Video: Last Week in Local 12/2/19

Mike Blumenthal

Colan: Once again, Google has started removing 3-packs for queries like “sexual harassment attorney”

Colan: Joy added a useful section to the Experts Guide to Local SEO subscription that will track technical issues related to GMB

Colan: The Bedlam update continues to shake and move. Joy has added a section to the Experts Guide to Local SEO covering all the details.

Also see: https://guide.localu.org/november-5-2019-the-bedlam-algorit hm-update/ 

Colan: A new user-generated attribute has been spotted in the wild. “Good Discounts” is now available as an attribute that users can select about a business.

Colan: A member of the Local Search Forum asked an interesting question about spacing out Google My Business edits.

Carrie: Colan compiled some pretty terrible public sharing of misinformation by GMB “support” folks – which reinforces that they’re not very well trained, or updated as things change. I was the victim of bad advice like this – luckily I knew it was crap advice….many SMBs would have NO CLUE they were being told something that was false/didn’t work.

Carrie: Story details how Amazon was/is skirting security by giving sensitive information like name/address/phone to drivers that are NOT background checked – including handing out credentials for approved drivers to non-checked drivers.

We’ve already talked about how Amazon has used contractors to avoid liability in the past. I guess living in the boonies and relying on USPS and UPS to get amazon to me is a good thing in this case.

Carrie: Alex Moran tweets a screenshot of a Google Maps terrorist warning during the London Bridge incident. Realtime warnings in traffic are common – this is a good idea for tourists/pedestrians, etc.

Carrie: Mike and I had John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing on to talk about agency sales & strategy for SMBs and his new book, the Self-Reliant Entrepreneur. Some great stuff in this ~40-minute discussion!

Carrie: Interesting take from Phil Rozek at Local Visibility System. I think it’s a fine line between calling Google out and taking a step too far. I’m not sure where that line is, but if you have precedent and guidelines to back up your position – it’s worth bringing to their attention IMO. Phil talks about phobias/myths that he hears, and what the truth is….

Carrie: Cindy Krum of Mobile Moxie did an amazing whiteboard Friday about Fraggles – not the Muppet kind – the entity/content fragment kind. I find this SEO stuff supremely interesting – and I think it does and will apply to local – so if you’re not familiar I recommend giving this a watch

Carrie: Claire gave a talk to about 100 people in Dublin last week about Google as the new homepage -and shared her slides. This is a really great deck and worth a glance through for sure!

Listen at: https://open.spotify.com/episode/171B6zRjPa8PhEvIHdMCBI?si=8O3FX1DPSEOg_YDrmsSxCw

Carrie: Today is the 16th birthday of Search Engine Roundtable. Pretty sure this was one of my first go-to sources for info – read it and watched Danny Sullivan on Daily Searchcast every day back when I was starting out.