Category: Google+ Local

Google has confirmed that anonymous reviews have in fact been removed from public view. Their statement to me: “We do not allow anonymous reviews today and we’ve removed legacy anonymous reviews.” If you recall, on May 24th, I reported their disappearance with the article Google Stops Counting Anonymous Reviews?. Given the obvious angst that many small … Continue reading Google Confirms Removal of Anonymous Reviews →

From GetFiveStars, a new post about two business that are suing because of reviews (always a fascinating topic to me):  Reviews & Lawsuits – You Can Win for Losing and You Can Lose for Winning        From LocalU, my weekly conversation with Mary Bowling: Important Links from Last Week in Local – June 11 From … Continue reading Mike B Around the InterWebs →

Yesterday, Sergey Alakov and SearchEngineRountable reported a new siting in the Local Knowledge Panel: See What’s in Store. Today, Google has announced on Inside AdWords that as part if its new inventory feed program, See What’s in Store will be a free feature. From the Adwords Blog post: Onboarding to both local catalog ads and … Continue reading Google to Roll Out “See What’s In Store” as a Free Knowledge Panel Feature →

To paraphrase David Letterman, Google My Business Guidelines are like traffic signals to New Yorkers… just a rough suggestion. Google clearly states in the guidelines that “your name should reflect your business’ real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers. Accurately representing your business name helps customers find … Continue reading Google My Business Guidelines are Like Traffic Signals to New Yorkers – A (Very) Rough Suggestion →

The search “restaurants in Mountain View” seems to be returning interesting test of late. Yesterday we saw a feature snippet, schema driven list replace the local pack. In this test we Interesting Finds supplement the pack. These were first spotted by Barry Schwartz at SearchEngineRountable in early April in the context of a Mother’s day … Continue reading Another Interesting Google Local Result Test -> Interesting Finds →

In the EU and the US, Yelp has been actively seeking to get regulators to look at Google’s behaviors in local and to change the search results to stop favoring Google’s own local results. Yelp’s Luther Lowe noted: When a mother does a search for a pediatrician in Berlin, instead of being matched with rich … Continue reading Google Local After Antitrust – Careful What You Wish For →

Petra Kraft, a long time Local SEO and careful observer in the hospitality space, noticed an interesting test in Google Posts. She found a Knowledge Panel where Google was showing six posts using the primary image and a text over lay and the abilitly to see more via a right arrow. This is one of … Continue reading Google Posts Testing More Visual Display →

On June 13, Google Websites will be one year old. It was created to satisfy the needs of the very small business to have an easy, fast mobile website. In that time Google has managed to have had at least 2.2 million of the sites built. Given that Google also allows a business to purchase … Continue reading Google Websites Passes 2 Million Websites Nearing its First Anniversary →

I just got this email from my favorite pet client, Barbara Oliver. She watches her reviews like a hawk and is very protective of them: I noticed today that I have 139 google reviews and up until now, I had 172. Do they just delete older ones? You know how I get as I work … Continue reading Google Stops Counting Anonymous Reviews? →

At the LSA 18 Conference in Chicago (at friggin’ 8 am*) Anita Yuen, from the Google My Business team, announced new features focusing on the small(ish) and bigger agency market. “GMB now delivers a tailored experience for agencies and platform partners”. 3 Key investments Updated API – coming Messaging API Improved Search APIs across location … Continue reading Google My Business Agency Dashboard & Upgrade to API Coming →

Yesterday at Streetlight Magazine during David Mihm’s and my conversation he noted: You’ve been banging the drum for the last 12-18 months that for most businesses, Google Is the New Homepage. The reality is most customers are coming into your business digitally with Google as the front door. But it feels like with all the new … Continue reading Google as the New Mobile Website →

This was mentioned on twitter several weeks ago and reported on in France about a month ago (h/t Sergey Alakov). I missed the memo.  Google is now supporting restaurant reservations with the Book with Google Feature in the GMB. When initially introduced in October, it supported 12 booking programs across a range of verticals. OpenTable … Continue reading Google Adds Restaurants to the Book with Google Feature →

I have been looking at and thinking about Google Q & A great deal since its introduction. The feature reminds me of the movie, Dr. Strangelove and it’s subtitle: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Q & A is a lot like that. For those of you with many locations it’s … Continue reading Google Q & A Ebook →

Google has formally announced the availability of the new GMB feature to add a Service Menu to the local Knowledge Panel. It has recently been reported by  both Kevin Getch and Phil Rozek as visible in their client dashboards. From the announcement: Back in January we launched a new Menu editor for the food service industry. … Continue reading Google Formally Announces New Service Menu for Local Knowledge Panel →

Don’t let cost prohibit you from owning a franchise. Incredible fast paced opportunity1 for expansion. Find unlimited potential in new(ish) and fast growing lead generation space. Very low initial costs. Three years of Photoshop skills, understanding of call center technologies and a straight face required. Photo geo-tagging and familiarity with competitive local exchange carriers a … Continue reading Local Franchise Opportunity with a Chance to Enter the Google Local Spam Hall of Shame →

GetFiveStars: Google Write a Review Link Generator – Free Chrome Extension Sometimes big things come in very small packages. Easily being able to generate the Google Write a Review link for service area businesses has not been readily available. This Chrome extension will do that in 0 seconds flat. LocalU Deep Dive: Interview with Cindy Krum – … Continue reading Mike B Around the Internet →

There was an interesting article on CBC Canada this past week and it  encapsulates the range of problems that Google has not yet confronted in the review space- including but not limited to buying reviews, negative SEO reviews, review pile ons etc etc etc.: Kensington Market restaurant inundated with hundreds of 5-star reviews accused of buying … Continue reading Fake Reviews? Negative Reputation Mgt? Google Once Again Caught Flat Footed in the Review Space →

Phillip Barnhart of Nehmedia just noted on Google+ that Google Posts is testing the use of video as a media type within a Post. The Knowledge Panel for  Moments from the Heart Photography Cedar Park Tx shows the video in an actual post. I am a big fan of Google Posts as a tool for the … Continue reading Google Posts Testing Video as a Media Type →

Google has broadly pushed the new location dashboard to almost all accounts. And in doing so seems to have finally provided a near real time notification for (the long missing) Questions and Answers. The new location dashboard, using a card approach to highlight important activities and calls to action for a given listing, was first … Continue reading Google Pushes Full Release of New Location Dashboard & Improved Q & A Notifications →

In November, Google announced the limited availability of a new “UI for Google My Business to better allow users with multiple listings to view and edit their information“. Google noted the following about the new view: What’s changing User’s will no longer need to switch between card and list view within their dashboard, all users, … Continue reading New Google My Business Dashboard Slowly Rolling Out →