Mike Blumenthal

Yelp is attempting to fix their lack of accurate hours by encouraging the input of special hours for Holidays. Yelp, for all of their consumer strengths in reviews, has been woefully behind in getting accurate business hours from their restaurants. More than once I have selected a restaurant that was stated as opened in Yelp …

This falls into the “learn something new everyday in local” category…. fellow Top Contributor Treebles (a more knowledgeable Google Mapping/MyBusiness expert you will not find) advised me that Google publishes their Streetview update schedule for the year and it includes details as to which countries, states and cities they will be visiting. Who knew? You …

Phil Barnhart, Director of Marketing at NehMedia, reported out a new test version of Google’s Website Builder. The product appears to have a few upgrades from the previous version I reviewed in January. As Phil noted in his post, it still is limited in many ways: It’s not ready for prime-time – there are no …

Should you add city to your business name at Google? This question recently came in from John Simonson from Webstream Dynamics at the Local U forum (paywall): A (small) multi-location retailer who just starting using Yext was told by a Yext rep to append to their business name their city so to distinguish between their …

Google Local has been on a tear lately with tests being reported on a regular, almost daily basis. Two that really caught my eye were local restaurant results found by Sergey Alakov and the other by Kevin Indig (h/t Megan Hannay). These many tests are a testament to Google’s continual effort to gain audience and more importantly, …

Here are some places that wrote/spoke/recorded last week on the inter webs: Google and Local Search Success – a great conversation with Joy Hawkins about Google Local, tips for success, editing and rank as well as a discussion about her new Expert’s Guide to Local SEO, Also available as a podcast. Video: Last Week in Local …

Brian Barwig of Integrated Digital Marketing has pointed out that Google has been rolling out a number of updates to the Goggle My Business Dashboard. The latest is one that provides an improved, easily accessible menu to the left had side of a the listing view. The new menu surfaces both listing and account specific …

Here are some other articles and podcasts from last week that appeared elsewhere: Constructing the Enterprise Priority List for Local Search – Streetlight Magazine – In our biweekly chat with David Mihm and I discuss a local tactics for enterprises. “I think some local managers in corporations are getting pushback as to why their local traffic is falling, …

The scuttlebutt in the world of Local SEO has long been that Google Insights was inaccurate and unhelpful as a guide to consumer behaviors. But is the newish Insights a better guide? How accurate is it and how can we test it? Prior to the rollout of the Google MyBusiness dashboard in June of 2014, the …

Update 5/8: And the answer is 100! I continued testing and determined that if attempting to use 101 characters, the edit gets rejected with a Please enter fewer characters message: My exploration inside the Google Spam Hall of Shame made me curious exactly how long a business name could be. While I have yet to find the …