Podcast appearances and mentions of mike blumenthal

Send us a textIn this episode of The Near Memo, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal break down some of the biggest tectonic shifts happening at the intersection of AI, search, and antitrust law. The focal point? Google's claim that its Gemini AI now boasts 350 million monthly users. But what exactly counts as a user—and does stuffing Gemini into every app and product really mean it's being used?Greg and Mike dig deep into how Google is leveraging its product ecosystem—Chrome, Gmail, Workspace, Maps, Android, and Search—to inflate AI engagement numbers. The two unpack why Gemini still underperforms compared to ChatGPT and Claude, and what that gap reveals about Google's AI rollout and user trust.They also dive into the implications of the Department of Justice's antitrust remedies following the conclusion of the Google search monopoly trial. What could it mean for the web if Google is forced to divest Chrome—or even Maps? The conversation explores Google's use of default deals, bundling tactics, and how it might use its market power to dominate AI, just as it has search.Along the way, they highlight YouTube's overlooked role as a future-first search engine, powered by how-to content, brand channels, and a closed ecosystem that Google fully controls. And they dissect how local guides, AI-driven local search results, and Google's declining web traffic referrals are reshaping digital marketing as we know it.Whether you're a marketer, SEO professional, journalist, or tech policy nerd—this episode gives you a grounded, provocative look at what's really going on in the AI arms race.

Send us a textIn this jam-packed episode of The Near Memo, hosts Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal welcome back Adam Dorfman, VP of Product at BirdEye, for a timely deep dive into the ever-shifting world of local SEO, AI Overviews, and Google's evolving search ecosystem.The trio unpacks the seismic shifts happening in local search, AI-generated results, and the new metrics that matter when “clicks” no longer rule. From how Google is leveraging its own ecosystem to dominate AI outputs, to whether schema markup, directories, or social media still matter, this episode serves up unfiltered takes and battle-tested advice for marketers, SEOs, and local business owners alike.

Send us a textIn this thought-provoking episode of the Near Memo podcast, SEO veteran Cindy Krum joins Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal to unpack how Google's evolving use of AI, including MUM (Multitask Unified Model), is reshaping the search landscape. Krum explains how Google is moving from keyword- and entity-based indexing to modeling “journeys” that reflect a user's intent — aligning with Google's long-abandoned concept of “micro-moments” like “I want to know,” “I want to go,” “I want to do,” and “I want to buy.” These journeys are increasingly being monetized across different verticals such as YouTube, Merchant Center, and local results, as Google balances expensive AI integration with ad revenue optimization.The trio also explores the convergence of Google Discover, AI Overviews, and personalized browsing experiences — warning that this personalization could result in unprecedented data tracking and loss of consumer privacy. Krum emphasizes that marketers and SEOs must adapt quickly: diversify traffic sources, optimize across social and non-Google platforms, and consider how Google's motivations (data consolidation and monetization) are shaping an experience that prioritizes corporate interests over user needs. The message is clear — traditional SEO tactics won't survive the AI-driven tide unless they evolve dramatically.TakeawaysCindy Krum discusses the MUM model and its impact on SEO.Google's monetization strategies are evolving with AI integration.Personalization in search is becoming increasingly important.Marketers need to optimize for user intent and MUM journeys.Informational queries represent a significant portion of search traffic.Diversifying traffic sources is crucial for digital marketers.Branding and social media presence are essential for visibility.The search landscape is changing rapidly due to AI advancements.Marketers should be proactive in adapting to these changes.Understanding user journeys will be key to future SEO strategies.Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Mike Blumenthal, Executive Director of Cannabiz Credit Association Listen to a discussion at the Necann Boston 2025 event about the challenges of credit and payment reliability within the cannabis industry. Guests introduce the Cannabiz Credit Association (CCA), a centralized system that aggregates payment histories and credit data of cannabis businesses nationwide. The CCA helps companies assess who pays their bills on time, improve accountability, and reduce bad debt through credit risk scoring and industry-wide transparency. The conversation also touches on how the CCA system benefits leasing companies, cultivators, and brands by providing trustworthy credit information and encouraging timely payments.

Send us a textGreg Sterling, Mike Blumenthal, and Sammy Paget of BrightLocal discuss the evolving landscape of consumer reviews, focusing on how consumer behavior has changed over the years, the importance of businesses responding to reviews, and the impact of AI on review management. They explore the future of reviews, the decline in trust, and Google's policies regarding review authenticity, emphasizing the need for businesses to prioritize customer service and engagement.00:00 Consumer Expectations and Business Responses02:59 The Importance of Customer Engagement06:25 Common Mistakes Businesses Make with Reviews08:24 The Future of Reviews and AI Integration13:50 Trust and Alternative Sources of Information17:42 The Role of AI in Review Management22:43 Google's Trust Report and Review Management27:27 The Impact of Reviews on Education Institutions30:49 Final Thoughts on Reviews and Business PracticesTakeaways•Consumers expect businesses to respond to all types of reviews.•89% of consumers are likely to use businesses that respond to reviews.•Engagement through review responses can boost a business's reputation.•AI is changing how reviews are summarized and presented to consumers.•Trust in online reviews has declined, leading to alternative sources of information.•Businesses should focus on delivering excellent service to encourage positive reviews.•Google's aggressive removal of reviews aims to restore trust in the platform.•The badge of shame for manipulated reviews may not significantly impact consumer behavior.•Review responses should be thoughtful and engaging to signal business engagement.•Businesses need to view reviews as valuable feedback for improvement.Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

SEO veterans Mike Blumenthal, Greg Sterling, and David Mim continue exploring the pressing questions surrounding Google's role as a utility and its evolving platforms. Focusing on the European search experience, the discussion also revolves around AI's role in modifying search results, and local service ads' impact on user behavior. The talk also touches on how changes in Google's algorithm and business model are propelling a significant decline in traditional website traffic. The guests from Near Media provide expert insights on how businesses can adapt by enhancing the visibility of their services via structured content that appeals directly to these AI-driven formats.  Greg, Mike, and David share their perspectives on AI's potential to redefine consumer interactions with search platforms and marketing methods, while also highlighting the importance of direct customer relationships and authentic experiences.  Key Segments: [00:06:51] EU Tech Regulation and Google's Search Impact [00:10:30] Local SEO and Zero-Click Evolution [00:13:07] EDGE of the Web Title Sponsor: Site Strategics [00:14:00] Impact of Google Local Service Ads [00:17:00] Hotel Ads: Monetization Strategy Insights [00:20:40] Google Tests Enhanced AI Search Feature [00:25:31] Enhancing Local Conversion Strategies [00:29:07] Understanding User Intent in AI [00:32:22] AI's Concierge Era: Worth the Shift? [00:35:57] Tailoring Business Model to Audience Thanks to Our Sponsors! Site Strategics: https://edgeofthewebradio.com/site Follow Our Guests: Mike Blumenthal:  X: @mblumenthal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mblumenthal/ BlueSky: @mikeblumenthal.bsky.social Greg Sterling LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregsterling/  David Mihm  LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/davidmihm  Resources https://www.nearmedia.co/dma/google-preliminary-non-compliance-6-5/  https://www.nearmedia.co/dma/google-dma-compliance-2025-03/  https://www.nearmedia.co/dma/eu-home-services-search-behavior/  https://www.nearmedia.co/googles-2nd-local-pack-in-the-eu/ https://www.nearmedia.co/eu-home-services-search-behavior/

Send us a text01:59 Evolution of Consumer Review Behavior05:03 Trust in Reviews: A Declining Trend08:14 The Impact of Fake Reviews and AI14:18 Alternative Review Platforms and Their Trustworthiness19:30 Key Findings from the 15-Year Review Study22:07 Best Practices for Review Solicitation29:22 Consumer Expectations and Business ResponsesIn this episode, Greg Sterling, Mike Blumenthal, and guest Sammy Paget from BrightLocal dive deep into 15 years of consumer review research trends. Sammy shares insights from BrightLocal's long-running consumer review survey, highlighting how online reviews have evolved from novelty to necessity in the purchase journey. But as the role of reviews has grown, so has consumer skepticism.The trio discusses the sharp drop in review trust, the increasing sophistication of fake reviews—especially those powered by AI—and the paradox that while people trust reviews less, they still rely on them heavily. They also explore the growing use of alternative platforms like local news, YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit as sources of business recommendations. Plus, they examine generational behavior and cultural differences in review reading habits.Whether you're a local business owner or just fascinated by how we evaluate things online, this segment is packed with context and conversation on how trust and behavior around reviews is shifting—and what that means moving forward.Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

The EDGE untangles the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) with SEO veterans Mike Blumenthal, Greg Sterling, and David Mihm. This episode reveals how Google's strategic maneuvers in Europe are reshaping the SERP landscape and challenging the status quo in local search. With a strong research effort of the last two years, our guests dissect Google's attempts to comply with the DMA, such as the introduction of the Places Sites Tab, Carousel and the decoupling of the Local Pack from Google Maps. Despite these efforts, user behavior tells a different story—one where Google's new features are largely ignored. It seems the Local Pack is still the go-to destination for users, regardless of these new additions. Meanwhile, the episode exposes an intriguing juxtaposition in the hotels vertical, where booking.com emerges as a formidable player through ad dominance, highlighting a complex dance between market giants. This scenario sparks a discussion on whether Google's self-preferencing tendencies are truly being curtailed or simply rebranded. Join us as we explore how Google's “play nice” strategies may just be a façade amidst ongoing DOJ antitrust pressure. Could this pave a path for diversified regional strategies and fresh opportunities in the digital marketing sphere? Let us know your thoughts of the show at https://ratethispodcast.com/EDGE  Key Segments: [00:02:01] SEO News from the EDGE Highlig [00:04:40] Introducing NearMedia: Mike Bluementhal, Greg Sterling, and David Mihm [00:08:03]  What is the Digital Marketing Act? [00:08:59] Article 65 of the DMA Applies to the Regulation of Search [00:11:37] EDGE of the Web Title Sponsor: Site Strategics [00:13:34]  What has Google Done to Comply with the DMA? [00:16:21]  Google Rewriting History with Multiple Local Packs [00:18:13]  Was This Done to Address American Antitrust Concerns? [00:20:06]  Will the Election Change the Antitrust Enforcement? [00:24:23]  EDGE of The Web Sponsor: InLinks [00:26:31]  The DMA is not Prescriptive, But Setting Operational Parameters [00:28:10]  Major Research Since 2023 on User Behavior [00:30:23]   Google has a Self-Interest to Show You the Last Click [00:32:42]  EDGE of The Web Sponsor: Wix Studio [00:35:14]  What was the Most Surprising Findings? Guess....  [00:38:15]  In Summary: A Bad Faith Argument on Google's Part   Thanks to Our Sponsors! Site Strategics: https://edgeofthewebradio.com/site InLinks: https://edgeofthewebradio.com/inlinks  Wix: https://edgeofthewebradio.com/wixstudio  Follow Our Guests: Mike Bluementhal:  X: @mblumenthal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mblumenthal/ BlueSky: @mikeblumenthal.bsky.social Greg Sterling: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregsterling/  David Mihm:  LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/davidmihm  Resources https://www.nearmedia.co/dma/google-preliminary-non-compliance-6-5/  https://www.nearmedia.co/dma/google-dma-compliance-2025-03/  https://www.nearmedia.co/dma/eu-home-services-search-behavior/  https://www.nearmedia.co/googles-2nd-local-pack-in-the-eu/ https://www.nearmedia.co/eu-home-services-search-behavior/

