Mike Blumenthal

My wife was extolling the virtues of Dried Plums as a sweetener in her homemade ketchup the other day. She was convinced that they were better than prunes for the task. Little did she realize that “in 2001, plum growers in the United States were authorised by the government to call prunes ‘dried plums’. Due …

Talk about walk and talking in Local at the same time, Google Local has been on a testing tear with the Local Pack. Lots of reports of new and different pack layouts over the past few weeks. A special nod to Sergey Alakov, Barry Schwartz and Jennifer Slegg and the many other observant souls who …

After 10 years writing about Local Search, at one point I wondered  if I could keep the fire in my belly. But I have realized that there is always something exciting, always more to learn and its just a question of finding the people to learn from. What I have also recognized is that sometimes just sitting down …

Andrew of Andrews Lock & Key deserves more than a link and a citation and a little bit of publicity for his efforts but that is all that I have to offer since I don’t live in Mesa, AZ. Locksmith spam has long been an issue in Google Maps and has been the baine of consumers …

The LocalU Advanced conference in New Orleans on October 20th (networking party) and 21st (all day conference) promises to be an incredible event. The line up of speakers is amazing BUT the EARLY BIRD Pricing is ending on October 7th so you will need to sign up soon to get the lower price. We don’t …

Google has just released the Google MyBusiness API V3.1 . The update brings real time push notification for the ever changing listing updates AND when a new review is written for a location. These real time updates with push capabilities will allow businesses monitoring their listing via a dashboard to be actively notified of status changes, …

This week, 10 years ago, I published my first post. My blogging has directly led to 3 new careers1 and a bevy of new and wonderful friends.   During that time I have written over 2100 posts here, at  LocalU and now at GetFivestars. Early and trusted friendships with Matt McGee, Bill Slawski and David Mihm helped me learn …

Where is Local Search going? How do you get there? Join us at LocalU Advanced where we will take a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of the bleeding edge of local search. The upcoming LocalU Advanced takes place the night of October 20th and all day October 21st. To give you a sense …

If you ever are thinking that there isn’t opportunity in Local Search Optimization just head over to the BBB and do a search for Google. More opportunity than you can shake a stick at and with some very original names too! You can’t fault Chris the Google Guy for trying but if it were me …

As a consumer I like and use Yelp. I don’t like their business practices but as a consumer it’s my goto restaurant resource these days when traveling. I also like messaging, particularly iMessage, as my way of communicating with the 15 or so people I love and work with and often travel to see. So I was baffled …