Mike Blumenthal

It has been just over a month since Google My Business rolled out Google Websites worldwide. It appears that as of a few minutes ago, Google has passed a quarter of million sites built using the tool. That is roughly 40,000 sites per week, an average of 5681 per day since introduction. In the first …

Google, the past few days, has been rolling out a new capability with the down load Insights feature that now allows for spreadsheet data to be downloaded about Photos and Phone Calls in addition to the general Insights data that has been previously available. The feature, generally available since April, now allows additional details focusing …

Updated: Saturday July 1th Q: Has Messaging been launched as a product? Yes, Google has confirmed that it is now launched in the U.S. Q: Does every dashboard have Messaging? It is rolling out now to US users but should be in all US dashboards shortly. Q: Is the release worldwide? No, it is coming first to the …

Update: Google has confirmed that Messaging is officially rolling out. See the Messaging FAQ here. There have been numerous reports today of Google Messaging, the direct from Knowledge Panel SMS chat feature, rolling out more broadly. Whether this is an early rollout or a late test, it is hard to know as Google has not …

Many have asked whether Google would monetize Posts (or Websites, or Messaging or Insights or…). My thinking is that they will not monetize it directly but will use it as a reason for a business to come back to the Google My Business Dashboard where they can sell them Adwords. And not actually Adwords but …

Google, just off releasing a raft of new products and still testing others, has significantly updated the monthly Insights email that is being sent to GMB account owners. This email, one of many email notifications that the GMB is sending out, has signficantly more information than the previous email. Particularly this new email sends specific …

First reported last week on Twitter by Thibault Adda , I am now seeing a new front page GMB dashboard interface that not only allows a business to edit their listing but to get ready access to uploading photos, respond to reviews and be taken to the dashboard for more Insights. Google has long supported …

I was feeling lazy and running a little late so rather than grabbing BART in San Francisco I grabbed an Uber to the airport today. As I typically do, I asked the driver how Uber was treating him given the recent firing of his boss… He grumbled and said they sucked and it was getting …

On June 13th Google introduced Google Website, their single page web builder for (very) small businesses, worldwide. The product had been in testing since last year and appears to be targeted primarily at developing countries. How is it going two weeks on? How many sites have been built? I have been tracking the daily increase …

In a post on the Google My Business forum, Google allowed the sharing of a link to a form to for multi-location chains to express their interest in testing multi-location sharing of Posts. They note on the form: Posts for large multi-location businesses Posting across multiple locations is currently not supported in Google My Business. …