Send us a textGreg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal discuss the current state of Google suspensions, the impact of AI overviews on local search traffic, and the evolving landscape of digital marketing strategies. They emphasize the importance of businesses becoming less reliant on Google and exploring alternative marketing channels while navigating the challenges posed by AI and changing search dynamics.Takeaways•Google's traffic dynamics are shifting, impacting everyone.•Suspension isues have been fixed but appeals times for reinstatement have increased significantly.•AI overviews are reducing visibility for organic search results.•Businesses should be cautious when making changes to their listings.•The importance of managing Google Business Profiles is highlighted.•Only a small percentage of businesses actively manage their reviews.•Building a brand independent of Google is crucial for success.•Social media is a primary channel for customer engagement amongst SMBS.•AI traffic is not a substitute for traditional search traffic.•Google's strategy is to retain users by integrating AI into search.01:36 Update: Google Suspensions/Reverification Fix and Backlog 05:36 The Rise of AI Overviews in Local Search11:27 Navigating the Future of Google and AI16:56 Marketing Strategies in a Changing LandscapeSubscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Chasing Justice with Lt. Joe Pangaro – In a world where violence can erupt anywhere, knowing how to protect yourself is essential. Lt. Joe speaks with Mike Blumenthal from Millennium Martial Arts about recognizing danger, making smart decisions, and taking action when necessary. From road rage to terrorism, understanding self-defense and situational awareness can help you stay safe in unpredictable situations.

Chasing Justice with Lt. Joe Pangaro – In a world where violence can erupt anywhere, knowing how to protect yourself is essential. Lt. Joe speaks with Mike Blumenthal from Millennium Martial Arts about recognizing danger, making smart decisions, and taking action when necessary. From road rage to terrorism, understanding self-defense and situational awareness can help you stay safe in unpredictable situations.

Send us a textIn this episode, Mike Blumenthal and Greg Sterling continue their discussion with Curtis Boyd, CEO of the Transparency Company, focusing on the pervasive issue of review fraud. They explore the current landscape of consumer trust in online reviews, the implications of new FTC regulations, and the challenges businesses face in maintaining review integrity. Curtis shares his optimistic outlook on potential solutions and emphasizes the importance of transparency in the review process. The conversation also delves into practical strategies for businesses and marketers to combat fake reviews and improve their online reputation.00:00 Introduction to Review Fraud and Transparency Company00:23 Future of Review Integrity08:40 Strategies for Businesses and Marketers17:55 Optimism Amidst ChallengesSubscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textIn this episode, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal discuss the state of review fraud with Curtis Boyd, CEO of the Transparency Company. They explore the complexities of fake reviews, including the different types and metrics used to identify them. The conversation delves into the role of AI in generating fake reviews and the economic impact of review fraud on consumers and businesses. Curtis shares insights from a recent report estimating the financial damage caused by fake reviews, highlighting the challenges faced by ethical businesses in a marketplace rife with deception.00:10 Introduction to Review Fraud and Transparency Company01:48 Understanding Review Fraud: Types and Metrics04:42 The Landscape of Fake Reviews: Business Practices and Impacts09:11 The Role of AI in Review Fraud18:27 Economic Impact of Review Fraud: Insights from the Report25:32 The Challenge of Review Fraud32:08 Learn about Part 2 of the interviewSubscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Are offline marketing efforts a lost art in the digital age?  What's the SEO connection of it all? Wix's Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter talk with Mike Blumenthal and Greg Sterling from Near Media to tackle the intricate balance between online and offline marketing strategies. Find out where common offline marketing mistakes play a critical role in your digital presence and SEO strategy.  Dive into how word-of-mouth marketing translates into online growth for businesses We're going “unplugged” in this episode of the SERP's Up SEO Podcast. Key Segments [00:02:05] What's On This Episode of SERP's Up?  [00:02:43] Focus Topic of the Week [00:12:16] Focus Topic Guest: Greg Sterling & Mike Blumenthal  [00:40:59] Snappy News [00:48:21] Follow of the Week Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal CarterGreg Sterling Mike Blumenthal Terry Rice Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center Near Media  The Near Memo Podcast Brand24 News: SearchGPT Launches As ChatGPT's Real-Time Search Feature Google AI Answers In Google Maps: Things To Do, Review Summaries & About This Place

With a deluge of AI-spun content hitting the web today, it's never been more important to ensure you're working with real experts on your brand publication.Host Claire Carlile is joined by George Nguyen from Wix to discuss how to develop content hubs for brands that want to build their authority and expertise—no matter the vertical.What you will learn in this episode:Examples of brands with fantastic content hubs and brand publicationsHow to overcome the challenges you'll face when starting a content hubHow to approach working with expert contributorsHow to make your brand publication sustainable in the long termThe value of diversity in brand publications...and much more!About Claire Carlile (Host)Claire Carlile is a Chartered Marketer (MCIM) and is BrightLocal's Local Search Expert. Her work at Claire Carlile Marketing, where she helps businesses of all sizes make the most of the local search opportunity, allows her to provide real-world skills and expertise to what BrightLocal does.Where to find ClaireWebsiteXLinkedInAbout George Nguyen (Guest)George Nguyen is the Director of SEO Editorial at Wix. He creates content to help users and marketers better understand how search works and how to use Wix SEO tools. He was formerly a search news journalist and is known to speak at the occasional industry event.Where to find GeorgeWebsiteXLinkedInRoom 404Find out what George puts in Room 404... rest assured, it's a search phrase many will be happy to see/hear the back of!Want more from Adventures in Local Marketing? We highly recommend checking out these episodes:Steve Wiideman on Navigating Big Brand Local SEOEmbracing AI with Marie HaynesCrystal Carter on Powerful Applications of Schema MarkupResources from this episode:Wix's SEO Learning HubWix's Podcast: SERP's UpWix Business Website TemplatesThe Wix Playground in New York CityExpert Shoutout: Darren ShawExpert Shoutout: Krystal TaingExpert Shoutout: Celeste GonzalezExpert Shoutout: Miriam EllisExpert Shoutout: Greg Sterling, Mike Blumenthal, and David Mihm at Near MediaAbout Adventures in Local MarketingAdventures in Local Marketing is *the* podcast for local marketers, hosted by industry expert and popular speaker, Claire Carlile.Claire chats to a smorgasbord of marketers from various different backgrounds, who each bring their unique insight into facets of the local marketing landscape.

Send us a Text Message.In this extended episode of the Near Memo, Greg Sterling , Joy Hawkins, Darren Shaw & Mike Blumenthal explore the role of generative AI and how it has evolved one year after CHat GPT was released.  We cover:Experiences and opinions on the use of AI tools like ChatGPT in SEO and content creation.The effectiveness of AI in different aspects of agency work, including creative tasks and data analysis.The influence of AI on the quality of content and the evolving nature of SEO strategies.Perspectives on the future impact of AI on the SEO industry and the role of agencies.How Local SEO agencies use AI to improve client content:Content Creation Challenges with AI: Contrary to initial expectations, AI has not replaced content writers. While it is used for drafting and repurposing content, AI-generated articles often require extensive human editing, especially for factual accuracy and coherence.Content Refinement and Repurposing: AI excels in transforming existing content into different formats, like converting a list into a blog post or a blog into a script. This minimizes the editing work required.Efficiency in Post Creation: AI has been particularly effective in generating social media or Google posts, reducing the time and mental effort involved in content creation. This includes automating tasks like emoji placement in posts. How Local SEO agencies explain AI to their clients:AI in Client Communication: Both Sterling Sky and Whitesoark  are transparent with clients about their AI usage, addressing concerns about potential negative impacts on SEO performance. AI is presented as a tool for idea generation and preliminary drafting, not as a primary content creator.Client Engagement with AI: Clients are generally receptive and interested in AI's role in content creation. The emphasis is on AI as an assistant that complements human skills, ensuring quality and originality in content.Cost Implications: There have been no significant shifts in pricing structures due to AI efficiencies. The focus is on using AI to maintain or reduce costs rather than altering client fees. Local SEO Agencies & their AI future:AI as a reporting super power: extracting meaningful insights from large data sets for clients.Long-Term Impact on Staffing and Skills: Agencies do not foresee AI replacing human staff. Instead, AI is viewed as a tool that enhances staff capabilities. Concerns about AI causing dependency or de-skilling are noted, but the overall sentiment is optimistic.Future of AI in Local SEO: AI is expected to lead to more efficient workflows and better quality content. Agencies anticipate a growing divide between those heavily reliant on AI and those favoring a balanced, human-centric approach. AI's role in data analysis and automating repetitive tasks is highlighted, enhancing both client service and internal processes.ChatGPT's Review InsightsExperiences and opinions on the use of AI tools like ChatGPT in SEO and content creation.The effectiveness of AI in different aspects of agency work, including creative tasks and data analysis.The influence of AI on the quality of content and the evolving nature of SEO strategies.Perspectives on the future impact of AISubscribe to our 3x per week newsletter at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Join us in this eye-opening discussion with Zachary Dotson, an experienced marketer in the home services industry, as he sheds light on a rampant scam in Google Local Service Ads. Learn how fake companies are exploiting the system with stolen licenses and profiles, bait-and-switch pricing tactics, and the impact on legitimate businesses and consumers. Discover the challenges faced in tackling these scams and the response from authorities and Google. This conversation with Mike Blumenthal from Near Media is a must-watch for anyone in the service industry or those who use online ads for home services.The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Subscribe to our 3x per week newsletter at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

