Mike Blumenthal

Service businesses have been in a tizzy of late worrying about the possible demise of the local pack and its replacement by the Home Services Ad format. This would effectively monetize all of the prime real estate in local search and interject Google into their quoting process. Maybe this screen shot will provide a small safe …

Join Mary Bowling, David Mihm and me for the newest Deep Dive in Local Video. Each week we share our thoughts about the critical news and events in the past week in local. In the second half of that weekly video  we take a deeper strategic and tactical dive into one interesting area that caught their attention during the week and …

Earlier today Google announced an educational and legal attack on deceptive robo calling that has and continues to run rampant in the local space. Google mentioned in their blog today that they had filed a lawsuit. I have just read through the filing and it reads like one of my rants against this sort of …

Update: Details of Google’s Robo Calling Lawsuit Against Local Lighthouse are now available. Apparently Google is not going to take the abuse from robo callers any more. Today Google is publicly starting to educate the public about rob caller’s abuses in Google’s name AND has apparently initiated its first law suit against a search marketing …

Scott Hendison of Search Commander in Portland, reported some strange goings on with Google My Business today for clients that were using location extensions in Adwords – a consolidated interface using the current bulk upload interface that presented both the local listing and the AdWords account. From Scott’s post: TWO of three clients that I’ve …

Negative reviews are the one of the hardest issues that SMBs have to confront. Learning how to respond to them effectively is best learned by sharing amongst ourselves and with these same SMBs. So I wanted to try some participatory blogging to tap the collective consciousness about what makes for a good response to a …

I have always wondered about triggers and motives that lay beneath consumer’s desire to leave reviews for local merchants. Fortunately large scale consumer research is now relatively cheap and easy with Google Surveys. I just published the first summary of my search into the question, When and Why do Consumers Leave Reviews for Local Businesses at …

Google is releasing a new app today on Android and shortly on iOS that upgrades the mobile Google My Business experience. The goal of the upgrade was to make the interface and visuals more similar to Google search and provide better feedback as to error states. New features: Improved Editor Easier to find your listing …

Google just released several iOS app updates including the Google Plus app which now supports Collections, Google Maps with an improved review flow and most significantly Google StreetView which now allows both the creation and uploading of PhotoSpheres. PhotoSpheres are the poor man’s version of Business View (as of today called Street View | Trusted), Google’s professionally …

Google is testing Knowledge Panel feature, Place Actions Forms, to allow scheduling via Intuit’s Demand Force with appointment based businesses. You can test it yourself via this search: cahaba valley animal clinic. (h/t Mary Bowling of Ignitor Digital). According to Demand Force “By completing the business forms earlier in the search process, your clients will have …