“Mark Up Everything” ~Pierre Far, Google – at Pubcon 2014 During the Q&A in the Semantic Search session at Pubcon last week, Pierre Far uttered the words quoted above. I was there and I almost applauded. I’m not going to lie – this was seriously music to my ears. Google has been telling us that…
Many of us in local search have specific verticals we pay stronger attention to. By default, with a wife that’s a realtor, real estate is one such vertical for me. This summer’s Pigeon update to Google’s local search results has left many scratching their heads. Local Map Results Get Foreclosed With little optimization effort over…
Today, Google is releasing a feature worldwide that allows a business to transfer the “heart” of its local data (verification, reviews, Map pin, location) from a verified Local Page to an existing Brand Page. This allows a business to now “upgrade” their Brand page (or any non-local page) to a full local page where it…
Clients often come to us with preexisting Google+ accounts that contain Google business pages and YouTube channels with content that have already been claimed. The business page and the channel are often in two separate accounts (YouTube channel in one login and a business listing in another). This setup used to be normal, an acceptable…
On behalf of the Local U faculty, I’d like to share a big thank you to everyone who came out for #LocalU Advanced in Philly today! And a special thanks to Wil Reynolds of SEER Interactive for starting the day with a fantastic keynote. We hope you all had a great day, and we hope…
[Ed. note: The following is a guest article written for Local U by Jackson Lo of Menu.ca.] Restaurants may not be the hottest topic in local search, but they are one of the most widely searched industries on a daily basis. Today, we still see only a fraction of restaurants using the web as a…
Networking with your customers, vendors, and local business groups is a great way to grow your business. At networking events, you hand out business cards and tell everyone what you do for a living, where you do it, and how they can find you if they need your services. At it’s simplest definition, using Schema.org…
UPDATE June 3, 2014: Google has announced a feature that now allows a Brand Page to Become Google+ Local Page. Please read this newer article before reading the following. The question of how to handle the existence of two (or more) G+ Pages for a given local business has become a frequent one. Over the past…
Google has announced a new feature that will be available in beta for a limited set of AdWords advertisers: +Post Ads. How do they work? Similar to promoting or boosting a post on Facebook, +Post ads allow you to turn your Google+ content strategy into ads to amplify the reach of your posts. However, Google is taking…
These days, anyone who’s going to move their business to another location needs to consider the best way to handle that move online and plan their steps carefully. You’ll want to get started with your online preparation a couple of months before you actually pack up your shop and re-open it at the new address.…