Mike Blumenthal

Google’s Q3 Earnings call took place yesterday and here is the full transcript of the call. For your convenience I have extracted those comments that relate to Maps, Local and Local Mobile. There are a number of juicy nuggets and it is worth the read: Eric Schmidt Geo-Mobile another core component and new opportunity for …

Like John Kerry in 2004, Google seems to have lost Ohio. Although this time, rather than being due to political operatives or electronic voting machines, the issues seem to lie with some new bug in the Local Business Center.  A reader, whose daily livelihood depends on the Local Business Center and who was recently spotted …

For those of you that didn’t notice, Maps Guide Jen has noted in the comments on my Local Business Center System Errors post: Looks like the team was able to get a fix through faster than expected. Most people who were experiencing this error should find that it’s resolved. There may be some people who are still seeing …

How do you get 13 Authoritative Oneboxes across the US with a one page website and take the afternoon off earlier? Google Mapspam, of course. I am such a glutton for the gritty details I could not resist following the trail laid down in the Google Groups for Business Mapspam report yesterday. I think I …

Update 6:00 pm 10/15/08 Maps Guide Jen has commented below: Looks like the team was able to get a fix through faster than expected. Most people who were experiencing this error should find that it’s resolved. There may be some people who are still seeing a server error. Those people should file a reinclusion request …

Searchengineland has published my newest installment in the ongoing series on hijackings at Google Maps: Problems Continue With Google Local Business Listings. The same hijackers that hit the florist industry hijacked the local listings of major brands like Mariott, Hertz, Avis and Thrifty changing location, url and business name. The change of business name was such …

Steve Espinosa has some interesting preliminary research on the relative click thru rates of a #1 listing in the Local 10-Pack and a simultaneous #1 listing in organic. The organic listing showed 1.6x the click thru of the the Local 10 Pack listing. As it is preliminary research and only looked at click thru not …

This posting from yesterday’s Google Maps Business Owners Group was of interest to me. The Local Business Center has been broken for several weeks, preventing many business owners from updating listings. There have been numerous reports in the Groups of this problem. As noted in the comment, when a business attempts to update an LBC …

In Friday’s InformationWeek there is an article detailing “bug that could let hackers use Google Maps to infiltrate Google, Google Mail, or Google Apps accounts“. According to the article, a frame injection attack could be used to phish login credentials from Google users via Maps: The Butler Group Adrian ‘pagvac’ Pastor, a security researcher with …

I received the following phishing email: From: reactivation@google.com Subject: Please Update Your Billing Information. Date: October 11, 2008 12:44:39 PM EDT To: mike@blumenthals.com Hello, Our attempt to charge your credit card for your outstanding Google AdWords account balance was declined. Your account is still open. However, your ads have been suspended. Once we are able …