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----New Version of Places Categories----Google English (US)(PfB) Google English (CA)(PfB) Google French (CA)(PfB) Google English (GB)(PfB) Google English (AU)(PfB

MIKE BLUMENTHAL

With rollout of iOS 9 Apple is becoming ever more important in local search. This fact struck home early this year when a major theme park contacted me and said that people were piling up at their service entrance instead of their front gate. Turned . Read more. Mike Blumenthal in Google+ Local, Reviews September 11, 2016. HACK: SEEING GOOGLE QUESTIONS & ANSWERS ON THE DESKTOP From a management point of view, one of the more annoying attributes of the new Google Questions & Answers product is that it is only live on Android via Google Maps and in mobile browsers on iOS and Android. There is a are several hacks to allow you to see and respond to this

feature

GOOGLE MAPS AND PO BOXES Updated 11/05/09- Authoritative word on PO Boxes from Joel Headley of Google: PO Boxes have proven unverifiable and are called out as such. We’re working on providing the right solution for businesses that need to hide a home address, however. The poor man’s virtual office, the PO Box, has been singled out in the new 5 TIPS FOR RESPONDING (OR NOT) TO “FAKE” REVIEWS 2- If you can’t follow them, for whatever reason, DON’T RESPOND. 3- Sometimes there is no adequate response to a review. You really can’t own a problem detailed in a “fake” review any more than you can talk reason to a crazy person. 4- Sometimes, the best defense is a good offense. Do your job, encourage loyal customers to leave

good

LIST OF GOOGLE MAPS CATEGORIES List of Google Maps categories. Update 02/11/10: These Google LBC categories have now been placed in a searchable database too located on the Google LBC Categories page of my website. Update 12/20/09: I have a new list of current categories at Google Local Business Center Categories – The Complete List. Update 10/13/2009: If you have found HOW ACCURATE IS GOOGLE MY BUSINESS INSIGHTS? The scuttlebutt in the world of Local SEO has long been that Google Insights was inaccurate and unhelpful as a guide to consumer behaviors. But is the newish Insights a better guide? How accurate is it and how can we test it? Prior to the rollout of the Google MyBusiness dashboard in June of GOOGLE MAPPING TOOL AVAILABILITY MATRIX Barry Schwartz has pointed out that last week, Google Maps added a chart showing which Google Maps services were available in which country. Maps is a global product that is offered in 200 some odd countries and there are a range of features available depending on licensing and data availability. Thus the matrix is incredibly GOOGLE ANSWER BOX: CALL 650-253-0000 FOR SUPPORT Google Answer Box: Call 650-253-0000 For Support. When Dan Leibson showed me this Google Answer Box I thought either that the Google Answer Box had a wicked sense of humor or maybe, just maybe, it knew something that I didn’t. Given the recent court decision in Germany ordering Google to “stop ignoring customer emails and start offering

a

GOOGLE ON REVIEWS: ASKING FOR THEM IS OK, SOLICITING THEM Google on Reviews: Asking for them is OK, Soliciting them is BAD. What is the difference between asking for reviews and soliciting them? It seems that a number of SMBS have discovered that one leads to jail time. Google has been throwing out reviews left and right of late. This is not a bug but the outcome of a newly aggressive review spam

filter.

CATEGORY SEARCH

----New Version of Places Categories----Google English (US)(PfB) Google English (CA)(PfB) Google French (CA)(PfB) Google English (GB)(PfB) Google English (AU)(PfB

MIKE BLUMENTHAL

With rollout of iOS 9 Apple is becoming ever more important in local search. This fact struck home early this year when a major theme park contacted me and said that people were piling up at their service entrance instead of their front gate. Turned . Read more. Mike Blumenthal in Google+ Local, Reviews September 11, 2016. HACK: SEEING GOOGLE QUESTIONS & ANSWERS ON THE DESKTOP From a management point of view, one of the more annoying attributes of the new Google Questions & Answers product is that it is only live on Android via Google Maps and in mobile browsers on iOS and Android. There is a are several hacks to allow you to see and respond to this

