Update: I got a call from a someone who claimed they were a representative of Katapult SEO, based in San Diego. Apparently one of their employees had alerted them to this post, and they wanted to talk to me about it. During the call, I indicated to them that they needed to contact the original poster or recorder of the conversation, and that I was only reporting on this situation, as a blogger. [Read more…]

A court has ruled that Yelp must reveal the true identities of people who have left reviews on Yelp. Specifically, Yelp has been ordered to reveal the identities of 7 people who have left (bad) reviews of Hadeed Carpet Cleaning in Alexandria, Virginia. This court ruling sets a precedent for online reviews, and, more specifically, the reviews by anonymous reviewers on Yelp. [Read more…]

When you take a photo using your iPhone or Android mobile phone, the location data (latitude, longitude) of where that image was taken is usually saved in the photo file. Other information, such as the device that took the photo, and the image size, is also saved. The data that is saved in the image file itself is typically called “EXIF Data“. By editing image files before you upload them, you can add additional information to those files, which ultimately could help your local search engine optimization efforts. [Read more…]

I knew this was coming at some point, and perhaps we all knew that Google has been starting to crack down on local businesses who have their Google Maps listing using a UPS Store as their location. Now I have what I would call official notification from Google that this is not just a policy but something they’re starting to enforce: Google has rejected a new local business listing that has their address set up at a UPS Store. [Read more…]

According to a report, Google is going to start charging for usage of their Google Maps service. Google will charge businesses that are “heavy users” of their service. If a business gets more than 25,000 map requests per day, then the business will have to start paying to allow their users to use Google Maps. [Read more…]

When you perform a search at Google with a query that includes a city name, there is a good chance that Google will automatically pull some of the Google Places Listings into the search results. [Read more…]