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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Alphabet ‘graduates’ Loon and Wing from moonshots to full, independent businesses – The Verge
Source: www.theverge.com
Alphabet is turning Loon and Wing into full, independent companies within its X moonshot factory. The two companies will be classified as “Other Bets” within Alphabet, alongside former X projects like Waymo, Chronicle, and Verily.

Data Center | LSA Insights
Source: www.lsainsights.com
Local Search Association has published its data on various industries. You can purchase them online.
Google Adds GrubHub & DoorDash Ads to Local Knowledge Panel
Source: www.thesempost.com
New ads appearing on Google local knowledge panels are driving orders away from the restaurant direct and instead are directing traffic through extremely prominent ads on the knowledge panel for each business to third party services for food deliveries which require these restaurants to pay a commission for any of the orders placed through the ad instead of the site directly.
Google Adds Call Buttons to Posts – Sterling Sky Inc
Source: www.sterlingsky.ca
Spotted by Colan Nielsen
Local Landing Page Study: What’s happening in 2018 – Nifty Marketing
Source: niftymarketing.com
Key Takeaways 381% more backlinks on average to top ranking landing pages in 2018 vs 2016. The average number of reviews on Google for top local ranking sites are up 30% from 2016. The average Google page speed for mobile on top ranking sites is up 15% from 2016. 72% of all the searches we performed had local pack ads showing on mobile. 31% of top listings had questions on their GMB profiles while only 9% of top listings had answers.
Scoring Your Brand Page at Google – Local University
Source: localu.org
Google’s doing everything it can to keep searchers on its pages rather than sending them off to other sites-including yours! Take this quick quiz to see how well your own Brand page at Google is doing.
Amazon’s share of the US e-commerce market is now 49%, or 5% of all retail spend – TechCrunch
Source: techcrunch.com
Its sales are up 29.2 percent versus a year ago, when it commanded 43 percent of all e-commerce retail sales.
Google expanding store visitation and local conversion reporting – Search Engine Land
Source: searchengineland.com
All customers using location extensions (all geographies) should be able to access these reports by the end of July. It’s not only available to enterprises but small business customers as well. Google stressed that all visitation data is “aggregated and anonymous.”
GMB Agency Accounts and FAQs – The Google Advertiser Community
Source: www.en.advertisercommunity.com
Organization accounts are now able to sync locations in Adwords, as you could in the old Google My Business Dashboard.
Search Queries – How Customers Found A Business
Source: www.en.advertisercommunity.com
Google formally announced the roll out of this very useful KeyWord feature.
Video Deep Dive: Google Insights-Queries to Find Your Business Overview – Local University
Source: localu.org
Mary, Carrie and I detail the new feature and how you might use it.
Do Google reviews impact local ranking? – Search Engine Land
Source: searchengineland.com
Joy did a great piece analyzing the impact of Google’s recent take down of reviews.
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