feature

GOOGLE MAPS AND PO BOXES Updated 11/05/09- Authoritative word on PO Boxes from Joel Headley of Google: PO Boxes have proven unverifiable and are called out as such. We’re working on providing the right solution for businesses that need to hide a home address, however. The poor man’s virtual office, the PO Box, has been singled out in the new 5 TIPS FOR RESPONDING (OR NOT) TO “FAKE” REVIEWS 2- If you can’t follow them, for whatever reason, DON’T RESPOND. 3- Sometimes there is no adequate response to a review. You really can’t own a problem detailed in a “fake” review any more than you can talk reason to a crazy person. 4- Sometimes, the best defense is a good offense. Do your job, encourage loyal customers to leave

good

LIST OF GOOGLE MAPS CATEGORIES List of Google Maps categories. Update 02/11/10: These Google LBC categories have now been placed in a searchable database too located on the Google LBC Categories page of my website. Update 12/20/09: I have a new list of current categories at Google Local Business Center Categories – The Complete List. Update 10/13/2009: If you have found HOW ACCURATE IS GOOGLE MY BUSINESS INSIGHTS? The scuttlebutt in the world of Local SEO has long been that Google Insights was inaccurate and unhelpful as a guide to consumer behaviors. But is the newish Insights a better guide? How accurate is it and how can we test it? Prior to the rollout of the Google MyBusiness dashboard in June of GOOGLE MAPPING TOOL AVAILABILITY MATRIX Barry Schwartz has pointed out that last week, Google Maps added a chart showing which Google Maps services were available in which country. Maps is a global product that is offered in 200 some odd countries and there are a range of features available depending on licensing and data availability. Thus the matrix is incredibly GOOGLE ANSWER BOX: CALL 650-253-0000 FOR SUPPORT Google Answer Box: Call 650-253-0000 For Support. When Dan Leibson showed me this Google Answer Box I thought either that the Google Answer Box had a wicked sense of humor or maybe, just maybe, it knew something that I didn’t. Given the recent court decision in Germany ordering Google to “stop ignoring customer emails and start offering

a

GOOGLE ON REVIEWS: ASKING FOR THEM IS OK, SOLICITING THEM Google on Reviews: Asking for them is OK, Soliciting them is BAD. What is the difference between asking for reviews and soliciting them? It seems that a number of SMBS have discovered that one leads to jail time. Google has been throwing out reviews left and right of late. This is not a bug but the outcome of a newly aggressive review spam

filter.

GOOGLE LOCAL SPAM HALL OF FAME: GAME ON! Sometimes even I have my breath taken away by the ability of law firms to attempt to manipulate the Google Local algo but this name (spam? hey maybe this is their name, who knows?) raises the bar for everyone. Just how bad is it? Well there are lots of ways to measure but one is USING GOOGLE REVIEWS ON YOUR WEBSITE The question often comes up whether a business can and should use their Google & Yelp reviews on their website. Leaving aside the value to the user experience for a minute, I was curious about the legal issues involved. A small business would be foolish to MIKE B AROUND THE INTERWEBS Mike B Around the InterWebs. As a reminder, the FeedBurner email feed of my posts is going away. I would suggest that if you want to follow my writing that you subscribe to the Near Media Newsletter where I am joining David Mihm and Greg Sterling to focus on local search, social and commerce. Some recent writings and podcasts: Articles: Amazon LIST OF GOOGLE MAPS CATEGORIES List of Google Maps categories. Update 02/11/10: These Google LBC categories have now been placed in a searchable database too located on the Google LBC Categories page of my website. Update 12/20/09: I have a new list of current categories at Google Local Business Center Categories – The Complete List. Update 10/13/2009: If you have found 11 TIPS TO OPTIMIZE THE NEW GOOGLE QUESTIONS & ANSWERS The new Google Places Questions & Answers offers a lot of potential for both helping and hurting a business. Here are some thoughts on how your business should approach this new and untried feature in the local Knowledge Panel. 1- Get out in front of them. Crowd sourcing can be intimidating to the typical business GOOGLE ROLLING OUT QUESTIONS & ANSWERS Google has announced and started to roll out Questions & Answers, a crowd sourced and business sourced Q & A product for local Knowledge Panels places listings. Tim Capper has a great summary as well that is worth the read. Essentially the product is designed to allow Google to offer additional FAQ type content via the Knowledge Panel that WHICH SITES DO CONSUMERS USE TO FIND A LOCAL BUSINESS? WHY The headwinds that they face may make the goal of competing with Yelp and Google unrealistic. The issues confronting YP.com all revolve around demographics. Firstly there is the issue of Google’s share. On average it was 60.9%. However in the youngest cohort measured in the survey of adults 25 and older Google’s share was almost 80%. THE SOUND OF TROUBLE KNOCKING The Sound of Trouble Knocking – A Call from Google Places India. When Google wants to verify information about a business and when unable to verify it in a fully automated way, they have someone call that business. The calls can result in suspensions and removals from the index (“We do not support this location”). HOW DO DAILY GAS PRICES STAY ACCURATE IN GOOGLE MAPS Price Discovery. Every day OPIS captures station-specific retail gasoline and diesel prices for up to 130,000 service stations throughout the United States. Through exclusive relationships with credit card companies, direct feeds and other survey methods, OPIS is able to provide the most comprehensive and accurate pump prices in the

