Mike Blumenthal

Inside the U.S. Antitrust Probe of Google (paywall – to get to it use this search result to get through)  is a look by the Wall Street Journal at the FTC staff report inadvertently released to them under a FOIA request. The staff findings “concluded that Google’s conduct has resulted—and will result—in real harm to consumers and to …

@mblumenthal @serenasaitto I don’t really get why it upsets people. No one is forcing them to pay extra & @Uber is not a monopoly. — Mike Okhravi (@mikeokhravi) December 18, 2014 I have been thinking about this question a lot since receiving the above tweet. Users do have a choice to either use or not …

I had several “retail” interactions over the past few weeks that rubbed me the wrong way. I went to rent a car from Enterprise, the only car rental in Olean, for about the 10th time this year. Other than knowing my name, they treated me like a new customer, signing all the forms, holding a …

Reuters has an exclusive report that Google’s next version of Anroid will be car ready for use without a phone. “Allowing drivers to enjoy all the benefits of the Internet without even plugging in their smartphones“. I have a hard time seeing this happening.  For a number of reasons. Cars, like the iPhone, are integrated …

Google has long been the top dog in local search. Along the way they bested IYPs, Driving Direction sites and Mapping companies. Google left more than a few, like CitySearch and Yahoo Local, among the walking dead and severely limited the growth options for the likes of  the Groupons and Navteqs of the world. They have …

Over the past several days, a number of Google “annoyances” have cropped up…. sometimes it is amazing where a company like Google chooses to put its head…. that I wanted to get off my chest. 1- Did you know that Google’s bulk upload, even though upgraded multiple times with a raft of new ownership, management …

I wanted to circle back to the call tracking issues in local. In my previous post, I wrote a great deal about where it doesn’t work. I also have wanted to cover where and how it does work. It made sense to me to ask someone in the industry to put it together so I …

Google has just announced several updates to the mobile capabilities of My Business. Business Owners can now respond to reviews via the MyBusiness mobile app (Android today, iOS very soon) Call Analytics from within MyBusiness – this was a feature that was rolled out temporarily last month, but is now (permanently) available in mobile and desktop …

Update: We have sold out of the early bird ticket special. Stay tuned. The most comprehensive and advanced Local Search conference.  Advanced LocalU is the only conference of its kind and provides you with the knowledge and tools you need to help your business and the businesses of your clients to prosper in local search. …

Finding duplicates for the same listing with the Google local index is critical. Unfortunately the new Maps is terrible at it and G+ creates too many false positives. You can revert to the old Maps and its increasingly quirky behavior or MapMaker to find the duplicates in the Google Local index but both of those …