct Media seems to have found that you already had second profile with the same name and that you had done your dirty deed to 18 cleaning companies in Cary, NC. …

Andy Kuiper just pointed out to me, that in addition to the random UGC inputs on the Google Places page discussed this morning, that full on community edits of a claimed listing have returned to Places. The new (back to the future sort of new) community editing system allows logged in users to edit any listing …