
Every week we bring you a brief 15 minute video and the links of the best articles in Local Search. OK. It’s not always 15 minutes but we are never off by more than 10 minutes or so.
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Expedia stock suffers worst day yet as Google threat hits travel websites – MarketWatch
Source: www.marketwatch.com
Mike: Expedia and TripAdvisor both saw significant stock declines as they dealt with “incremental weakness in SEO volumes and a related shift to high-cost marketing channels.” and “some incremental SEO headwinds” in the latest quarter.
Obviously Google is in a full-on press in the travel world and that puts real-world pressure on the stock value of companies in the travel space as Google moves more and more into providing users with everything they need to know to make a travel decision.
Why thousands of Amazon packages converge on a tiny Montana town – The Verge
Source: www.theverge.com
Mike: The odd, odd world of “preppers” in Roundup, Mt repackaging arbitraged goods for Amazon.
And we all thought that Amazon’s logistics network was efficient. Not!
Operator of defunct Orange County chain of drug rehab centers indicted for fraud – Orange County Register
Source: www.ocregister.com
Mike: Last year, Jeffrey White and Nicholas White pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and admitted that their scheme resulted in more than $27 million in losses.
The new indictment charges Yates, their partner, with thirteen counts of health care fraud and conspiracy. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 20 years on each conspiracy count.
The real world impact of Maps spam is very significant both financially and in terms of its impact on people’s lives.
Google expands Local campaigns inventory, BOPIS offers for Shopping campaigns – Search Engine Land
Source: searchengineland.com
Mike: Google will now be showing “branded” pins along navigation routes and making this feature available to smaller chains.
Discover new places with help from top Local Guides
Source: www.blog.google
Mike: Google is working towards making Maps much more of a discovery environment t. In that view people in Bangkok, Delhi, London, Mexico City, New York, Osaka, San Francisco, São Paulo and Tokyo will soon see top Local Guides featured in the For You tab of the Google Maps app.
Interesting that Google in noting that they now have 120 million local guides.
Are Google’s Many Broken Features Reflections of Google’s Style? | Street Fight
Source: streetfightmag.com
Mike: Google’s chaotic style of innovative product development collides with the real world and it is no place more obvious than local.
Mike Blumenthal on Twitter: “Google Q&A Update: in meetings with Google today and they have confirmed that there are technical issues at play in the erratic showing and not of Q&A”
Source: twitter.com
Mike: Google Q&A Update: in meetings with Google today and they have confirmed that there are technical issues at play in the erratic showing and not of Q&A
As a local bricks and mortar business, your brand SERP is your new Homepage
Source: www.semrush.com
Mike: Claire Carlile is participating in a Webinar focusing on how local relies on brand SERPs as your new homepage.
Mooyah Encourages Employees to Recognize Star Power – QSR magazine
Source: www.qsrmagazine.com
Mike: Interesting case study engaging servers intimately with customer experience and quality control.
Mooyah’s internal research showed that for every half-star rating increase, restaurant revenue upped 5-9 percent.
Building a Local Marketing Strategy for Franchises [Guide Sneak Peek] – Moz
Source: moz.com
Mary: Moz has published a good marketing guide for franchises because: “It’s much more of a relay race than a marathon: franchisors and franchisees work collaboratively to build a brand, but no one person has 100% control over the whole picture.”
Local SEOs still seeing volatility in ranking with Google’s latest algorithm update – Search Engine Land
Source: searchengineland.com
Mary: @JoyanneHawkins says that on the Google Maps pack side of things, the latest “Bedlam” update was about Google rewarding relevance more.
How to Spot Fake Law Firms in Google My Business » Juris Digital
Source: jurisdigital.com
Mary: @CaseyMeraz finds that fake law firms are (still? again?) ranking great in Google My Business . Here’s his advice of finding and fighting them.
Google My Business discontinues toll free phone support – Search Engine Land
Source: searchengineland.com
Mary: Google’s reverting to call backs for customer support. Are we getting too much support from Google?
GatherUp Is Acquired By Alpine Software Group | GatherUp
Source: gatherup.com
Mary: Congratulations to everyone @gatherup ! They are now part of Mar-Tech.
Leveraging Your Content Investment: Blogs vs Content Hubs | Perficient Digital
Source: blogs.perficientdigital.com
Carrie: Eric Enge does a breakdown of blogs and when they should be used to convey content – their temporal nature lends well to “news” sites. If you’ve got evergreen content that is not on a timeline, a content hub of pages might be more appropriate. Some good numbers here. They looked at 100 randomly selected blogs and found that 70% of the pages in the blog weren’t actually blog posts. 2/3 of blog posts had a link depth of 5+ – meaning how many clicks to get to the content form the homepage.
Google Maps Allows Users to Report Spammy Users – Local Search Forum
Source: www.localsearchforum.com
Carrie: Users can now report spammy users on Google Maps. Down with the craptastic local guide spammers!
Google Maps becomes more ‘social’ with Local Guides follow feature – Search Engine Land
Source: searchengineland.com
Carrie: Mike can follow those local guide experts while he’s in Bangkok!
Getting Your Google My Business Listing Holiday Ready – A Guide For 2019 – Whitespark
Source: whitespark.ca
Carrie: Holidays are coming – here’s a great post on how to get your GMB holiday ready from Allie over at Whitespark. #1 – update your hours/add special hours. If you’re open more than usual- put it in there, if you’re closed for 2 days after Xmas, put it in there!
Flagging Invalid Events on Your GMB Listing – Local Search Forum
Source: www.localsearchforum.com
Carrie: Krystal Taing of RioSEO posted a really helpful fix in the Local Search Forum for people with unrelated or inappropriate events listed on their GMB. There IS a way to remove them and she goes through the steps. Most notably Tim Capper was showing events at 10 downing street that were 100% unrelated to 10 downing street.

AlsoAsked.com: Discover and visualise the questions people are asking
Source: www.AlsoAsked.com
Carrie: My new favorite tool added a CSV export option – wooohooo! I should note that this tool gathers from UK results only – but I still find it highly useful for US-based content creation/optimization.
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