LocalU Author Page

Joy is the owner of the Local Search Forum, LocalU, and Sterling Sky, a Local SEO agency in Canada & the USA. She has been working in the industry since 2006, writes for publications such as Search Engine Land, and enjoys speaking regularly at marketing conferences such as MozCon, LocalU, Pubcon, SearchLove, and State of Search. You can find her on Twitter or volunteering as a Product Expert on the Google My Business Forum.

📹 Video: Last Week in Local for Week Ending January 23, 2023

By Joy Hawkins / January 23, 2023

Join Mike and Carrie as they discuss the last week in Local SEO, LIVE in the new year! They’re talking about what’s new at Google, automatic suggestions on FAQs, creating unique local content, shelf inventory AI tool for retailers, LocalU Dallas, and so much more!Last Week in Local is a look back at the interesting…

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Last Week in Local

📹 VIDEO: LAST WEEK IN LOCAL FOR WEEK ENDING JANUARY 16, 2023

By Joy Hawkins / January 16, 2023

Join Mike and Carrie as they discuss the last week in Local SEO, LIVE in the new year! They’re talking about what’s new at Google, automatic suggestions on FAQs, creating unique local content, shelf inventory AI tool for retailers, LocalU Dallas, and so much more!Last Week in Local is a look back at the interesting…

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Google Business Profile Category Updates for December 2022

By Joy Hawkins / January 5, 2023

Google has around 4,000 different categories that small businesses can use in their Google Business Profile (GBP). Choosing the correct categories is very important because they have a massive impact on rankings.  Many people are not aware of how often the list of categories changes. Fortunately, we track and list updates to them on our…

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Why You Should Add Videos to Your Google Business Profile

By Joy Hawkins / December 12, 2022

Google has given business owners the ability to add videos to their Google Business Profile for quite a while. Up until now, there has never been a compelling reason to add them to your profile. They were usually buried and we have found that adding things like Google Business Profile photos and videos to your…

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3 Tips for the New Google Business Profile Manager Dashboard (Now Called New Merchant Experience)

By Joy Hawkins / December 7, 2022

Google recently launched a new dashboard on the Google Business Profile Manager (formerly Google My Business). It is called the New Merchant Experience (NMX). Here are a few tips to help with this new dashboard. 1.  See Performance Improvement Year Over Year When you initially go into the performance metrics, it only shows data for…

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Google Adds Guidelines for Delivery-Only Food Businesses

By Joy Hawkins / May 7, 2022

While on vacation recently, my kids were extremely excited to try out Mr. Beast Burger. They have a pretty interesting business model as they don’t have their own locations and operate out of physical restaurants.  When you place the order, the food that arrives comes from a local restaurant but is delivered with all the…

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1-Star Reviews Have Increased on Yelp for 4 Years in a Row

By Joy Hawkins / February 21, 2022

Yelp releases data every year that shows the star rating distribution for all reviews left on their site. I recorded the numbers that were listed in their reports for the last 4 years to see what trends they show.  There are two main things that stick out: The number of people that leave 2, 3,…

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What You Need to Know about Updates from Customers on Google Maps

By Joy Hawkins / February 11, 2022

Recently Barry Schwartz wrote about the “Updates from Customers” feature that people are starting to see more regularly on Google Maps. I wanted to share some things that I’ve learned about the feature and how it works. You probably won’t be seeing large volumes of customer-added photos just yet. The feature is still pretty buried…

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Google My Business Disables Select Categories for Service Area Businesses

By Joy Hawkins / August 6, 2021

Several weeks ago, a thread came up on the Local Search Forum where Jim Frolling noticed a business had their primary category in Google My Business changed from “tire store” to “wheel shop”.  He noticed that this appeared to happen to every single listing on Google that did not have their address displayed publicly (known…

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Google My Business Adds Labels for New Listings

By Joy Hawkins / June 3, 2021

My colleague Dave DiGregorio noticed this morning that Google has a “New on Google” label that is showing beside listings in both the local pack results and the local finder. ‘ This feature can be really useful for keeping an eye on your competition and also identifying listings for your own brand that recently got…

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