Yelp is trying to go deep into the personalization game. Soon, new screens will allow users to select preferences and favorites that will be used by the company to offer better recommendations and personalized search results. With the latest version of the Yelp app, users are going to be prompted to indicate dietary and lifestyle preferences, and […]
Barry Schwartz was able to have an interview with local search expert, and founder of local SEO agency Sterling Sky, Inc during last months MozCon event. The two spoke about Hawkins decision to break out on her own, why she bought Local Search Forums from her mentor, and how her team has been able to […]
A few years ago, Google Guaranteed was introduced in order to help boost consumer confidence in-home services providers appearing in local Services Ads. This year, the company introduced another program for professional services, called “Google Screened.” Currently, Google Screened is a test program that is limited to only a few verticals in a few markets: […]
There are several studies going around that show how important reviews are to a consumer’s decision-making when it comes to making purchases. In order to protect the integrity of online reviews, Congress passed The Consumer Review Fairness Act (CRFA) in 2016. This was largely modeled on an earlier California law. The intention of CRFA was to “prohibit the […]
Google has add the ability for users to see reviews across multiple listings on a single page. These can be seen within Google My Business reviews section at https://business.google.com/reviews. Google made the announcement over here saying “Businesses can view reviews for multiple listings at once. With bulk reviews, you’ll be able to view, reply to, and flag reviews for […]
Google My Business has added support for hotels to login to Google My Business and update the hotel’s services and amenities details. Users are able to add these details under the hotel attributes of the Google My Business console. Sign in to Google My Business. If you have multiple locations, open the location you’d like to […]
Barry Schwartz sat down with Ignitor Digital co-founder, Mary Bowling who spends a lot of time educating local SEOs on the topic, she also has been in the local SEO space before it was known as local SEO. In the following video, the two discussed the changes in local SEO over the years. They also […]
The saga of shortnames has been going on for about two weeks now, which is a bug that caused Google My Business (GMB) listings to disappear when shortnames were added to accounts. According to Google the problem was resolved, saying that the missing listings were restored early last week, but it’s still there. Some SEOs continued […]
It appears that Google is rolling out new call-to-action buttons for service level businesses in the local knowledge panel. The businesses that have opted into messaging in Google My Business will find that button show up for branded queries. So how does it work? All you need to do is search for a business’s name, and […]
On June 27, Google announced a new website that had resources aimed at helping small businesses get started with Google products. The launch coincides with International Small Business day. The site, which is called Google for Small Business, includes “personalized plans” with recommendations of Google products based on a company’s answers to several prompt questions such as […]