Video: Last Week in Local – October 21, 2019

Mike Blumenthal

Mike: “There are few products that scale like a dollar offered for $ 0.50. If it feels like 1999 again with charismatic CEOs cut with cheap capital — and the illusion of the prosperity party rocks on into the morning.”

Scott Galloway presents a great model for understanding which of the unicorns are charlatans and which offer real value.

Mike: Drone delivery is coming to a house near you very soon.

Mike: We have said it before and will say it again: Make sure your site is ADA (Americans with Disability Act) compliant. Now even the Supreme Court agrees.

Mike: Interesting factoids:

*Google Maps have over 1 billion daily users

*5 million websites and apps use it.

*Users contribute more than 20 million pieces of information every day–that’s more than 200 contributions every second

Mike: Google Maps is rolling out a new feature that gives people the ability to receive more detailed voice guidance and new types of verbal announcements for walking trips. This feature is the first in Google Maps to be built from the ground up by, and for, people with vision impairments.

This demonstrates Google’s deep and broad investment in Google Maps and making it THE interface of choice in Local.

Mike: A great summary of which WordPress hosts do a good job and which don’t: “For hosting my small business WordPress site, I’d probably go with WP Engine. The price is right and those websites perform nicely. “

Mike: “Yelp gives extortion a bad name”

Mike: An interesting look at the alternative to UGC reviews and algos that fail to catch the spam or help users all that much.

Mike: Google is starting with automating the rental car and movie ticket booking process, with Android Police spotting the latter in action today.

The transactions are coming! The Transactions are coming.

Mike: Now if Google could just tell the affected restaurants.

Mike: Incognito mode is arriving for Maps so SEO’s can now “depersonalize” Map results.

Mary: Hotels, restaurants and car dealerships benefit from the most discovery and direct searches according to a recent study conducted by @BrightLocal. If you work with car dealerships, this is a must-read full of stats to help you make your case for investing in Local Search.

Mary: Watch Joy Hawkins and Blake Denham give a telemarketer the business!

Mary: Kevin Rowe gives us his 50 point audit for Local SEO. It is based on Moz’s best practices. I don’t necessarily agree with some of it.

–List NAP of all locations in footer?

–For example, “1234 Anywhere Street” and “1234 Anywhere St.” mean the same thing to most people, but can muddy up your SEO if you use them interchangeably.

–With an estimated 20% U.S. market share in search, you shouldn’t neglect setting up your site with Bing’s tool.

There’s enough misinformation in here to make me cringe a little. Don’t believe everything you read about LocalSearch unless you trust the writer and the publishing source and in Local Search, it’s important to know when it was published.

Carrie: Claire Carlile shared a good tip on Twitter – the “Latest Photos” section of the Knowledge Panel is populated by user photos on Twitter – better be checking that frequently, esp. when you have very active customers/clients who upload photos a lot.

Carrie: Mike wrote a post over at GatherUp about review gating and the impact removing the tactic has had on average ratings. Spoiler Alert – not much – move on.

Carrie: Wrap up of the Webinar Rio did on “getting ready for the holiday season” that our own Mary Bowling participated in. This is the blog post with the TL;DR and the tactics in it – great stuff!