industry.

HOW TO GET GOOGLE STATUS UPDATE ROBOCALLS FROM 3RD PARTY This Google MyBusiness forum post, pointed out by Joy Hawkins, shows the far reaching impact that local search robo callers have in poisoning the industry. It is amazing to me 1) that we allow our regulatory environment be so lax that these scams continue (ah isn’t laissez faire capitalism grand?) and 2) that Google has

MIKE BLUMENTHAL

With rollout of iOS 9 Apple is becoming ever more important in local search. This fact struck home early this year when a major theme park contacted me and said that people were piling up at their service entrance instead of their front gate. Turned . Read more. Mike Blumenthal in Google+ Local, Reviews September 11, 2016.

CATEGORY SEARCH

----New Version of Places Categories----Google English (US)(PfB) Google English (CA)(PfB) Google French (CA)(PfB) Google English (GB)(PfB) Google English (AU)(PfB USING GOOGLE REVIEWS ON YOUR WEBSITE The question often comes up whether a business can and should use their Google & Yelp reviews on their website. Leaving aside the value to the user experience for a minute, I was curious about the legal issues involved. A small business would be foolish to HACK: SEEING GOOGLE QUESTIONS & ANSWERS ON THE DESKTOP From a management point of view, one of the more annoying attributes of the new Google Questions & Answers product is that it is only live on Android via Google Maps and in mobile browsers on iOS and Android. There is a are several hacks to allow you to see and respond to this

feature

HOW ACCURATE IS GOOGLE MY BUSINESS INSIGHTS? The scuttlebutt in the world of Local SEO has long been that Google Insights was inaccurate and unhelpful as a guide to consumer behaviors. But is the newish Insights a better guide? How accurate is it and how can we test it? Prior to the rollout of the Google MyBusiness dashboard in June of GOOGLE MAPS AND PO BOXES Updated 11/05/09- Authoritative word on PO Boxes from Joel Headley of Google: PO Boxes have proven unverifiable and are called out as such. We’re working on providing the right solution for businesses that need to hide a home address, however. The poor man’s virtual office, the PO Box, has been singled out in the new GOOGLE MAPPING TOOL AVAILABILITY MATRIX Barry Schwartz has pointed out that last week, Google Maps added a chart showing which Google Maps services were available in which country. Maps is a global product that is offered in 200 some odd countries and there are a range of features available depending on licensing and data availability. Thus the matrix is incredibly GOOGLE UPDATES REVIEW CONTENT POLICY Google has just updated the review content guidelines to explicitly prohibit review stations AND employee reviews. The changes to the policy are noted in italics: For instance, as a business owner or employee you should not review your own business or current place of work. Don’t offer money or product to others to write reviews GOOGLE ANSWER BOX: CALL 650-253-0000 FOR SUPPORT Google Answer Box: Call 650-253-0000 For Support. When Dan Leibson showed me this Google Answer Box I thought either that the Google Answer Box had a wicked sense of humor or maybe, just maybe, it knew something that I didn’t. Given the recent court decision in Germany ordering Google to “stop ignoring customer emails and start offering

a

GOOGLE ON REVIEWS: ASKING FOR THEM IS OK, SOLICITING THEM Google on Reviews: Asking for them is OK, Soliciting them is BAD. What is the difference between asking for reviews and soliciting them? It seems that a number of SMBS have discovered that one leads to jail time. Google has been throwing out reviews left and right of late. This is not a bug but the outcome of a newly aggressive review spam

filter.