In this extended episode of the Near Memo, Greg Sterling , Joy Hawkins, Darren Shaw & Mike Blumenthal explore the role of generative AI and how it has evolved one year after CHat GPT was released.  We cover:Experiences and opinions on the use of AI tools like ChatGPT in SEO and content creation.The effectiveness of AI in different aspects of agency work, including creative tasks and data analysis.The influence of AI on the quality of content and the evolving nature of SEO strategies.Perspectives on the future impact of AI on the SEO industry and the role of agencies.How Local SEO agencies use AI to improve client content:Content Creation Challenges with AI: Contrary to initial expectations, AI has not replaced content writers. While it is used for drafting and repurposing content, AI-generated articles often require extensive human editing, especially for factual accuracy and coherence.Content Refinement and Repurposing: AI excels in transforming existing content into different formats, like converting a list into a blog post or a blog into a script. This minimizes the editing work required.Efficiency in Post Creation: AI has been particularly effective in generating social media or Google posts, reducing the time and mental effort involved in content creation. This includes automating tasks like emoji placement in posts. How Local SEO agencies explain AI to their clients:AI in Client Communication: Both Sterling Sky and Whitesoark  are transparent with clients about their AI usage, addressing concerns about potential negative impacts on SEO performance. AI is presented as a tool for idea generation and preliminary drafting, not as a primary content creator.Client Engagement with AI: Clients are generally receptive and interested in AI's role in content creation. The emphasis is on AI as an assistant that complements human skills, ensuring quality and originality in content.Cost Implications: There have been no significant shifts in pricing structures due to AI efficiencies. The focus is on using AI to maintain or reduce costs rather than altering client fees. Local SEO Agencies & their AI future:AI as a reporting super power: extracting meaningful insights from large data sets for clients.Long-Term Impact on Staffing and Skills: Agencies do not foresee AI replacing human staff. Instead, AI is viewed as a tool that enhances staff capabilities. Concerns about AI causing dependency or de-skilling are noted, but the overall sentiment is optimistic.Future of AI in Local SEO: AI is expected to lead to more efficient workflows and better quality content. Agencies anticipate a growing divide between those heavily reliant on AI and those favoring a balanced, human-centric approach. AI's role in data analysis and automating repetitive tasks is highlighted, enhancing both client service and internal processes.ChatGPT's Review InsightsExperiences and opinions on the use of AI tools like ChatGPT in SEO and content creation.The effectiveness of AI in different aspects of agency work, including creative tasks and data analysis.The influence of AI on the quality of content and the evolving nature of SEO strategies.Perspectives on the future impact of AI on the SEO industry and the role of agencies.The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and CSubscribe to our 3x per week newsletter at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Have you ever wondered how users interact with local search results? Or how to tackle the review chaos—both fake and missing? You’re in luck. Today, we’re getting the lowdown from Mike Blumenthal, who knows Google’s local search like the back of his hand. Let’s dive in! The Scoop on Local Search Behaviors First, some eye-opening…

In this episode, Near Media's Mike Blumenthal highlights the Google trends we should all be paying close attention to, discusses the evolution and importance of images in Google Business Profile, and introduces upcoming Near Media consumer research that could change how we look at searcher behavior.Listen to learn:What the future of Google Business Profile might look likeWhere to go to improve your Google and Google Business Profile knowledgeThe part ads and monetization play in the future of Google Business ProfilePLUS a surprising fact about what consumers do and don't care about in reviewsRESOURCESFollow Mike on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mblumenthalMike's profile on the Google Business Profile Community Help Forum: https://support.google.com/profile/1779682?sjid=8164595187474410917-EUMike has an open email policy: mike@blumenthals.comMike's older local search blog, which he keeps alive as an archive: https://blumenthals.com/blog/The Near Memo - Near Media's Podcast: https://www.nearmedia.co/memo/Sterling Sky blog: https://www.sterlingsky.ca/blog/BrightLocal blog: https://www.brightlocal.com/insights/Whitespark blog: https://whitespark.ca/blog/Near Media: https://www.nearmedia.co/How to Upload and Manage Google Business Profile Photos: https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/google-business-profile/optimization/photos/Dispute a removed Google Business Profile photo or video with this form: https://support.google.com/business/gethelp

Reviews play a crucial role in a business’s online reputation, with many customers relying on them to make informed decisions. However, fake reviews have become a significant issue for businesses, with attackers leaving false reviews to damage a business’s reputation. In this podcast, we’ll be talking with Mike Blumenthal, an expert in GMB and online…

See the episode resources in the show notes on:https://emjpodcast.com/mike-blumenthal-talks-about-his-journey-with-local-seoCheck out more episodes of our SEO podcast.

Mike's LinksMove from Content Creation to Content Creativity In 2023 - Local University - https://localu.org/move-from-content-creation-to-content-creativity-in-2023/Survey Of 755 Link Builders Shows What Works In 2022 - https://www.authorityhacker.com/link-building-survey/Cyrus Sheard thread on Link Builder Survey on Twitter - https://twitter.com/cyrusshepard/status/1597669127728295936?s=12&t=D-tkb6_tCMfY7R-XfzNP0QFTC, States Sue Google and iHeartMedia for Deceptive Ads Promoting the Pixel 4 Smartphone - https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/11/ftc-states-sue-google-iheartmedia-deceptive-ads-promoting-pixel-4-smartphoneThe Influence of Reviews on Conversion - https://streetfightmag.com/2022/12/02/influence-of-reviews-on-conversion/Mike Blumenthal on new Google Profile Image bug on Twitter - https://twitter.com/mblumenthal/status/1598392086671360009Smart Move, Google - https://garrit.xyz/posts/2022-11-24-smart-move-googleCarrie's LinksReview & Service Attributes: Do they affect how long a review stays at the top of a listing? - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/review-service-attributes-do-they-affect-how-long-a-review-stays-at-the-top-of-a-listing/LocalU Dallas April 26 - tickets on Sale - https://localu.org/dfw-23   Lorenzo Hotel - Downtown DallasGoogle Shows Download Your Google Business Profile Data When You Remove Your Listing - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-remove-local-profile-download-content-34500.htmlGoogle Business Profile Can Notate Previous Location  - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-business-profile-previous-location-34479.htmlTip of the week - What's the 1 thing we covered that you should read if your time is limited? ChatGPT - Understand the pros, cons and possible utilization of this very smart new tool in our arsenal. (https://chat.openai.com/chat)

Mike's LinksMove from Content Creation to Content Creativity In 2023 - Local University - https://localu.org/move-from-content-creation-to-content-creativity-in-2023/Survey Of 755 Link Builders Shows What Works In 2022 - https://www.authorityhacker.com/link-building-survey/Cyrus Sheard thread on Link Builder Survey on Twitter - https://twitter.com/cyrusshepard/status/1597669127728295936?s=12&t=D-tkb6_tCMfY7R-XfzNP0QFTC, States Sue Google and iHeartMedia for Deceptive Ads Promoting the Pixel 4 Smartphone - https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/11/ftc-states-sue-google-iheartmedia-deceptive-ads-promoting-pixel-4-smartphoneThe Influence of Reviews on Conversion - https://streetfightmag.com/2022/12/02/influence-of-reviews-on-conversion/Mike Blumenthal on new Google Profile Image bug on Twitter - https://twitter.com/mblumenthal/status/1598392086671360009Smart Move, Google - https://garrit.xyz/posts/2022-11-24-smart-move-googleCarrie's LinksReview & Service Attributes: Do they affect how long a review stays at the top of a listing? - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/review-service-attributes-do-they-affect-how-long-a-review-stays-at-the-top-of-a-listing/LocalU Dallas April 26 - tickets on Sale - https://localu.org/dfw-23   Lorenzo Hotel - Downtown DallasGoogle Shows Download Your Google Business Profile Data When You Remove Your Listing - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-remove-local-profile-download-content-34500.htmlGoogle Business Profile Can Notate Previous Location  - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-business-profile-previous-location-34479.htmlTip of the week - What's the 1 thing we covered that you should read if your time is limited? ChatGPT - Understand the pros, cons and possible utilization of this very smart new tool in our arsenal. (https://chat.openai.com/chat)

Mike's LinksA Guide: Why Are My Reviews Missing on Google? - https://www.nearmedia.co/a-guide-why-are-my-google-reviews-missing/API endpoint update from Google - https://localsearchforum.com/threads/api-endpoint-update-from-google.59655/How to Get Zocdoc off Your Google Business Profile - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/how-to-get-zocdoc-off-your-google-business-profile/Google Maps Tests New Sidebar Navigation - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-maps-new-sidebar-navigation-34438.htmlDoes the Length of a Google Review Matter? - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/length-google-review-matter/Carrie's LinksBuy LocalU Event Videos - Local University - https://localu.org/buy-localu-event-videos/Brodie Clark on Twitter: "The past year was a big one for development of tools to help us do a better job at SEO. I tested out a ton of new SEO tools. Here's my top 10 (both free & paid) to use in 2023 - https://twitter.com/brodieseo/status/1597134729266204672Gary Llyes - 60% of the internet is duplicate -  Google Search Central Live in Singapore via Barry Schwartz - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-60-percent-of-the-internet-is-duplicate-34469.htmlFirst time seeing messaging after making edits to a GBP where Google tells you down to the minute how long until your edit is reviewed. - Colan Nielsen - https://twitter.com/ColanNielsen/status/1597244695096176641  Tip of the week - What's the 1 thing we covered that you should read if your time is limited? A Guide: Why Are My Reviews Missing on Google? - Mike Blumenthal - https://www.nearmedia.co/a-guide-why-are-my-google-reviews-missing/

Mike's LinksA Guide: Why Are My Reviews Missing on Google? - https://www.nearmedia.co/a-guide-why-are-my-google-reviews-missing/API endpoint update from Google - https://localsearchforum.com/threads/api-endpoint-update-from-google.59655/How to Get Zocdoc off Your Google Business Profile - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/how-to-get-zocdoc-off-your-google-business-profile/Google Maps Tests New Sidebar Navigation - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-maps-new-sidebar-navigation-34438.htmlDoes the Length of a Google Review Matter? - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/length-google-review-matter/Carrie's LinksBuy LocalU Event Videos - Local University - https://localu.org/buy-localu-event-videos/Brodie Clark on Twitter: "The past year was a big one for development of tools to help us do a better job at SEO. I tested out a ton of new SEO tools. Here's my top 10 (both free & paid) to use in 2023 - https://twitter.com/brodieseo/status/1597134729266204672Gary Llyes - 60% of the internet is duplicate -  Google Search Central Live in Singapore via Barry Schwartz - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-60-percent-of-the-internet-is-duplicate-34469.htmlFirst time seeing messaging after making edits to a GBP where Google tells you down to the minute how long until your edit is reviewed. - Colan Nielsen - https://twitter.com/ColanNielsen/status/1597244695096176641  Tip of the week - What's the 1 thing we covered that you should read if your time is limited? A Guide: Why Are My Reviews Missing on Google? - Mike Blumenthal - https://www.nearmedia.co/a-guide-why-are-my-google-reviews-missing/

