LOC@L SEO GUIDE

Mike Blumenthal has some concerns re Google Places’ new user review feeds: When was the last time you heard a reviewer ask for an RSS feed of their reviews? Well maybe some reviewer some place did… but then I suggest you follow Google’s instructions and go find it. Instead of attaching it to the obvious place in [...]

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Greg Linden uncovers a potential new Google Maps ranking signal: direction requests: …certain very large search engines have massive logs of people asking for directions from A to B, hundreds of millions of people and billions of A to B queries. And, it appears this data may be as or more useful than user reviews [...]

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While putting together the Top 10 Reviews Sites In Google Place Search report, we noticed what we thought were testimonials from a business’ website showing up in the reviews section of the result. See the below screenshot from a SERP for “Los Angeles Car Dealers“: In its FAQ on Rich Snippets, Google states that testimonials [...]

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Fred Wilson has a great local discussion going on the AVC blog about how to shorten a Google Maps URL to make it easier to send. One of the commenters suggested checking out http://amap.to/ Here’s the shortened link for Pleasanton, CA: http://amap.to/evtp9 Pretty cool.

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Twitter just announced it’s launching an API that will allow developers to add latitude & longitude to any tweet. There’s all sorts of funky services this could lead to such as a site that tracks the locations of Twitter spammers for people to drop nukes on and such (if they are dumb enough to opt [...]

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Update: MyMapInfo, the SEO who was working on Artie’s site, commented on Will’s post that I had mistaken him for a spammer when he has been trying to get his client to rank well after the client was the victim of map spammers.  I’ll take him at his word and apologize for impugning his reputation [...]

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In the previous post, where I stumbled on to ads on a Google Map on Merchant Circle, “Mappin’” Mike Blumenthal took me to the local search woodshed with the following comment: In mid March, Google announced that they have changed the API to allow the hosting site show ads along with searches for local businesses [...]

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I was just looking at this page on Merchant Circle and noticed ads showing up on their Google Map! I am sensing a trend.

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When Best of the Web Local launched in August, I thought it was yet another wakeup call to Yellow Pages companies (both print and IYPs) that their business was under attack.  There are already thousands of IYP type sites out there, but when an established domain like BOTW.org launches one and combines that with the [...]

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I have been using an iPhone for the past two weeks and it’s pretty clear to me that the only thing that is going to stop me from using it more and more to find things is a fatal car crash.  That’s why my loved ones and I are glad to hear about a number [...]

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