MIKE BLUMENTHAL

With rollout of iOS 9 Apple is becoming ever more important in local search. This fact struck home early this year when a major theme park contacted me and said that people were piling up at their service entrance instead of their front gate. Turned . Read more. Mike Blumenthal in Google+ Local, Reviews September 11, 2016.

CATEGORY SEARCH

----New Version of Places Categories----Google English (US)(PfB) Google English (CA)(PfB) Google French (CA)(PfB) Google English (GB)(PfB) Google English (AU)(PfB USING GOOGLE REVIEWS ON YOUR WEBSITE The question often comes up whether a business can and should use their Google & Yelp reviews on their website. Leaving aside the value to the user experience for a minute, I was curious about the legal issues involved. A small business would be foolish to HACK: SEEING GOOGLE QUESTIONS & ANSWERS ON THE DESKTOP From a management point of view, one of the more annoying attributes of the new Google Questions & Answers product is that it is only live on Android via Google Maps and in mobile browsers on iOS and Android. There is a are several hacks to allow you to see and respond to this

feature

HOW ACCURATE IS GOOGLE MY BUSINESS INSIGHTS? The scuttlebutt in the world of Local SEO has long been that Google Insights was inaccurate and unhelpful as a guide to consumer behaviors. But is the newish Insights a better guide? How accurate is it and how can we test it? Prior to the rollout of the Google MyBusiness dashboard in June of GOOGLE MAPS AND PO BOXES Updated 11/05/09- Authoritative word on PO Boxes from Joel Headley of Google: PO Boxes have proven unverifiable and are called out as such. We’re working on providing the right solution for businesses that need to hide a home address, however. The poor man’s virtual office, the PO Box, has been singled out in the new GOOGLE MAPPING TOOL AVAILABILITY MATRIX Barry Schwartz has pointed out that last week, Google Maps added a chart showing which Google Maps services were available in which country. Maps is a global product that is offered in 200 some odd countries and there are a range of features available depending on licensing and data availability. Thus the matrix is incredibly GOOGLE UPDATES REVIEW CONTENT POLICY Google has just updated the review content guidelines to explicitly prohibit review stations AND employee reviews. The changes to the policy are noted in italics: For instance, as a business owner or employee you should not review your own business or current place of work. Don’t offer money or product to others to write reviews GOOGLE ANSWER BOX: CALL 650-253-0000 FOR SUPPORT Google Answer Box: Call 650-253-0000 For Support. When Dan Leibson showed me this Google Answer Box I thought either that the Google Answer Box had a wicked sense of humor or maybe, just maybe, it knew something that I didn’t. Given the recent court decision in Germany ordering Google to “stop ignoring customer emails and start offering

a

GOOGLE ON REVIEWS: ASKING FOR THEM IS OK, SOLICITING THEM Google on Reviews: Asking for them is OK, Soliciting them is BAD. What is the difference between asking for reviews and soliciting them? It seems that a number of SMBS have discovered that one leads to jail time. Google has been throwing out reviews left and right of late. This is not a bug but the outcome of a newly aggressive review spam

filter.

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS WEBSITES PASS 36 MILLION CREATED Google My Business Websites, first released publicly in June of 2017, has passed 36 million sites created and continues on a strong upward trend. From the beginning, GMB Websites has seen strong growth, passing a million sites built within the first 6 months and really taking off, passing 10 million sites built, by the fall of 2018. USING GOOGLE REVIEWS ON YOUR WEBSITE The question often comes up whether a business can and should use their Google & Yelp reviews on their website. Leaving aside the value to the user experience for a minute, I was curious about the legal issues involved. A small business would be foolish to HOW ACCURATE IS GOOGLE MY BUSINESS INSIGHTS? The scuttlebutt in the world of Local SEO has long been that Google Insights was inaccurate and unhelpful as a guide to consumer behaviors. But is the newish Insights a better guide? How accurate is it and how can we test it? Prior to the rollout of the Google MyBusiness dashboard in June of 5 TIPS FOR RESPONDING (OR NOT) TO “FAKE” REVIEWS Reviews come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they are used to get back at a business for bad service but they can be used as well to settle a personal or political score in a public forum. In this review and review response, it really isn’t totally clear who is telling

the truth. jared

GOOGLE LOCAL BUSINESS CENTER CATEGORIES Update 02/11/10: These Google LBC categories have now been placed in a searchable database too located on the Google LBC Categories page of my website. Picking the right category with the Local Business Center is one of the keys to success in Google Maps. Categories are critical to being considered relevant on any given search RESPONDING TO NEGATIVE REVIEWS Ted Paff is the President of Customer Lobby, an on-line solution to help local service businesses to get, manage and publish reviews.Ted called me when he read my principles of a review program post to introduce himself and his company. We had a far ranging conversation that covered everything from the economy to parents but always came back to conversation about reviews and GOOGLE MY BUSINESS NEW FEATURES: ‘ADD PRODUCT COLLECTION 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

