Mike Blumenthal

Its tough being TomTom. They are in an industry that is being cannibalized on the hardware side by low end devices and their very expensive purchase of TeleAtlas is being quickly deprecated on the software and underlying data side. That being said does that give them permission to be low-lifes in promoting their geo products? …

Ancient History In 2004 Google Local was released as an independent entity on Google.com. In April of 2006, when Google merged Local into Maps, the competitive scene was much different than today. Google’s main competitors on the mapping and directions side were Mapquest and Yahoo and on the IYP side Superpages, Yellowpages and Yahoo. Google …

Barry at SEORountable has just posted that Google is changing their recommended practice for removing duplicate listings of your business from Maps. Here are the new guidelines from the Google Places Help (bolds in body are mine): Duplicate listings for my business Duplicates listings for a single business are often issues in both Google Maps …

It is the end of a Grand Experiment in user generated content. Google has just announced that user edits of unclaimed business listings will need to be reviewed by Google before showing in the Map index. In March of 2008, Google Maps added the capacity to allow users to edit business listings. It caused a …

Late last summer, Google confirmed that having a listing in multiple languages was allowable. At the time Google noted: Yes, users can do this. The thing is, there isn’t a feature currently available, but there is a workaround. What users can do is first create the listing in English. Then they can select the appropriate …

Google Maps has started providing webinars as a means to educate more SMBs about the benefits and features of Google Places. Not much new here but note Google’s clear cut answer about call tracking numbers. Here is a summary of the May 10th webinar: From: Brianna Brekke <maps.guide9@google.com> Date: May 17, 2010 4:50:51 PM EDT …

Last week we had another successful Local University in Twin Cities. Matt McGee has created a great recap of the event. I had an incredible time and truly enjoyed myself as the Twin Cities audience was engaged and very savvy. While the event was targeted to SMBs there were more than the usual share of …

Local Search folks don’t always agree on the factors that affect rank but there is one search relevance factor on which there is strong agreement: A local business listing must be in the city of search in order to even be considered on a given service + city query. While there is a general idea …

Today, I am presenting at the second GetListed.org Local University in the Twin Cities. If you are coming PLEASE take a moment to introduce yourself as I would love to meet you. For those of you that attended the presentation these links will provide background information and details for a pathway to dig deeper into …