Mike Blumenthal

It appears that Google is discontinuing Google SMS in the Google My Business dashboard and in doing so leaving large companies in the lurch. Google My Business has yet to make a statement but it appears that the GMB SMS feature, which preceded their new App based messaging, is soon to be on the chopping …

Google has the unique ability to look like they are doing something about systemic problems in Local when in reality it is just misdirection. Spam reporting is but one flagrant example of this. I recently reported some obvious spam. Any effing idiot could see that it is spam and yet my edit was denied. #ShameOnGoogle …

Who knew? Near Me searches peak on the weekends. In October, I noted that Near Me searches, while generally going up, had a distinct seasonal peaks in July and December. Actually more careful analysis shows those peaks to fall around the 4th of July and the week right after Christmas.  Both correspond with high travel …

Google My Business is testing a new, direct in the GMB App messaging capability. This was noted by Casey Bryan(from down under) on Twitter and confirmed by Steven Johns in the UK: This is new! I’ve just turned on messaging for my #GoogleMyBusiness listing 👩‍💻 pic.twitter.com/F2NLakoZRS — Casey Bryan (@CaseyABryan) December 7, 2018 I have …

Over the past year we  have seen the expansion of Google’s Reserve with Google call to action in all of their local products. It was never very clear to me which categories were eligible for Reserve with Google  or which might get it in the future. Joel Headley of PatientPop recently shared a link to …

Google Maps announced yesterday that searchers can now follow their favorite businesses and be alerted to offer and event Posts from that business.  I have long believed that Google Posts is a solid investment of a business’s time as Posts show up in a brand search, in the local finder and on keyword searches in …

This is my third post in the “who the f knows” series. Google has rarely been accused of great wordsmithing. But they have been accused of testing. In this case it appears that they are testing wordsmithing. Seeing the schedule/book/make an appointment CTA in the 3 pack motivated me, like any rational local searcher,  to …

I will be heading out on vacation on Friday so my production will be non existent for the next month or so. But if you haven’t heard enough of me for the past few days here are some other tidbits I worked on across the interwebs: Google and the On-SERP Experience: We’re Just Gettin’ Warmed …

This is my second post in the “who the f knows” series. And it relates to Google now showing the book or schedule button in the 3 pack. Or not showing as the case may be. When your boss comes and sees you and asks why are your booking buttons not showing you can either …

Transactions in Local Search via Google’s Reserve with Google tool have historically been limited to Knowledge Panel results. It appears that this transactional capabilities being expanded or will be expanded to include embedding calls to action directly into the Local 3-Pack search results. And given Google’s obvious expansion of the Reserve with Google we can …