HOW DO DAILY GAS PRICES STAY ACCURATE IN GOOGLE MAPS Price Discovery. Every day OPIS captures station-specific retail gasoline and diesel prices for up to 130,000 service stations throughout the United States. Through exclusive relationships with credit card companies, direct feeds and other survey methods, OPIS is able to provide the most comprehensive and accurate pump prices in the

industry.

GOOGLE’S WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE RESPONSE EVER Several week ago a large number of mostly service area listings started receiving the dreaded “We currently do not support the location” message. At the time Google noted that “your listing may have been dropped due to a technical issue that we cannot yet resolve. We hope to have a resolution soon for this issue, at which point we will be in touch with next steps to help you return your GOOGLE TURNS ON “RESERVE” FOR TRIP ADVISOR Apparently Google has turned on their Reserve relationship with Trip Advisor allowing consumers to purchase tickets directly from the Business Profile (aka Knowledge Panel). Only problem? Once activated within Google, a business can’t shut this off from within Google. I noted last week seeing these Reserve with Google “buy tickets” button in Business Profiles for a

MIKE BLUMENTHAL

Update: I just heard from David Deering about the plug-in’s use of Schema. Firstly the schema is not done correctly. More importantly however (which I suspected but didn’t investigate as I thought the schema was reserved for the paid version mea culpa) marking up reviews and ratings that were created on another site actually goes against

CATEGORY SEARCH

----New Version of Places Categories----Google English (US)(PfB) Google English (CA)(PfB) Google French (CA)(PfB) Google English (GB)(PfB) Google English (AU)(PfB USING GOOGLE REVIEWS ON YOUR WEBSITE The question often comes up whether a business can and should use their Google & Yelp reviews on their website. Leaving aside the value to the user experience for a minute, I was curious about the legal issues involved. A small business would be foolish to HACK: SEEING GOOGLE QUESTIONS & ANSWERS ON THE DESKTOP From a management point of view, one of the more annoying attributes of the new Google Questions & Answers product is that it is only live on Android via Google Maps and in mobile browsers on iOS and Android. There is a are several hacks to allow you to see and respond to this

feature

HOW ACCURATE IS GOOGLE MY BUSINESS INSIGHTS? The scuttlebutt in the world of Local SEO has long been that Google Insights was inaccurate and unhelpful as a guide to consumer behaviors. But is the newish Insights a better guide? How accurate is it and how can we test it? Prior to the rollout of the Google MyBusiness dashboard in June of GOOGLE MAPS AND PO BOXES Updated 11/05/09- Authoritative word on PO Boxes from Joel Headley of Google: PO Boxes have proven unverifiable and are called out as such. We’re working on providing the right solution for businesses that need to hide a home address, however. The poor man’s virtual office, the PO Box, has been singled out in the new GOOGLE MAPPING TOOL AVAILABILITY MATRIX Barry Schwartz has pointed out that last week, Google Maps added a chart showing which Google Maps services were available in which country. Maps is a global product that is offered in 200 some odd countries and there are a range of features available depending on licensing and data availability. Thus the matrix is incredibly GOOGLE UPDATES REVIEW CONTENT POLICY Google has just updated the review content guidelines to explicitly prohibit review stations AND employee reviews. The changes to the policy are noted in italics: For instance, as a business owner or employee you should not review your own business or current place of work. Don’t offer money or product to others to write reviews GOOGLE ANSWER BOX: CALL 650-253-0000 FOR SUPPORT When Dan Leibson showed me this Google Answer Box I thought either that the Google Answer Box had a wicked sense of humor or maybe, just maybe, it knew something that I didn’t. Given the recent court decision in Germany ordering Google to “stop ignoring customer emails and start offering a way to communicate with the GOOGLE ON REVIEWS: ASKING FOR THEM IS OK, SOLICITING THEM What is the difference between asking for reviews and soliciting them? It seems that a number of SMBS have discovered that one leads to jail time. Google has been throwing out reviews left and right of late. This is not a bug but the outcome of a newly aggressive review spam

filter. The

MIKE BLUMENTHAL

Update: I just heard from David Deering about the plug-in’s use of Schema. Firstly the schema is not done correctly. More importantly however (which I suspected but didn’t investigate as I thought the schema was reserved for the paid version mea culpa) marking up reviews and ratings that were created on another site actually goes against

