Category: Google+ Local

Andrew of Andrews Lock & Key deserves more than a link and a citation and a little bit of publicity for his efforts but that is all that I have to offer since I don’t live in Mesa, AZ. Locksmith spam has long been an issue in Google Maps and has been the baine of consumers … Continue reading Andrews Lock and Key – Locksmith Warrior Mesa Az →

The LocalU Advanced conference in New Orleans on October 20th (networking party) and 21st (all day conference) promises to be an incredible event. The line up of speakers is amazing BUT the EARLY BIRD Pricing is ending on October 7th so you will need to sign up soon to get the lower price. We don’t … Continue reading Local U Advanced New Orleans – Early Bird Special Ending 10/7 →

Google has just released the Google MyBusiness API V3.1 . The update brings real time push notification for the ever changing listing updates AND when a new review is written for a location. These real time updates with push capabilities will allow businesses monitoring their listing via a dashboard to be actively notified of status changes, … Continue reading Google My Business API Gets Updated to V3.1 →

This week, 10 years ago, I published my first post. My blogging has directly led to 3 new careers1 and a bevy of new and wonderful friends.   During that time I have written over 2100 posts here, at  LocalU and now at GetFivestars. Early and trusted friendships with Matt McGee, Bill Slawski and David Mihm helped me learn … Continue reading 10 Years Ago Today -The 7 Steps for Local Listing Success at Google (& Yahoo) →

Where is Local Search going? How do you get there? Join us at LocalU Advanced where we will take a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of the bleeding edge of local search. The upcoming LocalU Advanced takes place the night of October 20th and all day October 21st. To give you a sense … Continue reading Video: Local U Advanced Speaker Series – Cindy Krum on the Latest Trends in Local Mobile →

If you ever are thinking that there isn’t opportunity in Local Search Optimization just head over to the BBB and do a search for Google. More opportunity than you can shake a stick at and with some very original names too! You can’t fault Chris the Google Guy for trying but if it were me … Continue reading Money Grows on Trees with Google →

As a consumer I like and use Yelp. I don’t like their business practices but as a consumer it’s my goto restaurant resource these days when traveling. I also like messaging, particularly iMessage, as my way of communicating with the 15 or so people I love and work with and often travel to see. So I was baffled … Continue reading Why is Yelp Failing at the iMessage App Game? Because They are Choosing To →

As many of you know 29 Prime has not been a favorite Local SEO of mine. They lied, dissembled, prevaricated and misled thousands of small business folks. They have now gone into Chapter 7 Bankruptcy. I was alerted to their bankruptcy by Regina Martinez, with whom I had been corresponding over the past year about how … Continue reading 29 Prime, SubPrime, Bankrupt →

Subtitled: Mike, Oh Mike? Would you take out the recycling? I have been busy writing over the past week, sometimes on the weekend when you might not have seen the article and other times at other sites that you might not have in your feed. Here is the rundown of articles since September 8th in … Continue reading Some Recent Posts, Articles & Videos – Or Why is Dad Hunched Over a Keyboard? →

Tl;dr Has Google finally committed to Local? Has Local finally been elevated to the big leagues within Google as a starter instead of being relegated to filling the role of pitch hit competitive enhancer? Is Local receiving both the financial support and more importantly front page Google love that it needs to really succeed. It would … Continue reading Is Google Doubling Down on Local? Yes. Now What →

Conversations with Joy Hawkins, Priya Chandra and Sergey Alakov surfaced some odd behaviors with the new “Reviews from the web” Knowledge Graph feature. These 3rd party reviews were sometimes appearing and other times not when the Knowledge Panel was displaying. After some testing, I determined that the specific query and its degree of relatedness to … Continue reading Exploring Oddities of Reviews from the Web with Joy, Sergey & Priya →

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 … Continue reading Stoppleman to Google: “Delete It” – Yelp Reviews Gone from Knowledge Panel →

h/t to Matt McGee for assembling this on Storify [View the story “Conversation with @jeremys and @mblumenthal” on Storify]

LocalU Advanced takes a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of the bleeding edge of local search. Our upcoming LocalU Advanced is taking place the night of October 20th and the day October 21st. To give you a sense of the topics we will be covering we will be interviewing some of the speakers … Continue reading Video: Local U Advanced Speaker Series – David Deering & Schema for Local →

Google has confirmed that they are expanding the test of a “write directly to the search” results product first seen in January for presidential candidates and in the March time frame seen for small businesses. According to Google the test is expanding from “10’s of small businesses to thousands”. We should be seeing more and … Continue reading Google Expanding SMB Test of “Write Directly to Search” Feature →

LocalU Advanced is my favorite conference of the year. And you probably get tired of me saying this but this will be one of the best ones yet. The agenda has been released and it is chock full of great speakers: – Darren Shaw will be talking enterprise citation campaigns – Cindy Krum will discuss digital marketing in the age of … Continue reading LocalU Advanced Agenda & Super Early Bird Pricing →