Mike Blumenthal

Many in the local search space have characterized the Google Local Guides program as a cheap imitation of Yelp’s Elite reviewer program. I suppose in some sense that is true but it appears to me that Google is bringing their own approach to the program and scaling it aggressively in a way that seems uniquely …

Chris Moreno of LocalLeads.com sent me this audio recording of a scammer pretending to be Google in their voice message to a small business. Chris asks what can be done to stop these folks. Very little given the current regulatory environment which pretty much takes a hands off approach to these sorts of scams. Education …

It appears that Yahoo seems to have forgotten that they have the Yelp review API or update it so infrequently that it is effectively useless. The reviews Yahoo is showing for many businesses are often 3 to 11 months out of date. Last year to much hooey and horse puckey, Yahoo “upgraded” their review system to grab reviews …

For a company that now professes to be mobile first Google’s mobile review experience seems opaque and not generally accessible. It’s a Google Maps app only affair and if you are an iPhone user you might not know that. But they are making small strides in the app.  I just downloaded a February 26th update …

Google is leaving no stone unturned in their effort to find new ways to 1)show ads and 2)redirect users back to Google properties to see those ads. Brad Brewer of Brewer Digital Marketing originally shared this screen shot on G+ showing the addition of a link to Google’s hotel search from the Knowledge Panel on …

Update 3/5: Dan notes the response he received from support: “We attempted to retain the review itself and could not do so as a “snippet”, though it still stands as a wonderful review for your business. We removed the confusing snippet from your account.” Update 2:27 PM (PST) 2/27: Googler Jade Wang just posted this on …

TechCrunch and SEL are reporting Google testing of  a live chat button appearing on business’s local Knowledge Panel. This program is apparently part of a test with a limited number of businesses. It has been around at least since mid November when an invitee asked me about problems he was having with the test. Here …

Google has just announced a major update to Google My Business that finally rationalizes photos and their use across all of the places where your listing is shown. From the post: Starting today, you can tell us which image you’d like to appear when customers search for your business on Google. Just log in to Google My …

Reviews are hard. Particularly at Yelp. Most Americans have no desire to leave a review. When you combine that fact with fragmented market share and review site policies it becomes even more difficult. Here are some numbers to put the difficulties with Yelp in perspective. Let’s start with emailing 100 of your customers to calculate how …