CATEGORY SEARCH

----New Version of Places Categories----Google English (US)(PfB) Google English (CA)(PfB) Google French (CA)(PfB) Google English (GB)(PfB) Google English (AU)(PfB USING GOOGLE REVIEWS ON YOUR WEBSITE The question often comes up whether a business can and should use their Google & Yelp reviews on their website. Leaving aside the value to the user experience for a minute, I was curious about the legal issues involved. A small business would be foolish to HACK: SEEING GOOGLE QUESTIONS & ANSWERS ON THE DESKTOP From a management point of view, one of the more annoying attributes of the new Google Questions & Answers product is that it is only live on Android via Google Maps and in mobile browsers on iOS and Android. There is a are several hacks to allow you to see and respond to this

feature

HOW ACCURATE IS GOOGLE MY BUSINESS INSIGHTS? The scuttlebutt in the world of Local SEO has long been that Google Insights was inaccurate and unhelpful as a guide to consumer behaviors. But is the newish Insights a better guide? How accurate is it and how can we test it? Prior to the rollout of the Google MyBusiness dashboard in June of GOOGLE MAPS AND PO BOXES Updated 11/05/09- Authoritative word on PO Boxes from Joel Headley of Google: PO Boxes have proven unverifiable and are called out as such. We’re working on providing the right solution for businesses that need to hide a home address, however. The poor man’s virtual office, the PO Box, has been singled out in the new GOOGLE MAPPING TOOL AVAILABILITY MATRIX Barry Schwartz has pointed out that last week, Google Maps added a chart showing which Google Maps services were available in which country. Maps is a global product that is offered in 200 some odd countries and there are a range of features available depending on licensing and data availability. Thus the matrix is incredibly GOOGLE UPDATES REVIEW CONTENT POLICY Google has just updated the review content guidelines to explicitly prohibit review stations AND employee reviews. The changes to the policy are noted in italics: For instance, as a business owner or employee you should not review your own business or current place of work. Don’t offer money or product to others to write reviews GOOGLE ANSWER BOX: CALL 650-253-0000 FOR SUPPORT When Dan Leibson showed me this Google Answer Box I thought either that the Google Answer Box had a wicked sense of humor or maybe, just maybe, it knew something that I didn’t. Given the recent court decision in Germany ordering Google to “stop ignoring customer emails and start offering a way to communicate with the GOOGLE ON REVIEWS: ASKING FOR THEM IS OK, SOLICITING THEM What is the difference between asking for reviews and soliciting them? It seems that a number of SMBS have discovered that one leads to jail time. Google has been throwing out reviews left and right of late. This is not a bug but the outcome of a newly aggressive review spam

filter. The

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS WEBSITES PASS 36 MILLION CREATED Google My Business Websites, first released publicly in June of 2017, has passed 36 million sites created and continues on a strong upward trend. From the beginning, GMB Websites has seen strong growth, passing a million sites built within the first 6 months and really taking off, passing 10 million sites built, by the fall USING GOOGLE REVIEWS ON YOUR WEBSITE The question often comes up whether a business can and should use their Google & Yelp reviews on their website. Leaving aside the value to the user experience for a minute, I was curious about the legal issues involved. A small business would be foolish to HOW ACCURATE IS GOOGLE MY BUSINESS INSIGHTS? The scuttlebutt in the world of Local SEO has long been that Google Insights was inaccurate and unhelpful as a guide to consumer behaviors. But is the newish Insights a better guide? How accurate is it and how can we test it? Prior to the rollout of the Google MyBusiness dashboard in June of 5 TIPS FOR RESPONDING (OR NOT) TO “FAKE” REVIEWS Reviews come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they are used to get back at a business for bad service but they can be used as well to settle a personal or political score in a public forum. In this review and review response, it really isn’t totally clear who is telling

