Back in March 2019 (just last month), Yelp announced a new initiative called Verified Licenses, which is supposed to bring peace of mind to booking a professional that’s listed on Yelp.com. I did some checking of my own on a few local businesses. I found that despite Yelp displaying a verification logo and link to license information, the actual license information of these businesses is bogus. In some cases, the license numbers aren’t even valid license numbers in the State where the business listed. [Read more…]

According to recent research, only about 1.4 percent of local businesses, with a verified Google My Business listing, respond to reviews left about their business. Even less liked a Google review but ultimately didn’t even respond to the review. This recent research shows the sad state of Google Review responses. Local businesses, even those who have claimed their Google My Business listings, don’t feel that it is important enough to respond to Google reviews. [Read more…]

As you might be aware, I’m a Google Local Guide. Whenever I’m out and about I tend to post reviews and take photos of just about every single establishment, local business, and tourist attraction that I go to. Google Local Guides get points for every review, photo, and edit of everything that’s listed on Google Maps. There’s a strict point system, and different levels, based on how many points you have as a Local Guide. Currently, uploading a video gets you the most points. [Read more…]

Google is putting a 3-pack of videos in the search results for certain local search queries. The videos that are showing up in the search results 3-pack do not appear to be from YouTube or Google videos. Here is an example of a search query that shows the 3-pack of videos. [Read more…]

It appears to me that Google may be testing allowing Google My Business posts to get indexed in the search results. Previously, the Google My Business posts have not been getting indexed in Google’s search results. However, it appears that a limited number of them (about 3,100 of them) are getting indexed. I’m not sure if this is Google testing certain posts and allowing a limited number of them get indexed–or if it’s a mistake. From what I can tell, though, it appears to be a limited test of about 3,000 GMB posts. [Read more…]

Hotels and hotel managers have gotten way too paranoid about online reviews. How have we become a culture where we rely so heavily on online reviews (true or not) that one or two online reviews will make or break a business? Or even stop people from going to a hotel just because of something we read on the internet? [Read more…]