Mike Blumenthal

My wife was extolling the virtues of Dried Plums as a sweetener in her homemade ketchup the other day. She was convinced that they were better than prunes for the task. Little did she realize that “in 2001, plum growers in the United States were authorised by the government to call prunes ‘dried plums’. Due …

Yelp reviews, after showing briefly in the new “Reviews from the web” area of the Knowledge Panel, have once again disappeared from site. It would seem that TripAdvisor aggregate reviews are also conspicuously absent. Google must work on the premise of ask for forgiveness not permission. Unfortunately it does not appear that Jeremy Stoppleman (of delete …

Google has yet to make any announcements vis a vis providing business photos to the Knowledge Panel via Image Search rather than from the GMB and Google Maps. Whether the change is permanent or “just a test” we do not know. It is very widespread though and appears to be the new normal. Google’s new …

A very brief history: Rich Snippet review stars have had a tough week. Starting last Wednesday I noticed they were missing on a few searches I was using in a demo. By Friday, the reports of their disappearance were widespread. Interestingly not all instances of the review stars disappeared, even during the “darkest” hour. Many …

Moses and Rooth Attorneys at Law is a two location criminal defense practice with one office in central Orlando and one in New Smyrna Beach on the coast. I wanted to do a visual mapping comparison of pre and post Pigeon impacts like I did with Barbara Oliver Jewelry & Co. to see the impact of Pigeon both …

It has been a little over 2 months since the Pigeon update. And while quality issues continue, with some listings taking a hit and others gaining, Barbara Oliver & Co Jewelry seems to have netted out with slight gains in web traffic similar to what she saw immediately post update. Her total web traffic was …

The recent Google Local Update (aka Pigeon) was very disruptive. Although as I wrote at the time and reiterate, only when we actually look at measurable results can we both understand its actual impact and perhaps understand more of what was happening and what changes Google has made. There were two main parts to the update …

Google is apparently testing a new, cleaner front page layout that will affect both local and regular search results. First reported by Dan Barker on March 5th, Searchnewz is reporting that they will be rolled out.  I am now seeing this new layout on Safari for Mac. The differences: The removal of the underlines from …