Cindy Krum jumps into the news with Erin to tackle the slew of news this week! A little late, but still really important! Erin blames his kids… Covering articles from Barry Schwartz, Mike Blumenthal, Roger Montti and Fili Wiese, we also jumped into a Twitter thread that revealed something very interesting! Is there going to be a larger focus on structured data from Google to the degree of triggering manual penalties? As Cindy says. “The news this week kind of reinforces the idea that you are in Google's results wherever you are at their leisure and at their discretion. And what they give, they can easily take away.” Check your schema, all - it could be an issue. News from the EDGE: [00:03:16] Almost all industries have seen a large increase in Google Cost-Per-Leads [00:08:56] EDGE of the Web Sponsor: edgeofthewebradio.com/inlinks [00:09:41] Twitter removes 80% of its contractor employees without notice [00:14:20] GBP updates might eliminate your reviews. Have backups! [00:20:54] EDGE of the Web Title Sponsor: Site Strategics [00:21:42] Marketers are jumping on the Mastodon bandwagon. Should you? [00:25:11] Social Thread: Spammy Schema will get a Manual Penalty? Barry Blast from Search Engine Roundtable: [00:32:41] Barry Blast 1: Google Ads Paying Advertisers $100 To Enroll In Automatically Applies Recommendations Thanks to our sponsors! Site Strategics https://edgeofthewebradio.com/site Inlinks https://edgeofthewebradio.com/inlinks Follow Us: Twitter: @ErinSparks Twitter: @Suzzicks Twitter: @TheMann00 Twitter: @EDGEWebRadio #StandwithUkraine edgeofthewebradio.com/ukraine

Mike's Links:POPABLE AND WALMART JOIN FORCES TO HELP SMALL BUSINESS RETAILERS GET BACK ON THEIR FEET AFTER THE PANDEMIC - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/popable-and-walmart-join-forces-to-help-small-business-retailers-get-back-on-their-feet-after-the-pandemic-301662834.htmlGoogle is shutting down its dedicated Street View app next year - https://9to5google.com/2022/11/01/google-street-view-app-shutting-down/Semantic Photography: Low Hanging Fruit to Increase Google Local Conversions - https://www.nearmedia.co/semantic-photography-the-low-hanging-fruit-to-increase-google-local-conversions/Does the Number of Google Reviews Impact Ranking? [Case Study] - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/number-of-reviews-impact-ranking/Carrie's LinksReviews showing review location in Google – Darren Shaw – https://twitter.com/DarrenShaw_/status/1588964280665534464How to find reviews you haven't responded to yet in the NMX  – Joy & Colan - https://twitter.com/JoyanneHawkins/status/1588518928002998272Tanking Local Rankings? How to Turn Them Around If They've Gone Down – Phils preso from LocalU - https://twitter.com/philrozek/status/1588274549057286145LocalU on demand coming this week - https://localu.org/buy-localu-event-videos/Level up your online presence with images that convert – Joy Hawkins & Mike Blumenthal - https://www.rioseo.com/events/local-photos-live-event/

Mike's Links:POPABLE AND WALMART JOIN FORCES TO HELP SMALL BUSINESS RETAILERS GET BACK ON THEIR FEET AFTER THE PANDEMIC - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/popable-and-walmart-join-forces-to-help-small-business-retailers-get-back-on-their-feet-after-the-pandemic-301662834.htmlGoogle is shutting down its dedicated Street View app next year - https://9to5google.com/2022/11/01/google-street-view-app-shutting-down/Semantic Photography: Low Hanging Fruit to Increase Google Local Conversions - https://www.nearmedia.co/semantic-photography-the-low-hanging-fruit-to-increase-google-local-conversions/Does the Number of Google Reviews Impact Ranking? [Case Study] - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/number-of-reviews-impact-ranking/Carrie's LinksReviews showing review location in Google – Darren Shaw – https://twitter.com/DarrenShaw_/status/1588964280665534464How to find reviews you haven't responded to yet in the NMX  – Joy & Colan - https://twitter.com/JoyanneHawkins/status/1588518928002998272Tanking Local Rankings? How to Turn Them Around If They've Gone Down – Phils preso from LocalU - https://twitter.com/philrozek/status/1588274549057286145LocalU on demand coming this week - https://localu.org/buy-localu-event-videos/Level up your online presence with images that convert – Joy Hawkins & Mike Blumenthal - https://www.rioseo.com/events/local-photos-live-event/

DescriptionShopify study shows much higher churn than WooCommerce, why & what are the implications?A recent study in the Mails & Globe explores retention over the past 3 years of the major e-commerce platforms. They concluded that Shopify's retention was one of the lowest particularly compared to Woo Commerce. Is this a failure on the part of Shopify or just a reflection of how easy it is to get started with the product? While interesting, does the study tell the whole story?SEMRush zero click study makes the case that the web clicks are still kingSEMRush recently completed an in-depth study of zero click behavior on Google. While the study largely ignored local search, its findings were much more granular than previous work in this area. When you discount query refinement, and users that move to a different part of Google after the initial query, that Google is sending roughly 25% of users to its own answers while sending 43% on to other websites. Apple Maps Vs Google Maps Functionality in EuropeSegment 3 desc: During his recent travels in the UK, Portugal and Italy, Mike Blumenthal used biking, driving and walking directions as well as restaurant and hotel discovery features in both Google and Apple Maps. Google's biking directions won out as Apple doesn't offer them in Europe yet. Google's hospitality POIs were so good that there was no need for TripAdvisor or other 3rd party apps. But when it came to driving directions and walking directions Apple Maps was consistently superior for a tourist.

Join special guest Chris Ratchford and Carrie Hill as they discuss the news from local search in the last week.Want to read more? Here are all the links!Chris' Links:What is Express Delivery on DoorDash? Is it Worth it? - Ridesharing Driver - https://www.ridesharingdriver.com/doordash-express-delivery/The FTC is readying its war on fake reviews - https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/policy/ftc-fake-reviews-rulesTikTok vs. Amazon: Social video giant hiring in Seattle and L.A. to build e-commerce network – GeekWire - https://www.geekwire.com/2022/tiktok-vs-amazon-social-video-giant-hiring-in-seattle-and-l-a-to-build-e-commerce-network/Google rolling out site names and updated favicon logos in search results - https://searchengineland.com/google-rolling-out-site-names-and-updated-favicon-logos-in-search-results-388714Carrie's LinksEdge of the web radio - episode 534 | Images and Local Search with Mike Blumenthal - https://edgeofthewebradio.com/seo-podcast/images-local-search-mike-blumenthal/Beginner's Guide to Google Business Profiles: What Are They, How To Use Them, and Why - Moz - Miriam Ellis - https://moz.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-google-business-profileHearing Aids Now Available OTC -  Prices set to plummet - Huffpost - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hearing-aid-prices-plummet-fda-over-the-counter-sales_n_634cbeace4b04cf8f379e438

Join special guest Chris Ratchford and Carrie Hill as they discuss the news from local search in the last week.Want to read more? Here are all the links!Chris' Links:What is Express Delivery on DoorDash? Is it Worth it? - Ridesharing Driver - https://www.ridesharingdriver.com/doordash-express-delivery/The FTC is readying its war on fake reviews - https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/policy/ftc-fake-reviews-rulesTikTok vs. Amazon: Social video giant hiring in Seattle and L.A. to build e-commerce network – GeekWire - https://www.geekwire.com/2022/tiktok-vs-amazon-social-video-giant-hiring-in-seattle-and-l-a-to-build-e-commerce-network/Google rolling out site names and updated favicon logos in search results - https://searchengineland.com/google-rolling-out-site-names-and-updated-favicon-logos-in-search-results-388714Carrie's LinksEdge of the web radio - episode 534 | Images and Local Search with Mike Blumenthal - https://edgeofthewebradio.com/seo-podcast/images-local-search-mike-blumenthal/Beginner's Guide to Google Business Profiles: What Are They, How To Use Them, and Why - Moz - Miriam Ellis - https://moz.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-google-business-profileHearing Aids Now Available OTC -  Prices set to plummet - Huffpost - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hearing-aid-prices-plummet-fda-over-the-counter-sales_n_634cbeace4b04cf8f379e438

Mike Blumenthal's second segment on the EDGE takes us into the realm of the value of image optimization for Local Search. It's a huge conversion factor for businesses that can be easy wins. Check out the incredible tool, AirCam.ai - a service that gives a breakdown of all of the images your business needs for local visibility. Mike gives us his take on the most recent Google updates and how they may affect local visibility. He also unequivocally lays down his opinion about AI machine learning evaluating human content: Google's not being accountable for the businesses that are relying on local visibility for revenue. [00:04:35] The HCU: Content Written For People By People Evaluated By AI [00:06:40] The Machine is Getting It Wrong [00:08:40] Is Helpful Content Update Unfair to SMB's Without Budget? [00:12:37] Will the Updates Affect the Knowledge Graph? [00:14:09] EDGE of the Web Title Sponsor: Site Strategics [00:15:11] Why are Images So Valuable to Local Search? [00:29:14] Mike's Pro Tip for Local Optimization: Aimcam.ai Thanks to our sponsors! Site Strategics https://www.sitestrategics.com Follow Mike! https://www.twitter.com/mblumenthal  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mblumenthal/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQb7CMIgNQz38U6RVcE8rug  Connect: mblumenthal@nearmedia.co

Mike Blumenthal, “Professor Maps” of the Local SEO community, catches up with the EDGE after some time to lay out the volatility he's seen in local search. Mike's been focused on the Google Business Profile forums and has seen some pretty striking and concerning developments. Witnessing around 200 review take-downs and close to 2,000 business profile suspensions per month, Mike's a bit concerned to say the least. Where is Google's accountability and transparency in responding to these issues? There's no mechanism to challenge the decision on the review take-downs.  The value of Local Search positioning and consumer interaction is unquestionable. But one question does present itself: who's property is this, yours or Google's? [00:05:59] So Many Changes in Local SEO - The Last Few Years [00:08:20] Local SEO Volatility: A Recent Timeline [00:09:47] Google Sees Their Future as Local [00:12:16] How Valuable is Google Local Search? Sometimes 95% of Leads [00:14:07] EDGE of the Web Title Sponsor: edgeofthewebradio.com/pageonepower [00:17:11] The Consumer is Trained on Google Reflection of your Brand [00:18:09] Hunting in GBP Forums with a Specific Focus [00:21:39] There's No Support from Google, Once They Nuke a Review [00:22:51] EDGE of the Web Sponsor: Site Strategics [00:24:34] Are We Just Going to Just Publish to Google in the Future? [00:25:49] Is This Our Property or Google's? [00:28:28] Business Suspensions Complaints are 10X  Thanks to our sponsors! Page One Power https://edgeofthewebradio.com/pageonepower  Site Strategics https://www.sitestrategics.com Follow Mike! https://www.twitter.com/mblumenthal  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mblumenthal/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQb7CMIgNQz38U6RVcE8rug

