Local businesses are getting unsolicited sales calls from a company saying they’re from Amazon Alexa. The local business apparently can purchase a listing on Amazon Alexa for a one-time fee of $69 plus a monthly maintenance fee of only $19 per month. I’ve spoken with at least four separate businesses across the United States, from South Florida to Texas to Indiana to South Carolina. They all say they’ve been called by someone saying they’re from Amazon Alexa, selling a similar listing service. [Read more…]

Recently, I made the decision to completely remove my company’s Google My Business listing. There are several reasons why I chose to not have my company’s website listed in Google Maps any longer. But what’s more interesting to me is the fact that the website has seen no ill effects by doing it. In fact, I’m seeing a lift in traffic to the site, as well as better search engine rankings overall (for the keywords I’ve been tracking). [Read more…]

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…]

Last week I noticed that for my local business, Hartzer Consulting, that the knowledge panel for my local business was not showing up. If you searched for Hartzer Consulting (the name of the business, which is unique), then the Google My Business listing would NOT show up. It had looked to me like it was a change that Google had made, as others were reporting it, as well. [Read more…]

Be careful of all of the code that others request that you add on your website, even supposed trusted SEO-related tool vendors. If you don’t fully understand the code and why it’s being place on your website, then it’s your responsibility. The tool vendor may be giving them access to your website or even to Google Search Console without an explanation. [Read more…]

Google Local listing and Google Maps link spam is still a big problem. As a Google Local Guide, I continue to see link spam attacks across entire cities and neighborhoods when I review Google local listings. In most of the cases, I see the same domain name being spammed over and over again, and in many cases the domains/sites that are linked don’t resolve. [Read more…]

Google My Business websites can easily overwrite local businesses’ website URLs in their Google local listing, the created Google My Business websites aren’t optimized using best practices, and Google Analytics code is inserted into the sites without giving access to the website owner.

Google My Business has recently launched a new website creation tool for local businesses. If you have a Google My Business listing for your business, and you log in to manage your listing, you may be presented with popups asking you to create a new website for free. Google will even host it for you. Not a bad deal, right? [Read more…]

Google has recently launched a new feature called Google Posts for local businesses. If you are a local business and have verified your business with Google My Business, you now have the option to post blog posts on your local business profile. This is really good for local business, as local businesses can update their listings with relevant information–and offer deals. But, I hate to say it, this new feature, Google Posts on Google My Business, is far from being ready for prime time. [Read more…]

If you are in the North Bay, Ontario Canada area, and are looking for a great place to eat breakfast, you might search Google to find a local restaurant. One of the search results is Terry’s Place, a local eatery. But, if you look at their Google My Business listing, as shown above, you’ll see that the top photo isn’t very pleasing. In fact, it’s quite possibly the worst photo that a restaurant could possibly have–EVER–in a Google My Business Listing. [Read more…]

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of the new augmented reality app called Pokémon Go. If you haven’t, then you’re probably living under a rock. Anyhow, if you truly haven’t heard about it, Pokémon Go is a new mobile phone app that’s taking the nation by storm. Once installed, it’s a game that combines the “real world”, and allows players to play a virtual scavenger hunt of sorts, trying to catch animated characters. These animated characters appear in real locations, such as in a park, inside your home, or even inside a local business. If you have a retail location, you can take advantage of the Pokémon Go phenomenon, and entice customers to visit your location. This will increase foot traffic and sales. [Read more…]

When it comes to marketing your business online, building trust is a big deal. It’s something that not only will help you get more customers, trust is extremely important because if you don’t have it–it could be devastating. You could lose traffic to your website and you could lose sales. It’s possible that you don’t even know that you’re losing out on potential sales. More importantly, the search engines use trust factors as a part of their algorithms to determine your website’s positioning in their search results. [Read more…]

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…]