Last week in local 9/11/2017
Join Local U for the latest public episode of Last Week in Local, a weekly conversation about the articles that attracted our attention during the past week ending September 11th, 2017. This week features Joel Headley and Mike Blumenthal.
If you have a special topic you would like us to discuss for our other weekly feature, the Deep Dive in Local, or if you would like to be on one or the other of our segments, reach out and send us the topic and your availability. If you are interested in sponsoring this weekly show also please let us know.
Let us know what you think. Welcome to Last Week in Local!
Mike’s Links
LocalU Advanced Santa Monica Pre-Agenda Pricing Deal – Local University
Pre Agenda Pricing ends tonight!
Last week in local 9/11
Consumers are increasingly favoring retailers’ own products over outside brands, and the Amazon-Whole Foods deal only exemplifies that, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett told CNBC Wednesday.
How Kirkland Signature Became One of Costco’s Biggest Success Stories – WSJ
Still, Costco doesn’t aim to become a store that only sells Kirkland products, said Costco finance chief Richard Galanti. Shoppers expect to find brands they know at Costco, and Kirkland looks like a better value next to a higher priced branded version, he said
Amazon widens its retail footprint with Kohl’s partnership
Strange that a bricks and mortar retailer would invite the fox into the hen house?
What this means is that even more than it is in the advertising business, Facebook is in the surveillance business. Facebook, in fact, is the biggest surveillance-based enterprise in the history of mankind. It knows far, far more about you than the most intrusive government has ever known about its citizens. It’s amazing that people haven’t really understood this about the company.
Local SEO Tips for Local Business Structured Data Markup – Online Ownership
A good summary of the coding structures of Rich schema mark up for local.
A brief history of customer loyalty
As loyalty programs proliferated they became less successful at truly creating loyalty. Is membership the alternative?
Hack: Seeing Google Questions & Answers on the Desktop
Google Question and Answers is a PITA because it is currently only rolled out on mobile browsers and Android Maps. Here is a technique to be able to read and respond to Google Q & A via the desktop.
PlePer Tools – Google My Business Categories – Full List
A new, api driven list of Google local categories plus the ability to compare two different countries.
Joel’s Links
Florida Gov: Use Google Maps for real-time road closure updates
In many cases for profit entities has surpassed
A better world for wheels on Google Maps
While this in and of itself is not new, Google is growing an ever increasing use of Local Guides to build out more features and capabilities in local.
Google’s New Street View Cameras Will Help Algorithms Index The Real World
Will Google be able to extract human understandable facts from the images they get from StreetView? That is the goal and we need to be thinking about Streetview as the bot to the real world.
The New ‘Location, Location, Location’ in Retail | Street Fight
Has Experience replaced Location as the new mantra for local retailers?
Ranking your local business part 7: Social Signals • Yoast
Social is important but not so much for ranking in local (except G+).
6 things you need to know about Google’s Q&A feature on Google Maps
Realize that a single word answer can be turned against you.
August 22, 2017 – The Day Google Rolled Back the Possum Proximity Filter – Sterling Sky Inc
This has been an annoying “feature” of the local algo when its your listing that has been hidden. While it can still happen, it will happen less when it just two businesses on the same street.