Mike's Links:Ford Just Made a Stunning Announcement. Here's What It Means for Customers — Inc. - https://apple.news/ArPcBDLVqSp6wFK7lKXorDwGoogle hits Astroturf trail & deceives SMB in search of support for their issued - Mike Blumenthal on Twitter - https://twitter.com/mblumenthal/status/1569727101871218688?s=12&t=YV5mYYCY3AHV6U-CcgKqdAiOS 16 elevates search but still fails at local and internet search - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LctX3gbIxQcComments on Adobe's 2022 Emoji Usage Trends Survey - https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2022/09/comments-on-adobes-2022-emoji-usage-trends-survey.htmRanking Drops for Local Service Business - https://localsearchforum.com/threads/ranking-drops-for-service-area-businesses.59362/page-2#postsCarrie's LinksSearch Console Adds Section for Merchant Listing & product listing markup - https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/09/merchant-listings?hl=enMordy Oberstein on Diagnosing how/why pages were crawled not indexed - https://twitter.com/MordyOberstein/status/1569671231489597441 Tl:dr - complicated “cute” article titles were a handicap to G understanding what the page/post was about.Add more descriptive subheadingsCarrie is doing SEO Chat - Thurs @ 1pm ET - Helpful Content - How do you know it's helpful? - https://twitter.com/search?q=%23seochat&src=typed_query&f=liveLocalU Advanced Tickets on Nov 2 - Speakers Announced - Agenda Coming Early Next Week! - https://localu.org/nov2Speakers Announced:Colan Nielsen @colannielsenElizabeth Rule @ownyourserpPhil Rozek @philrozekBrandon Schmidt @brandonschmidtAmanda Jordan @amandatjordanBen Fisher @TheSocialDudeCrystal Horton @imcrystalhorton+ 2 PanelsLocalU Scholarship Application (apply for a scholarship through Sept 30) - https://localu.org/localu-scholarship-application/The Fren ZoneThe Fren Zone brings you the brightest technical minds in crypto and Web3. Join our...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Mike's Links:Ford Just Made a Stunning Announcement. Here's What It Means for Customers — Inc. - https://apple.news/ArPcBDLVqSp6wFK7lKXorDwGoogle hits Astroturf trail & deceives SMB in search of support for their issued - Mike Blumenthal on Twitter - https://twitter.com/mblumenthal/status/1569727101871218688?s=12&t=YV5mYYCY3AHV6U-CcgKqdAiOS 16 elevates search but still fails at local and internet search - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LctX3gbIxQcComments on Adobe's 2022 Emoji Usage Trends Survey - https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2022/09/comments-on-adobes-2022-emoji-usage-trends-survey.htmRanking Drops for Local Service Business - https://localsearchforum.com/threads/ranking-drops-for-service-area-businesses.59362/page-2#postsCarrie's LinksSearch Console Adds Section for Merchant Listing & product listing markup - https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/09/merchant-listings?hl=enMordy Oberstein on Diagnosing how/why pages were crawled not indexed - https://twitter.com/MordyOberstein/status/1569671231489597441 Tl:dr - complicated “cute” article titles were a handicap to G understanding what the page/post was about.Add more descriptive subheadingsCarrie is doing SEO Chat - Thurs @ 1pm ET - Helpful Content - How do you know it's helpful? - https://twitter.com/search?q=%23seochat&src=typed_query&f=liveLocalU Advanced Tickets on Nov 2 - Speakers Announced - Agenda Coming Early Next Week! - https://localu.org/nov2Speakers Announced:Colan Nielsen @colannielsenElizabeth Rule @ownyourserpPhil Rozek @philrozekBrandon Schmidt @brandonschmidtAmanda Jordan @amandatjordanBen Fisher @TheSocialDudeCrystal Horton @imcrystalhorton+ 2 PanelsLocalU Scholarship Application (apply for a scholarship through Sept 30) - https://localu.org/localu-scholarship-application/The Fren ZoneThe Fren Zone brings you the brightest technical minds in crypto and Web3. Join our...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Mike Blumenthal. Mike is the Co-founder and Analyst at Near Media where he researches and reports on reputation, reviews, and local search. Mike provides local consulting to a range of businesses, big and small, across the SMB and SAAS marketplaces. He is also assisting Air.cam, an online professional photographic marketplace, with pivoting to the local marketing space and helping them bring the power of photography to every business located in the US and Canada. More About Mike Blumenthal: Nearmedia.co Send Mike an email – mblumenthal@nearmedia.co Connect with Mike on Twitter Take The Marketing Assessment: Marketingassessment.co This Duct Tape Marketing Podcast episode is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network and SEMRush.

SEOs should predict the future. It's the chance to overcome competitors. Consider new techs faster than traffic and sales are yours. Mike Blumenthal shares his valuable insights on our podcast. Watch or listen to the entire episode to know a lot more. Wanna get more traffic? Submit your request on my website – https://unmiss.com/. Here…

 Chewy's provides great CX and it goes viral: When a dog owner's pet died and they asked Chewy to refund their unused food, the company went above and beyond. In doing so, they demonstrated the incredible viral value of great customer service. A simple customer service act provides bountiful returns. A look at the top 1000 Google queries on the desktop and what it says about local: Kevin Indig of Shopify looked at the top 1000 searches on Google Desktop. Interestingly at least ⅓ were local in intent and most of those were branded local searches.John Oliver & Rand Fishkin look at the two antitrust bills that might pass this summer: John Oliver, like many comedians these days, does a  better job of explaining the antitrust bills in front of Congress than the news does. And he is more fun to listen to. Rand Fishkin looks at how the bills will dramatically change what we do as marketers.The Near Memo, with David Mihm, Greg Sterling & Mike Blumenthal, is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.

If you are a business owner that gets less than flattering reviews about your company, you may participate in manipulating or suppressing reviews. For instance, you don't ask unhappy people to leave a review but ask happy customers to leave one. Additionally, you may also be tempted to buy or incentivize reviews, thinking these tactics will make the problem go away. However, is that savvy business practices or does it make the problem worse? And—is there a better way to go about responding to negative online business reviews? Shawn Hessinger, the Executive Editor for Small Business Trends, sits down with Mike Blumenthal, the co-founder and analyst at Near Media, to answer those questions and more. In this episode, they discuss new federal guidelines and how you should respond to negative reviews.

Show guest, Mike Blumenthal, shares his latest research findings on the increased power of images in local search. In this episode, you will find out what images Google wants to see, how to leverage images to improve your rankings, and how to use one of Google's free tools to maximize your chances of success.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/seo-101-on-wmr-fm/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The number of Google My Business reviews you obtain is one of the many figures that matter in your legal practice, and you are keeping track of it meticulously. While you might be tempted to try unusual treatments or methods that promise to improve your Google My Business review rating, think twice; a Google suspension isn't the only consequence you may face; the FTC might also want to have a word with you. This week's episode features Grace and Liel discussing the recently published Online Customer Reviews: A Guide for Platforms, by the Federal Trade Commission. The message is clear: "do not review gate". The conversation explores best practices to keep your law firm out of trouble, how to handle incentives, and a final answer to whether is acceptable to have friends, family, or even staff write reviews about your law firm. So tune in, keep calm and continue generating reviews. Resources mentioned in our episode: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/featuring-online-customer-reviews-guide-platforms (Federal Trade Commission - Online Customer Reviews Guide) https://www.nearmedia.co/ftcs-business-marketer-guidelines/ (Analysis from Mike Blumenthal on FTC's new guidelines) https://support.google.com/business/answer/4596773?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop (How to request form Google a review removal) https://incamerapodcast.com/episodes/a-law-firms-reputation/ (In Camera Podcast Complete Guide on Review Generation) Send us your questions at ask@incamerapodcast.com Enjoy the show? Please don't forget to subscribe, tell your coworkers, and leave us a review!

Join Mike and Carrie as they discuss what's new in the SERPs, including continuous scroll on mobile, getting images in mobile results, indented results, and LSA showing in the local finder and map pack. They also look at Amazon's major seasonal hiring surge,  fake reviews, franchisees' responsibility to their own social media, and more!Mike's LinksAmazon Hiring 150,000 Seasonal Workers Amid Record US Job Shortage, Surging Wages - https://www.thestreet.com/.amp/markets/amazon-hiring-150000-seasonal-workers-amid-record-us-job-shortageDollar General Workers Stare Down Historic Union Vote, Vowing "We're Gonna Fight" - https://inthesetimes.com/article/dollar-general-workers-store-connecticut-union-campaignFTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews and Other Misleading Endorsements - https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/10/ftc-puts-hundreds-businesses-notice-about-fake-reviews-otherMike's Take: TC to 700+ Brands: Deceptive Endorsements Will Lead to Financial Pain - https://www.nearmedia.co/ftc-notice-of-penalty-offenses-tells-700-national-advertisers-that-deceptive-endorsements-can-lead-to-financial-penalties/MN toy store responds to 1-star review over mask requirement - https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-lifestyle/st-paul-toy-store-responds-to-1-star-review-that-complained-about-mask-requirementHow to Get Images in Mobile Search Results - Sterling Sky Inc - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/images-mobile-serps/Mike Blumenthal on Twitter - https://twitter.com/mblumenthal/status/1449802079841751041Webinar: The Local SEO Firehose | The State of Local Search in 2022 - https://webinars.duda.co/the-state-of-local-search-2022?utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=anton&utm_campaign=local_webinar_oct_28Carries links:Continuous scrolling comes to Search on mobile - Niru Anand, Google - https://blog.google/products/search/continuous-scrolling-mobile/Going Local: Why Franchisees Shouldn't Rely on Parent Brands' Social Media Marketing - Karen Spader via Entrepreneur.com - https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/387431Indented Results Roll Out at 40% of SERPs - Pete Myers - Moz.com - https://moz.com/blog/indented-serp-resultsBest practices for using third-party embeds - Leena Sohoni, Addy Osmani, Katie Hempenius - https://web.dev/embed-best-practices/LSA Showing up in the map pack & local finder - Ben Fisher - https://twitter.com/TheSocialDude/status/1445906604742701060Women-Led and Veteran Led attributes now Women-Owned and Veteran Owned

