Mike Blumenthal

There had been recent reports in Google Groups for Maps and elsewhere of review gone missing. Intrepid Maps Guide Jen reports today that they have been found: Hi B.J. The Maps team implemented a fix for your listing (and others that were similarly losing reviews). You should find that they are now all appearing. Let …

From the Yahoo Geo Blog: We’re proud to introduce a new version of Yahoo! Maps, which includes an update to Yahoo! Local Search integration, usability, and Print Page improvements. These past few months we’ve focused on improving the usability of Yahoo! Maps, and some of the modifications we encourage you to try include: Improved Local …

Yahoo! Local adds Web References and Imports Reviews – Stephen Espinosa, stephenespinosa.com Yahoo! Local seems to be taking a step in a direction that will indirectly help SEO’s by adding web references and importing reviews into their local listings. Google on One Boxes and Grouping Result Types to Fill Informational Needs– William Slawski, SeoBytheSea.com A …

There has been a large uptick in reports in the Google Maps for Business Groups of wrong URL’s being assigned to a business listing in Google Maps and the Local Ten Packs. These reports often speak of nefarious competitors, hijacked listings or lost business. I have written about this problem in the “archeological” past (here …

Earlier in the month, Google upgraded the Local Business Center with additional communication options: A number of readers expressed some confusion about the feature. Maps Guide Jen was kind enough to elucidate its limited function in an email exchange that we had recently. Mike: Could you give us any insight into the new Business Communications …

David Mihm has the best single source for information from SMX Local. Hopefully over the next few weeks I will be able to summarize the research that he, I and a number of others have been doing elucidating the correlations of measurable attributes to Map Ranking.

Martijn of martijnbeijk.com points out that Google has added back the ability to fix an incorrect marker location in the Local Business Center. The new implementation is cleaner with a larger map view. This feature was removed when the LBC was upgraded in June and its absence caused a large number of complaints and questions …

Our formal business name is Blumenthals.com but the Local Business Center does not allow the use of a web url in the business name field. I didn’t worry too much about it other than to be slightly annoyed. It has forced me to address what a business name should look like in the age of …

Google has rolled out a UI upgrade to the map side view of Google Maps. The new interface provides a simplified single search box to businesses & places of interest and a new cleaner interface to directions. Unfortunately, the Text View that is the default view when Maps is entered via the Onebox, still retains …

Having been engaged in research on local, prepping my talk for SMXLocal & traveling, I haven’t paid that much attention to the bowels of Google Maps of late, so this could have been present for quite a while. But Google has added a new tab to the More Info display for a business record in …