the truth. jared

GOOGLE LOCAL BUSINESS CENTER CATEGORIES Update 02/11/10: These Google LBC categories have now been placed in a searchable database too located on the Google LBC Categories page of my website. Picking the right category with the Local Business Center is one of the keys to success in Google Maps. Categories are critical to being considered relevant on any given search RESPONDING TO NEGATIVE REVIEWS Ted Paff is the President of Customer Lobby, an on-line solution to help local service businesses to get, manage and publish reviews.Ted called me when he read my principles of a review program post to introduce himself and his company. We had a far ranging conversation that covered everything from the economy to parents but always came back to conversation about reviews and GOOGLE MY BUSINESS NEW FEATURES: ‘ADD PRODUCT COLLECTION 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

GOOGLE’S WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE RESPONSE EVER Several week ago a large number of mostly service area listings started receiving the dreaded “We currently do not support the location” message. At the time Google noted that “your listing may have been dropped due to a technical issue that we cannot yet resolve. We hope to have a resolution soon for this issue, at which point we will be in touch with next steps to help you return your HOW DO DAILY GAS PRICES STAY ACCURATE IN GOOGLE MAPS From time to time in the GMB Forums the question arises of where Google Map’s gas prices come from and how to fix them when wrong. If your listing has your pricing wrong at Google you can file a report via “Report a Problem” at Google although it makes more sense to get in touch directly with the source for the gas price data. GOOGLE TURNS ON “RESERVE” FOR TRIP ADVISOR Apparently Google has turned on their Reserve relationship with Trip Advisor allowing consumers to purchase tickets directly from the Business Profile (aka Knowledge Panel). Only problem? Once activated within Google, a business can’t shut this off from within Google. I noted last week seeing these Reserve with Google “buy tickets” button in Business Profiles for a

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UNDERSTANDING GOOGLE MY BUSINESS & LOCAL SEARCH

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Mike Blumenthal

in Google Local

Spam May

30, 2021

GOOGLE LOCAL SPAM HALL OF FAME AND WORSE GRAMMAR AWARD Joe Cecconi’s Chrysler Complex New Car Dealership has just been nominated for the Google Local Spam Hall of Fame and Worse Grammar Award. The judges tell me that they have also won by unanimous vote. Their motto: Most dealers want to make your life simpler. Not us!

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Mike Blumenthal

in Google+

Local May 23,

2021

MIKE B: AROUND THE WEB, I LOOK AT YELP AND MORE Every week I look forward to my work at LocalU and Near Media. Be sure to catch the article on Yelp. As a reminder, the FeedBurner email feed of my posts is going away soon. If you want to follow my writing subscribe to the Near Media Newsletter where I am joining David Mihm

and …

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Mike Blumenthal

in Google+

Local May 15,

2021

MIKE B OUT IN THE WILDS OF THE INTERNET It’s been a busy week with lots of podcasts, an article and a minor disagreement with Rand Fishkin. Articles: How Google Came to Dominate Local Reviews – Google owns the local review economy. It wasn’t always that way. I detail how it happened by documenting the review history of a large(wish) fast, casual chain. …

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Mike Blumenthal

in Google Local

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April 12, 2017

MIKE B AROUND THE LOCAL WEB In case you didn’t get enough of me this week here on my blog, you can overindulge in local  until you puke at these other fine publications: Ductape Marketing: How to Get Found Using Ever-Changing Local SEO Tactics I have a fun conversation about Local with one of my favorite marketers, John Jantsch. We talk …

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Mike Blumenthal

in Local Mobile

September 14,

2016

APPLE IMESSAGE FOR IOS10 ROLLS OUT CONVERSATIONAL COMMERCE WITH TRANSACTIONAL LOCAL APPS Apple started shipping iOS10 with a new version of iMessage yesterday to the installed base of iPhone users. Welcome to the new era of conversation commerce for local. And with the new version of iMessage comes an App store and the ability for third parties to integrate directly into the messaging flow. When initially announced …

