Mike Blumenthal

Sometimes Google Maps just has a brain fart. Life will go along and all will be good with your listing. Then, for no apparent reason, it just forgets things. Not insignificant things like the year you opened or the special brand you carry but important things like your listing’s URL or its correct location on …

As part of a much larger campaign, Google is now serving up ads that promote Google Maps with a maplet that provides a guided video tour of  Maps functionality. The following ad was returned on the local search “Bradford Pa Restaurants”: When clicked the ad loads a Maplet (visible at this url) that provides a series …

Is Google replacing Title Tags on the main Google results page with Business names? I have a local client, Napoleon Engineering Services, that markets their custom bearing services nationally and into Canada. In the industry they often go by their “nickname” NES and are known as a high quality testing, inspection and manufacturing facility for …

In an agreement yesterday that portends significant change in local search marketing, New York State Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo secured a $300,000 settlement with Lifestyle Lift, a cosmetic surgery company that “flooded the internet with false positive reviews”. The press release claims that this is believed to be the first case in the nation against …

Yesterday I analyzed the rapid increase in postings to the Maps Help Forums. I was curious as to the specifics of why there had been such a large increase so I broke down last Thursday’s posting to get a sense of what was going on in the forums and what specific problems were being seen. …

Last week (July 4-10th) postings in the Maps Help Forums took a leap, hitting record highs for both single day totals and weekly totals. On Tuesday, July 7th, total postings in the three main forums for reporting problems totaled 173 postings versus the previous single day high of 112 postings. The weekly postings for the …

Land Grab: Google Expands Real Estate Listings. Matt McGee, SearchEngineLand. While this feature is new for Australia, it is only a minor change in real estate presentation in the US. To some extent, it is a lower profile for real estate than it has been over the past few years and it is still relatively …

The ability to see and change existing categories via Community edit has recently been removed by Google. David Rodecker of RelevantAds pointed out this subtle but interesting change in the Google Maps Community Edit feature that was introduced in March of 2008. A community editor can still add a category but the ability to know …

Last week in the Maps Forums and again today as a posting in a comment in Google Maps vs Locksmith Spammers: Spammers winning? Locksmiths have noted that Google is apparently building system wide impediments to spamming. Boruch Fishman, an SEO in the Locksmith industry noted: Recently Google has been slamming locksmith spam so hard it appears …

Maps Google has been somewhat more forward facing of late. They rolled out the data rich Dashboard accompanied by a strong PR push in the technical, business and mainstream media. They have been dribbling out tidbits as to how Maps function (see the diagram to right) and are being somewhat more forthright on the forums …