An auto dealer client’s GMB page was showing up in Google with a different domain (the car maker’s – Ford.com) attached to it only for certain queries. I started looking through all of the usual data suspects to see if the errant domain was connected to any of the dealer’s business listings and came up […]
As Google morphs SERP design from desktop to mobile, it appears that it has decided that reading words is perhaps too much to ask of our educationally-challenged fellow users. And so it is now testing icons in the mobile results as shown below: I guess it’s easier to click on a cute picture than try […]
Fantastic interview by Nyagaslov Zhekov with Dan Austin on Google’s ineffectual response to map SPAM, including Bryan Seely’s spoofing of Secret Service listings earlier this year. Money quote: “The “newest” ploy, which has been in development for several years now, is to use real estate listings on sites like Trulia, and have the PIN card […]
Just found a classic thread on one of those “did you get a call from this phone number” sites. Some samples for your local SEO reading pleasure: Calls our business several times per day (not interested in their services). If you hang up, they call right back. They repeat this throughout the day and when […]
No big surprise that The Atlantic’s piece on Google Maps – an “exclusive look inside Ground Truth, the secretive program to build the world’s best accurate maps” is coming out the week before the new iOS 6 with Apple Maps are introduced. It has been great theater watching all of the ways Google has been pushing the […]
[View the story “Lobster Searches Google For Pizza. Gets Confused.” on Storify] Lobster Searches Google For Pizza. Gets Confused. Storified by Andrew Shotland · Tue, Aug 28 2012 13:19:38 Google’s monopolistic behavior in Web search seems to have no bounds. Check out hover experience for local. http://pic.twitter.com/r0K2OMvIRakesh Agrawal The preceding was not meant to be […]
Nitin Mangtani is the Product Chief of Google Offers and I am liveblogging his talk at StreetFight Summt West 2012. He tells a story about his kid pretending to open a restaurant and makes a sign with lots of stars reading “best restaurant of all” to try to get customers. Note to Nitin, your kid […]
My post on Bizible’s new local search ranking factors study is now up at SearchEngineLand. You can also get more detail on the study and the results on Bizible’s blog. As mentioned in my SEL post, Bizible claims the study is scientifically valid and while in general I liked their approach, I can think of […]
On Monday, my SearchEngineLand column will preview the results of a new Google Places Ranking Factors study conducted by Bizible. Aaron Bird, CEO & Night Janitor of Bizible, approached me a month or two ago about the study and I was intrigued by his approach. The study is a scientific complement to David Mihm’s well-known […]
Linda Buquet has an interesting read on the recent Google Venice Update, which among other things appears to have boosted local businesses’ ability to rank in the organic, non-Places results: “If my research is right and 75% of searches are for “cityless keywords” then this is a huge opportunity that didn’t exist before – to […]