Join Mike and Carrie as they discuss wins and upsets in the world of local SEO - from Walmart's newfound online momentum, Google's newest SERP changes that are frustrating the auto industry, and news about our recent AND upcoming LocalU Advanced events! This is an action-packed episode giving you a whole week's worth of updates and information all in one convenient place.Mike's Links:Walmart+ is gaining momentum, hits 32 million members, Deutsche Bank estimate - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/14/walmart-hits-32-million-members-deutsche-bank-estimates.htmlWhat Reviews Tell Us About How Walmart Is Really Doing - https://www.nearmedia.co/walmart-inventory-woes-customer-reviews/Court: Just Because An Anonymous Yelp Reviewer Is Mean, Doesn't Mean You Get To Unmask The Reviewer - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210901/23112147487/court-just-because-anonymous-yelp-reviewer-is-mean-doesnt-mean-you-get-to-unmask-reviewer.shtmlDetecting Brand Penetration Over Geographic Locations - Go Fish Digital - https://gofishdigital-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/gofishdigital.com/detecting-brand-penetration-over-geographic-locations/amp/WhatsApp launches test of in-app business directory - https://www.reuters.com/article/whatsapp-business-idUSKBN2GB1SVTwitter's GMB Profile, Intuit's $12B Strategy, Transatlantic Privacy Fail - https://www.nearmedia.co/twitters-gmb-profile-intuits-12b-strategy-transatlantic-privacy-fail/Dave Smart on Twitter - Robots.txt tester - https://twitter.com/davewsmart/status/1439214231342174209?s=12Page Experience Update Measurable - https://www.sistrix.com/blog/core-web-vitals-is-a-measurable-ranking-factor/Cloudflare adds automated Signed Exchanges for Google Search - https://www.coywolf.news/seo/cloudflare-automated-signed-exchanges-sxg-for-google-search/Zyppy SEO — Higher Google Rankings & Traffic - https://zyppy.com/Survey Reveals That UGC Can Drive Improved Trust and Loyalty for eCommerce Brands - https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/survey-reveals-that-ugc-can-drive-improved-trust-and-loyalty-for-ecommerce/606801/Do Images Impact Ranking on Google? [Case Study] - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/do-images-impact-ranking-on-google/Reviews on Independent Sites - https://localsearchforum.com/threads/reviews-on-independent-sites.58206/Mike Blumenthal on Twitter review solicitation tactic/idea - https://twitte

Apple Tracking Opt-in at 4% in US, lower than anticipated, Shopify focuses on helping SMB be better and retain customer relationships, Facebooks Neighborhood, a NextDoor clone, is likely to be like Nextdoor but worse because of poor moerationAs the Apple 3rd party opt in rolls out, opt in numbers are lower than anticipated. THis points ot the consumers desire for more privacy and why government should up their privacy gameUnlike Facebook and Google who aggregate consumers to gain levarge over businesses, Shopify focuses soley on the SMB and helps them not just to build a better ecommerce experience but also with things like capital. They have become the second biggest e-commerce site behind Amaaon. Facebook once again knocks off another marketplace product that might just might create a referral opportunity for SMBS IF they can keep the communities from going down the rabbitt whole of unmoderated mayhem. Episode 14With David Mihm, Greg Sterling & Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal talks with Jason Barnard about review attributes Mike Blumenthal loves to say “All Local, All the time”. He is an authority on local SEO with 20 years of experience under his belt... so, who better than “The Godfather of Local” himself to discuss Google's new feature — Google Review Attributes. This new feature in Google allows consumers to leave a quality rating about attributes concerning the business  as part of their review and, according to Mike, as a business, there's a lot of reasons to love: it helps build consistency in customer service, and actionable information — which ultimately is the purpose of reviews — and it gives a chance to analyze your competitors in a structured and consistent manner. Mike goes on to explain how reviews, and particularly review attributes directly influence local search results and how to take advantage of that. He shares the strategies he uses with his clients to best leverage reviews and attributes in a successful local SEO strategy. What you'll learn from Mike Blumenthal 00:00 Mike Blumenthal and Jason Barnard00:43 The argument for Google being your homepage01:52 GatherUp's Knowledge Panel07:05 What are Review Attributes?12:26 Google Attributes focus on service-based industries15:54 In what industries are Google Attributes currently appearing?19:31 Could this new feature put the fear of Google into businesses?21:18 Google Maps as the bleeding edge for the Knowledge Graph23:58 How the information about reviews extracted by Google influences local search results26:08 How to encourage your customers to provide specific review content28:52 Is there a direct effect in a Brand's local search performance from a great attribute rating?30:17 The how-to of getting and leveraging first and third party reviews34:58 Could we say that Google homepage is Google's reflection of the world's opinion of you?38:25 How to get clients to give reviews on the different platforms Helpful Resources About How Review Attributes Work in Local SEO Have Review Attributes Fixed A Google Review Problem?The (Almost) Complete List of Google Review Attribute Categories Subscribe to the podcast Subscribe here >> This episode was recorded live on video February 3rd 2021 Recorded live at Kalicube Tuesdays (Digital Marketing Livestream Event Series). Watch the video now >>

Mike Blumenthal talks with Jason Barnard about review attributes Mike Blumenthal loves to say “All Local, All the time”. He is an authority on local SEO with 20 years of experience under his belt... so, who better than “The Godfather of Local” himself to discuss Google's new feature — Google Review Attributes. This new feature in Google allows consumers to leave a quality rating about attributes concerning the business  as part of their review and, according to Mike, as a business, there's a lot of reasons to love: it helps build consistency in customer service, and actionable information — which ultimately is the purpose of reviews — and it gives a chance to analyze your competitors in a structured and consistent manner. Mike goes on to explain how reviews, and particularly review attributes directly influence local search results and how to take advantage of that. He shares the strategies he uses with his clients to best leverage reviews and attributes in a successful local SEO strategy. What you'll learn from Mike Blumenthal 00:00 Mike Blumenthal and Jason Barnard00:43 The argument for Google being your homepage01:52 GatherUp's Knowledge Panel07:05 What are Review Attributes?12:26 Google Attributes focus on service-based industries15:54 In what industries are Google Attributes currently appearing?19:31 Could this new feature put the fear of Google into businesses?21:18 Google Maps as the bleeding edge for the Knowledge Graph23:58 How the information about reviews extracted by Google influences local search results26:08 How to encourage your customers to provide specific review content28:52 Is there a direct effect in a Brand's local search performance from a great attribute rating?30:17 The how-to of getting and leveraging first and third party reviews34:58 Could we say that Google homepage is Google's reflection of the world's opinion of you?38:25 How to get clients to give reviews on the different platforms Helpful Resources About How Review Attributes Work in Local SEO Have Review Attributes Fixed A Google Review Problem?The (Almost) Complete List of Google Review Attribute Categories Subscribe to the podcast Subscribe here >> This episode was recorded live on video February 3rd 2021 Recorded live at Kalicube Tuesdays (Digital Marketing Livestream Event Series). Watch the video now >>

Greg Gifford with Jason Barnard at SMX West Greg starts by singing the song back to me. Then we discuss his world-famous slide decks. Then onto Google is your new Homepage. Thanks to Google my Business, in local this has been the case for years - Mike Blumenthal said it is 2017. People searching your brand name in a near me / local context will probably not visit your site. So that Brand SERP is the first and the last impression they get before engaging with you. When was the last time you visited a restaurant website after searching their name? Do you need a website any more? Greg gives a quick rundown of the top tips for GMB… and since in local users will rarely visit your site, it effectively becomes your site. Then onto video - wich is now a necessity for your digital strategy, rather than luxury. And it can be low cost without looking cheap. Greg gives some amazing tips for making great videos. And, of course, those videos can rank on your Brand SERP. Aleyda Solis using Wistia, and Greg agrees. Both suggest adding it to YouTube too. Greg goes as far as to also adds it to Facebook and LinkedIn to reach the biggest possible audience. It's all about exposure… Then onto a more general discussion about digital marketing has come full circle and we are now back to marketing… and that maybe marketers can now approach digital marketing more confidently since it is simply one more piece of their marketing pie, and now a separate 'thing'. Lastly, Brand SERPs - what appears when someone searches your brand name - you can and should, control that experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZe2vHal2SA What You'll learn 0:26 Greg's original movie-themed talks1:30 Google is your new homepage and the importance of your GMB listing3:00 Are you losing customers or conversions with zero-click search?3:30 How to optimize your GMB5:24 Is video content production really expensive?6:35 Is video content creation only reserved for those naturally engaging and good on camera?7:40 The importance of video boxes on your Brand SERP, and platforms like Wistia and Youtube for better metrics8:36 Greg's video upload strategy designed to reach multiple audiences10:32 Digital Marketing has come full circle as the old school methods become relevant again12:08 How to deal with a bad review to your business showing up on your Brand SERP14:27 The correct approach on how to control people's experience when they search for your brand

Greg Gifford with Jason Barnard at SMX West Greg starts by singing the song back to me. Then we discuss his world-famous slide decks. Then onto Google is your new Homepage. Thanks to Google my Business, in local this has been the case for years - Mike Blumenthal said it is 2017. People searching your brand name in a near me / local context will probably not visit your site. So that Brand SERP is the first and the last impression they get before engaging with you. When was the last time you visited a restaurant website after searching their name? Do you need a website any more? Greg gives a quick rundown of the top tips for GMB… and since in local users will rarely visit your site, it effectively becomes your site. Then onto video - wich is now a necessity for your digital strategy, rather than luxury. And it can be low cost without looking cheap. Greg gives some amazing tips for making great videos. And, of course, those videos can rank on your Brand SERP. Aleyda Solis using Wistia, and Greg agrees. Both suggest adding it to YouTube too. Greg goes as far as to also adds it to Facebook and LinkedIn to reach the biggest possible audience. It's all about exposure… Then onto a more general discussion about digital marketing has come full circle and we are now back to marketing… and that maybe marketers can now approach digital marketing more confidently since it is simply one more piece of their marketing pie, and now a separate 'thing'. Lastly, Brand SERPs - what appears when someone searches your brand name - you can and should, control that experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZe2vHal2SA What You'll learn 0:26 Greg's original movie-themed talks1:30 Google is your new homepage and the importance of your GMB listing3:00 Are you losing customers or conversions with zero-click search?3:30 How to optimize your GMB5:24 Is video content production really expensive?6:35 Is video content creation only reserved for those naturally engaging and good on camera?7:40 The importance of video boxes on your Brand SERP, and platforms like Wistia and Youtube for better metrics8:36 Greg's video upload strategy designed to reach multiple audiences10:32 Digital Marketing has come full circle as the old school methods become relevant again12:08 How to deal with a bad review to your business showing up on your Brand SERP14:27 The correct approach on how to control people's experience when they search for your brand

