Mike Blumenthal

Last week we learned of both a new Google My Business feature (in beta), ‘Add Product Collection’ and new GMB Insight’s data, ‘Branded Searches’. Both are interesting features individually but together, they are even more interesting. The GMB Branded searches, reported at SEL by Barry Schwartz, is apparently being rolled out. As noted in the …

Near Me searches have generally been on the uptick since the advent of the iPhone. But there have been the occasional downturns that were misinterpreted as a break in the trend. Now that we have more data, it appears that those downturns and subsequent peaks are seasonal lows and highs of a generally increasing  usage …

Last week, off and on, we started seeing the use of the image carousel in the mobile Local Finder.  This is a format that has long been present in the restaurant search results. The carousels have been seen off and on since then, showing up and then disappearing, only to show once again. When they …

It appears that Google updating the mobile Local Finder to the “restaurant style” carousel slider type display. Earlier in the day Phil Barnhart pointed out that he was seeing this new display on dog grooming. I started seeing it initially on Chrome on iPhone as well across  many categories and by the end of the …

TLDR; Google has reduced the visibility of posts in both mobile and desktop search while simultaneously increasing their reach by now showing them (at least some of the time) in Google Maps. At the end of September, Google upended the visibility of Posts on both the desktop and mobile. On the desktop posts have been …

At Google I/O a preview of Google’s Assistant Duplex, Google’s AI based human sounding  digital assistant that can auto create reservations, set off a maelstrom of both interest and criticism. The Announcement from the Google My Business Forum Hey everyone! At our annual conference Google I/O, we showed a preview of a new feature in …

I was sitting on my office, doing “research” and did the same local search (Custom Jewelry Design Williamsville) on my iPhone in three different Google mobile environments; Safari, Chrome and the Google App. All within seconds of each other. Next time your boss comes and asks you what’s up with the local search results, throw …

Last December we started seeing thumbnails in the mobile local organic results. What was obviously a test then became more visible over the summer and starting last month, became widely visible. It is a mobile only feature that made me and several clients curious. How was it triggered? Why & when does it show? Why …

Last week Google, in a disappointing action,  moved Google Posts from front in center of the Knowledge Panel to the bottom of the KP in organic and to the middle of the search results in mobile. Obviously, this is likely to cause a reduction on conversions as the Posts are less visible and lower on …

TLDR: ~7% of businesses world wide that have verified their business listing are using Google Posts and roughly 26% of verified business in the US were doing so. On a percentage basis the use of posts was highest, around 30%, in Spain, Italy and Japan. The developed world has significantly more updake of this feature …