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Mike Blumenthal

in Google+

Local , Local

Mobile , Local

Search , Local

Social September

3, 2016

LOCAL U ADVANCED – END OF SUPER EARLY BIRD PRICING & SPEAKER INTERVIEW WITH JOY HAWKINS The LocalU Advanced Super Early Bird Pricing ($599 or $549 for 3 or more) goes up $100 at the end of day 9/8/2016.  So order today. To give you a sense of the kind of speakers and topics we will be dealing with we are interviewing some of the speakers.  In this second

interview of …

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FACEBOOK PLACES

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Mike Blumenthal

in Facebook

Places ,

Google+ Local

February 15, 2016

GOOGLE MYBUSINESS NOW SURFACING WEB VERIFY OPTION

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Mike Blumenthal

in Apple Maps &

Siri ,

Facebook Places

, Google

Places (Maps & Local)

,

Local Mobile ,

Local Social ,

Loci - Important Articles for the Year

January 23, 2013

LOCI 2012- JUSTIN SANGER

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Mike Blumenthal

in Facebook

Places

January 16, 2013

FACEBOOK GRAPH SEARCH AND LOCAL FROM ACROSS THE WEB- LET THE FIGHT

BEGIN

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Mike Blumenthal

in Facebook

Places , Local

Search December

12, 2012

THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN WHAT SMBS USE FACEBOOK FOR AND WHAT CONSUMERS

USE IT FOR

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APPLE MAPS / SIRI

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Mike Blumenthal

in Apple Maps &

Siri

September 19, 2015

AN UPDATED LIST OF APPLE BUSINESS LISTING DATA PROVIDERS Interested in who provides business listing data to Apple Maps? With rollout of iOS 9 Apple is becoming ever more important in local search. This fact struck home early this year when a major theme park contacted me and said that people were piling up at their service entrance instead of their front gate. Turned …

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TECHNICAL

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Mike Blumenthal

in Google+

Local , Reviews

September 11, 2016

THOUGHTS ON THE RECENT ROLLOUT OF AGGREGATE REVIEWS, SNIPPETS & CRITIC REVIEWS IN GOOGLE SERPS Since early August with the roll out of Critic Reviews and Top 10 Lists and with the recent rollout of Reviews from the web and a significant review snippet display upgrade, Google has been on a rich snippet tear. Here are some my thoughts, big and small, about these changes. Do you see these changes …

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Mike Blumenthal

in Google+

Local , Reviews

September 10, 2016

GOOGLE UPDATES MOBILE RICH SNIPPET DISPLAY WITH PRICING INFORMATION In addition to the release of Reviews from the web and new review rich snippet guidelines (again), Google has simultaneously updated the display of mobile organic review rich snippets with more space and additional pricing details. H/T to Aaron Weiche, the CMO at GetFivestars. Although Jared McKiernan of ParkWhiz asks some interesting questions:

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Mike Blumenthal

in Google+

Local ,

Microformats in Local

,

Reviews August 4,

2014

A PLUG-IN FOR ADDING GOOGLE REVIEWS TO YOUR WORDPRESS BLOG Update: I just heard from David Deering about the plug-in’s use of Schema. Firstly the schema is not done correctly. More importantly however (which I suspected but didn’t investigate as I thought the schema was reserved for the paid version… mea culpa) marking up reviews and ratings that were created on another site actually goes

against …

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LOCAL U

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Mike Blumenthal

in Local Search

, Local Social

, LocalU

April 23, 2014

LOCAL U ADVANCED – SEATTLE – JUNE 10TH Local U Advanced is returning to Seattle on June 10th with an all new curriculum for 2014. When asked what attendees liked best about our just completed Local U Advanced in Philadelphia here is what a few of them said: How intimate the group is and the ability to talk to the presenters before, during and after presentations. All …

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Mike Blumenthal

in LocalU

February 26, 2014

LOCAL U ADVANCED – MARCH 8TH – KING OF PRUSSIA, PA Update: 3/3/14: Only 11 seats left. There are only 9 days left until our next Local U Advanced, just outside of Philadelphia, at the DoubleTree by Hilton in King of Prussia, Pa. This year we have limited the total ticket sales (including sponsor seating) to just 65 folks. As of yesterday afternoon there were only …

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Blumenthal

The Blumethal Blog is a resource for local search topics to help SEOs and business owners understand how to rank better in Google's local results. The blog covers a wide range of topics, written by Mike Blumenthal, to improve online presence and to understand current news and trends in Google's local ranking system. WEEKLY NEWSLETTER & PODCAST: ------------------------- Sign Up For My Newsletter! Near

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