FULL SHOW NOTES:[INTRO music]00:12 Aaron Weiche: Episode 23, Course Correcting.00:16 INTRO SPEAKER: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.[music]00:43 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.00:46 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.00:47 AW: And I just finished eating a chocolate chip cookie. What do you think about that? 00:52 DS: It sounds pretty good. I just finished eating a salad. It's the exact opposite. [chuckle]00:58 AW: If my wife listens to this episode, I'm gonna get yelled at, but when I got gas at the gas station, they have these big chocolate chip cookies, and, yeah, this just looked like a great afternoon snack.[chuckle]01:09 DS: Totally, yeah. And now you made me wanna go get one.[laughter]01:13 AW: I'll mail you one.01:14 DS: Wow, I don't know if it'll be good by the time it gets here.[laughter]01:18 AW: So what's been going on other than salads and cookies? I know what's been going on. You spent all week last week hosting a massive virtual summit with 4000-5000 attendees. Let's talk about that a little bit before we get into our main topic today.01:34 DS: Yeah, so it's been huge. This summit was a massive success. We had actually 5500 people register for the summit.01:41 AW: Wow.01:42 DS: And pretty great attendance to all the different talks, and so it was big and we've been getting nothing but a steady stream of positive feedback about it. Just people comparing it to other conferences and saying how awesome it was and, yeah, so it was a great success. People love the content, and of course, I had some of the best speakers in the world such as Aaron Weiche, Mike Blumenthal, Joey Hawkins, so we had fantastic speakers. Basically, all the most known speakers in local search were there. Some heavy hitters outside of the local specific space like Rand Fishkin spoke. Michael King spoke. Brodie Clark, who was really building a name for himself down under in Australia, he spoke as well. And so, yeah, it was a great conference. We had huge visibility and, yeah, it was good. It was all good.02:31 DS: It was so much work though. Oh, my God, I can't... I'm glad it's over because not only was it so much work to put it together, I had my own presentation to do, the Local Search Ranking Factor survey had to get done out there, recreated, re-pull all the data, re-analyze all the data, build a slide deck, build a presentation around it and present it. And I handed that in like Monday night. The night before we were going live with the conference, I handed in my recording, and it was just a very stressful time. Glad it's over.03:01 AW: Yeah. Now, I wanna touch on a few benefits that we noticed in having myself and Mike both from GatherUp speaking at it. Our parent company Traject was a sponsor as well. They used their sponsor slot to tease our social product, which has been rebranded, called Fanbooster. But I wanna get back to seeing if you can quantify the work you put into it all, but on our side, the benefits with two speaking topics, we had great exposure, I can only guess you basically led off the conference with Mike, which I'm thinking was another hit. For a decade, he has been probably one of or the biggest thought leader in the space.03:50 DS: Totally.03:51 AW: And, yeah, a great draw and just the reason I love working with Mike is just the levels he can think on, and he gave a great talk around review attributes, which plays heavily into our platform and things like that. And then two days later, 'cause it was a three-day conference, and I talked on some things strategically related to reviews and reputation management. But for us specifically, we saw double the leads last week of what we had been averaging like the four to six weeks prior, which really great.04:30 AW: Any time you can 2X something is fabulous, and it returned our leads to pre-COVID for a week, which is awesome. I'm probably gonna be a little maybe frowny face next week when they jump down most likely again a little bit, but maybe some of those that paid for the videos and things like that are watching in this week, and then they'll still be interested to sign up. So we had a really great experience. A lot of Twitter conversation, which is always awesome, great, in the moment mentions, new Twitter followers, things like that. So from our standpoint, it was fabulous. From yours, what was the amount of work that it took you to put this together? I guess I just wanna frame up for any of our listeners that might be considering hosting a virtual conference as a marketing vehicle.05:24 DS: Yeah, I would love to be able to quantify the hours. It's tough to say. We've been working on it for about six months. Heavily working on it certainly through July and August, lots of recording. So there were 34 presentations, one of them mine, and then all the other ones I had to book an hour to record with that speaker. There was a ton of setting up all the speakers, doing speaker agreements, lots of chasing with regards to sponsorships too. So getting sponsors, going back and forth with them on a lot of stuff, writing up sponsorship agreements, getting the platform launched. We used the system called HeySummit, which turned out really well. But getting that whole website set up, my own team, if I think about what Jessie and Sydney put into it, it was almost a full-time job for them. And so hours, probably hundreds, a couple of hundred of hours have gone into launching this thing, and so it was a lot of work. And not only that, we worked with a company called HeySummit, and they were great 'cause they keep everything organized, and they also did all of our video editing, all the videos launched onto the site, and so...06:40 DS: Between all of us, maybe 300 hours is what it takes to put on a conference like this. If I had to guesstimate at it, maybe 400, 300-400. So that's a big investment. That's a big expense. The expenses broke even, so it's not really a money-making venture. We took any money that we got from sponsorship and we put it back into Facebook ads, Facebook and Instagram ads, to market the conference. So our whole goal was to get that attendance list up as high as possible, and we managed to get 5500 through all of our marketing efforts. And then ticket sales are covering all the expenses, expenses of that company that we worked with and speaker gifts, and so there's really nothing left in the end. It's not a money-making venture on its own. It was completely a marketing exercise for us to just get our brand in front of more people.07:28 AW: Yeah, and so you did that at a very large scale. You also, too, because of... The local search community is very niche and they're really... There's been a couple of attempts. MozCon created their own local event, and now they've just folded local into MozCon itself, which is a very large event in the SEO community. But I really saw it as you took the opportunity of a premier event in local search has been vacated, and you just claimed it heavily with what you did, and I think that's pretty cool.08:03 DS: Yeah, I think it's cool that way. And it's like, this one was so successful that we can't not do it again, so it's gonna be an annual thing. There's also some talk about doing spin-off conferences. Because we have all the talks pre-recorded, we could pull in a few new speakers that are specific to, let's say, dentistry. Like we'd get some top dental marketing guys to come in, and we'd do a few presentations with them, and then we'd pull out eight good... Our favorite talks from the summit, and we've got a new conference and it's really easy to spin it up now. And so we're actually thinking about doing a bunch of industry-specific conferences. A whole new set of sponsors, a whole new marketing push. So it's an interesting angle that we can keep running with for additional exposure into different markets in terms of marketing Whitespark. So the marketing potential of this is pretty huge.08:52 AW: Yeah, that's awesome. Now, you guys did a really great job. Internally, I was saying it made me miss 2019 because conferences and public speaking have been so important to GatherUp's growth and something that Mike and I are just wired to do, to share and network and connect through those events. And having that completely shut off in 2020, has been... It's removed a major marketing arrow out of our quiver, so it was nice to see that bump. We've seen it with a couple of the local universities in small chunks as well, but it was really nice to have that happen. And yeah, I'm looking forward to what else you guys can do with it with what you learned year one and what went right and what went wrong. You brought a lot of great speakers and you got some new faces in there, and I think you worked really hard on that, so well done.09:44 DS: Thank you.09:46 AW: I was definitely proud, excited, jealous, all of those things, which are all good.09:51 DS: Yeah, I'm excited about it too. I'm excited about the future of it. One thing that stood out for me is that you talked about the surge in leads that you saw from your presentations. It was fascinating to me that we did not see that. As the premier sponsor, the premier, we had four presentations from Whitespark. At the end of so many things there was all these like, "Hey, Whitespark deals," but we didn't really see a big lift in leads or sales from it, and it speaks to me about we just don't have the greatest products and services that are of interest to people.10:27 DS: We are very heavily citation-based, and that's part of it. Citations are losing interest in the industry right now but it's a big part of what we do, and so it just wasn't like, "Oh, awesome, citations." If I had done this conference six years ago, then I'm sure it would have been a massive business booster on the citation side of things. But our GMB service is amazing, and I think that there's a great potential there, and we saw some growth from a conference there. But our products, they're a little bit scattered. We got one for citations, we have one for reputation, we have one for rank tracking, but people, they're like, "Oh, I don't know what I should sign up for." So it's really like we have this grander vision of an integrated product that we're building, and we're working on that. So getting that launched as soon as possible is certainly a takeaway from the conference.11:14 AW: Yeah, no, that's really interesting and probably a super valuable takeaway, Daren. That could end up being... Depending upon how that sits with you and what you do with that, that might be as valuable as the conference and the marketing and the exposure itself. Is like what... It helped you learn something about yourself in a very fast cycle 'cause you saw it as, "We had 5000 people here with our name splashed all over it, leading the conversation, signed up through our website, all of these things, and it didn't move our sales in any direction." Right? 11:52 DS: Right. Yeah.11:53 AW: Yeah, no, that's really... That's, I don't know, telling/interesting/gave you some elongated, you don't notice it. If it's 5000 users over a year, you don't notice it, but when it's over a couple of weeks, it's something that really caught your eye.12:12 DS: Yeah, totally. And I think we are dialed in for next year, so when we do this conference again next year, we will have our software in the place, and so it'll be that perfect combination of like we know how to do this conference now, and so we do the conference, we have the right product to sell people, we can market it better and be in a much stronger position. So yeah, it's all good. All heading in the right direction.12:30 AW: On the flip side of that, and maybe around the leads and the bump we saw, I've really been both enjoying and realizing lately we finally have what I feel is like a very mature solution. And it's taken six years to get to that, and we still have things we wanna do and a couple of big piece items, but really gone are the days where 50% of the questions a prospect might ask you, you didn't have a great answer for or didn't have multiple options for. Where now it's like 10% of the questions might fall into that or even less to what's there.13:08 DS: That's amazing.13:09 AW: Yeah, and that just makes it great that when we get exposure, and we get in front of people, when we have the right marketing, it drives interest, leads, demos, sales for us. So it's really interesting to have that positioning now with it and understand that. And along those lines like...13:28 AW: I wish we could do a ton more marketing right now, it's really... The pandemic and the way, there's a lot of wait and see in the economy, especially with our larger enterprise prospects and customers. And it's such a hard thing to figure out in so many areas right now, and sales are really quiet for us on the upper end. Our resellers are creating movement and single locations are still coming on, so like the... If you frame it up as like onesie, twosies, we're making it there, our retention is great. We actually, in August, returned up above our pre-COVID revenue number, so it made... We didn't dip too far down and it didn't take too much for us to climb back up and be back to growing again and have gotten above what we lost in the first month or two, and things like that. Which is super encouraging, and I'm proud of our team for how hard, across the spectrum, everyone worked to make that happen. But it does get really... It's almost frustrating now to like, Oh, we have so many of these pieces in place, and the one thing that we could really get after is marketing and sales, and it is such a challenging marketing and sales environment right now.14:40 DS: Right, yeah, exactly. So it's so hard with the COVID situation, every... Budgets are tight, people are not really exploring new products right now, so... Yeah, I get that. And it's nice for you to be in that position, it's like we're almost in opposite positions: You've got a very mature product that you are struggling to do the marketing for, we've got a really great marketing engine and not the mature product. So it's like we've got to dial in our product, you've gotta ramp up your marketing somehow.15:09 AW: Well, and I think that serves as a great segue into the main topic that we wanna talk about today. I will say, I think there's