Mike Blumenthal

Billion Dollar Bully, “a documentary on marketing giant Yelp and their $3.6 billion racket against small business owners”, has reached its Kickstarter funding goal of $90,000. To read more about their plans for finishing the film visit their website. You can see the documentary trailer here.  The “Yelp is an extortionist” meme is one that continues …

Amazon has been moving steadily into local via their numerous local marketplaces; home services, same day product delivery, restaurant takeout, grocery deliver and hotel bookings.  Today they upped their hotel booking game with the rollout of Amazon Destinations as part of local.amazon.com. The website doesn’t go for the every hotel in the world approach of TripAdvisor and is focused …

There probably isn’t an image of your business that gets seen more by potential customers and searchers than your Google My Business profile image. There isn’t a single image that has more impact on searcher’s behaviors. And there isn’t an image in the online world that is harder to “get right.” Read my thoughts on …

I have previously noted the growth of “near me” and “near by” in mobile search. With the advent of mobile computing those phrases have moved rapidly into the search lexicon among phone searches. In a recent article at Think With Google, Matt Lawson noted: Google search interest in “near me” has increased 34X since 2011 …

Barry Schwartz noted a Google Maps Forum post by Abby announcing the full roll-out of the updated Google Maps for desktop and the deprecation of the old Google Maps. In its place, for slow connection or old browsers, will be a Google Maps Lite Mode, a slimmed down version of the new Maps that eliminates 3D …

I have been watching mobile Local Pack results for the past several weeks. This Guide to Google Mobile Local Pack Results catalogued what I was seeing across iPhone results as of several weeks ago. I am now seeing indications that the Local Stack, which requires an additional click to get to the business information, may be heading our …

Browserstack has an online tool that allows responsive design testing across different mobile devices. I was curious if it would catch some of the display differences that Google has in representing the local pack across devices with different OSs and display sizes. The differences are interesting and legion. There are some caveats like the fact …

There are several things you should or probably already do know about me: – I am not particularly fashion driven. In fact I all too often just plain out forget my belt or something. – I am not typically an early adopter. I have been in the computer industry long enough (35 years) to know …

Appleinsider erroneously reported earlier in the week that Maps in iOS 8.3 lets business owners claim POIs, removes select TripAdvisor reviews. As Andrew Shotland has pointed out it is true that business owners can now claim their listing via the Apple Maps App but AppleInsider was wrong in that Tripadvisor and Booking.com are still present. …

It appear that Apple, at least in the hotel world, is testing the use of reviews beyond their traditional partner Yelp. AppleInsider reported this morning the appearance of reviews from TripAdvisor and Booking.com on a limited number of hotel listings within Apple Maps. It makes sense that Apple would expand their review partnership beyond Yelp. …