{"id":8852,"date":"2011-01-17T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T10:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=8852"},"modified":"2011-01-17T07:44:13","modified_gmt":"2011-01-17T11:44:13","slug":"loci-2010-matt-mcgee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/17\/loci-2010-matt-mcgee\/","title":{"rendered":"Loci 2010 – Matt McGee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt McGee needs little introduction to most readers here. He has been involved, perhaps longer than I, in the local space as a consultant, practitioner and writer and was one of my first virtual friends in the space. I have had the good fortune to have had Matt become a real friend and we often “tour” together with GetListed Local University<\/a>. He maintains his own blog Small Business Search Marketing<\/a>, is Executive News Editor at Search Engine Land<\/a> and a moderator and editor at Sphinn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His sense of internet marketing is keen and one that I listen to and trust even if having him in my social graph at Hotpot skews the results to pizza.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I’ve been enjoying the previous articles in this series. I don’t agree with all the opinions on what was most important in 2010, but that’s surely part of the fun. I do agree that 2010 was a big year for the local industry. Marissa Mayer, one of the most important people at Google, was “promoted” to a position overseeing local and mobile. Google launched Places Search, a whole new take on local search results. Bing made some very cool upgrades to its maps product. Facebook took a real step into the local space with Facebook Places. And so much more. 2010 was a BIG year for local\/mobile.<\/p>\n

But for all the progress, I’m still struck by how undeveloped the space is as a whole. So, at the risk of having you call me “Debbie Downer” (that’s a Saturday Night Live reference, Professor), I’d like to list 10 things that are still missing, broken, or unsolved in local at the end of 2010.<\/p>\n

1- Google Places is still filled with bugs, from merged listings to problems with reviews and so much more. I have a gut feeling that spam is somewhat better than it’s been, but there are so many more problems for such an important piece of the local puzzle.<\/p>\n

2- It’s still borderline impossible for the average person to track local\/”pack” traffic in Google Analytics. There have been several articles that teach semi-complicated methods for doing this, but those articles shouldn’t be needed.<\/p>\n

3- On a related note, the Google Places business dashboard remains mostly useless. The data is several days old and the stripped-down referral keyword list remains often frustrating. It would be better for Places to integrate directly into Google Analytics.<\/p>\n

4- Bing still doesn’t offer any stats in its Local Listing Center. Nor does Yahoo.<\/p>\n

5- Google still appears to be much more interested in acquiring small businesses (as Google users) than they are in actually supporting the ones already in the fold.<\/p>\n

6- We still can’t manage multiple Places listings (for different clients) from a single interface. (Bing and Yahoo also don’t offer this functionality.)<\/p>\n

7- There’s still no effective SEO\/visibility solution for businesses without a location or for businesses that need to hide their location. Google’s product for those businesses seems to do more harm than good, and Bing doesn’t even have a product for them.<\/p>\n

8- Neither Google, Bing, nor Yahoo allow a local business to integrate their Facebook and\/or Twitter content into local business listings. I think Citysearch is the only local provider that has this functionality. Why?<\/p>\n

9- There’s still no real solution to the call-tracking dilemma. SMBs want\/need to track calls, but multiple phone numbers wreaks havoc on the trust of your primary business listing.<\/p>\n

10- Neither Google, Bing, nor Yahoo provide any review management tools inside the business listing dashboards.<\/p>\n

I’ll stop there with a “thanks” to Mike for letting me contribute to this series, and a “thanks” to you for reading. Hopefully we’ll see some or all of these things improve in 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt McGee needs little introduction to most readers here. He has been involved, perhaps longer than I, in the local space as a consultant, practitioner and writer and was one of my first virtual friends in the space. I have had the good fortune to have had Matt become a real friend and we often …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-loci-significant-articles-local-search"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t