no better time to be building than right now. If people aren't buying, great... Build. So that when that releases, when that changes, when that gets better, you have more to offer. Anyone, if you're in position in your product and you know you have some product market fit or things going your way, I would just double down on that so hard right now, so that when budgets loosen up, things pick up, whether that's a couple of months, six months, 12 months, 24 months, whatever it is, be in position to command those dollars. Take what you would invest into marketing and put it into the product. That would be my advice with this.15:57 DS: Agreed, 100%. That's what we're trying to do for sure. We're really focused on product right now. I'm trying to stay focused, I gotta stop distracting my team with all these side level, "Hey, here's a cool tool we could build, that doesn't actually drive any revenue for Whitespark, but hey, I wanna build it 'cause I love SEO." I need to stop doing that.16:16 AW: Alright, well, I'll try to hold you to that. I should probably stop eating gas station cookies, but we know how these battles go.16:24 DS: Yeah. Well, speaking of staying focused, one of the things that's come up for us recently, and I... This is the main thing, course correcting, it's like we had this feature that I got distracted with it, and I wanted to talk about that on the podcast today. It was like this idea that we were gonna build this feature called screenshots in our rank tracker. So we wanted to add this feature to our local rank tracking product that would allow people to see an actual visual of the rankings. So, like, actually we take a screen shot of every page. So it seemed like such a good idea, so we built this... The thing, we spent probably a good month and a half, two months building this feature. We launched the feature, it has had zero impact on our sales for the most part, so it's been useless from that perspective. And adoption rate of the feature was fairly low too.17:23 DS: Some people liked it, but the thing that it ended up doing was, while it was two months of development time, but then it was also... It's hugely expensive to... We had to spin up more servers to process everything, we had to implement new structures, and our actual crawling budget is way more expensive, it's like a separate crawl for each thing. We have to store all of those screenshots for 90 days. So we're spending a ton of money on S3 storage now, and so it was like, we launched this feature, did not help our business whatsoever, cost us a ton, continues to cost us a ton in operating costs, and so it's like we just made the decision to ditch the feature. And it's disappointed a few customers, but we set the email, we dropped the feature, we had three people cancel, that's it, just three. And so we've now saved ourselves massive maintenance costs, massive ongoing operating costs. And it really had no impact. And so it's like, that's the topic that's been on my mind and the main thing I really wanted to talk about.18:31 AW: Yeah, so let's go back to the beginning. Where did this feature originate from? Was this an internal idea, your idea, feedback from a customer, What does that look like? 18:41 DS: It was feedback from a potentially important customer, and it was really... It was Joy Hopkins that drove this feature. I blame you, Joy, if you're listening [chuckle] Basically, we launched the feature because Joy was like, "Listen, I'm using a competitor's tool. I really like your tool, but I can't use it 'cause it doesn't have screenshots, I use screenshots all the time." And I'm like, "Yeah, I know I've always wanted screenshots too." And so it's interesting to see how a decision like that can come from a single conversation with a single customer, and I think there's a big lesson there, it's like, do not drive your features by what one customer asked for. We've gotten caught by that a couple of times where it's like, we hear one or two people ask for something, but it's like, does it actually appeal to the entire user base? Is it that important to invest the time into? And so it's an important lesson to prioritize your feature development based off of one, how broad is the appeal for this feature and two, what will it to cost to build this feature? And I think we failed miserably on both of those.19:47 AW: Yeah. Has it spurned in you more ideas now, how to validate? It still doesn't mean one person can't give you a great suggestion.19:56 DS: Totally.19:57 AW: But then how might you bring that to your audience or what exists in your communication flows you're with right now where you'd be able to say, "You know what, we've actually had six other people request this" or "I know some people that'd be interested" or "Let me schedule a couple of calls with some of my power users and see what they think about it". And especially if it's a feature where... When you roll this out, were there any... Were you asking people to pay more for it or you were just including it and eating up margin in your current plan? 20:29 DS: Well sure, that's another good question and another good lesson is that one, we should've had it as an add-on at the very least. So it's like if you want this, you've gotta pay extra for it. Because it actually has significant additional operating costs, we should've charged for it. So that was another mistake made in the roll out of this feature. And then only the people that would've really wanted it would've paid for it. But even then, if by having the... Looking back at it, I'd probably still wouldn't have done it because there wouldn't have been enough people interested that would have justified the cost to build it. But to your question, it has made me think about implementing something like Kenney IO. Have you seen that? It's like this little feature request thing. It's like a software that you can have set up and customers can submit, "Hey, these are the features I want" and then they can upvote existing features that exist in there. And so it's like that way, you can kinda make sure that your development is driven by what your customers are asking for and then you have a little widget inside the tools like, "Do you have any feature requests? Let us know." and then that goes over to Kenney. I think that's a really smart idea and it's got me thinking about what... About adding that to our software? 21:40 AW: One thing I would almost suggest, even if it is something that you're not planning on feature gating in a plan or raising a price for, have a handful of phone calls, show them basic visual mocks or explain it, and then when they... If you ask a... Would you leverage this? Would this be something that would be really interesting or valuable to you? And they say "Yes," and then just pose the question,"How much more a month would you spend with us?".22:08 DS: Sure.22:09 AW: Right? 22:09 DS: What is it worth? 22:10 AW: Yeah. Would they actually put money on it? 22:13 DS: Yeah.22:13 AW: Even if everyone likes the idea, but everybody's like, "No, I wouldn't spend any more for it", then you also get like, "I'm saying yes to you to be nice because you've taken the time and it looks nice, but if you're asking me right now how much more I'd pay for it, I'm not gonna pay for it. I don't need it that bad".22:31 DS: Absolutely. Like, "Yeah sure. Give me this new feature. I might check it out. Sure, cool, but not giving you any more money for it". And honestly, I swear, if I had asked that question, I would've got a lot of people saying, "No, I'm not gonna pay more for it. I don't care about it that much" and then that would've told me and saved me all the hassle of building this. And so there's actually two things that we're... The topic of this podcast is course correcting, but there's also that preventative thing that we need to look at. It's like, how do you prevent yourself from building a feature that is actually not valuable.23:01 AW: Yeah. Well, it's that question, how did we end up on this course to have to correct it in the first place? 23:07 DS: Yeah.23:07 AW: It's definitely a piece to it. And it's like... It's something I still struggle with because I do build heavily off of intuition. But a lot of times that intuition isn't uninformed. It is from looking at, What are other people doing? What exists? What are competitors allowing people to do? It is taking in a lot of education across other things. It's even... I listen to probably six, seven talks from the Local Search Summit and it was just to get a feel for what's hot in certain areas, what are these leading experts pointing people in a direction, things like that, and then how does that play into what we're doing or what we should focus on or how can we even change our messaging to capitalize on it.23:56 AW: Like in the case, both David Mihm and Rand Fishkin's talk, talked about email and its value and just how much it outperforms social, and social is not just shiny, we gotta have it and it's sexy and fun and everything else and we have a social feature we put a lot into and it's very popular and gets used. But I've also written a couple of things like, "Hey, don't just use this for social. You can use this for images on your website or images in your email newsletters," and it just reaffirmed to me like, I'd put out a couple of tweets, piggy-backing on your hashtag and I'm like, "Hey, if you watched Rand and David's talk and you saw... So a email opens or 256 acts of engagement rate of social posts.24:42 DS: It's amazing.24:43 AW: Yeah, you're ready to double down on email, we've got you covered with the same solution that does social. So it is. You do have to do a lot of that intake. Obviously, having a way to capture the customer's voice, we still sometimes struggle at that. We keep loose track. We don't have an exact scoreboard but we do understand what people want in certain things and kind of loosely keep track of it. But I can't go and get like, "Oh well, 19 people have requested this, so you're the 20th. We really should build this".25:16 DS: Right.25:16 AW: But it would be helpful to make that more quantified.25:20 DS: Yeah. I was kind of feeling the same way. It's like one, we're not really asking for future requests and two, we're not scoring them. So I think those two things are super valuable and rather than me spending so much time trying to build based off of intuition, which of course, I think I have decent intuition, except in the rank track or screenshots example [chuckle] Generally, I think I have a decent sense about what would be appealing to the market, because I'm actively in the market. I'm always engaged in this stuff. But I think it'd be awesome to pull our customers and make sure that we're building based off of what people want. It's an important lesson I'm taking from this.26:01 AW: Yeah, well, one, I think you obviously saw where things were trending, you saw how you were leaking on this and there wasn't benefit, and the people weren't championing it, so you made the call to stop. And I think that's a progression because a year ago, you might not have done that. Correct? 26:19 DS: Yeah, we might have just continued to believe, in fact, I might not even looked at the numbers, I've been like... I didn't even notice that it was like, oh yeah, I forgot we launched that thing, it was costing us this much, and it didn't really impact subscriptions, but I'm trying to keep a closer eye on such things now.26:33 AW: Yeah, and did any part of you wanna talk to the three people that loved it so much that were there... 'Cause one thing I always struggle with, it can either be if you build something that doesn't take off, it either just didn't quite get over the hump where you built some, but not enough for it to really take hold. And someone else that does value it, could they offer you the last legs where then you can make the determination like, "Okay, it's gonna take me another two weeks or another month to build it this much better or to add this other benefit to it, and I'll do that. And if that doesn't change it, then I will shelf it, but I'm already 80% of the way, so just going a little further doesn't hurt, or did you just say "No, I know enough is enough, no one exposed anything great to me. It's just time to sunset it."27:23 DS: Yeah, I think those are some really good ideas and I would recommend anyone do something like you just proposed. In our case, we were limited and not really able to do that for this feature because one, we were exploring into whole new crawling architecture that we wanted to use instead of what we were currently using, but we couldn't because of screenshots, it was preventing us from switching to a much better solution that would allow us to maintain our crawl much better, and so we couldn't do it 'cause of the screenshots, and so that was like, "Gosh, these screenshots aren't paying us anything, let's just get rid of them," because that was the big driver of why we needed to do it.27:58 DS: And then the other factor is our rank tracker product is something we're going to maintain, but it's not generally going to be the thing that we're gonna put a lot of love into, because we have a broader vision, we're gonna build rank tracking into the broader vision, and then we'll eventually transition people over to our new software, and so when that happens, it's like I don't want to pull customers and find out that I can make it better by doing this when I don't want to invest any more Dev time into our existing rank tracking product.28:29 AW: Yeah, not easy, but sounds like you made the right call. You're doing a post-mortem on how we got here. How can I understand what people want more? How should I do more vetting of the value where they actually pay money for it? Things like that. I think those are all good lessons to learn and you have some actions to take next time.28:52 DS: Yeah, 100%. 'Cause I feel good about it, I'm taking the lessons and continuing to learn and grow and get better.29:00 AW: Interesting enough, I'm probably in the middle of your situation, so the timing of when you sent an email on this last week and you're like, "Oh, and I wanna talk about this." That was interesting. I have this internal conversation going, but we have a new reporting feature that we wanna put out, I'm not gonna get too specific and name it, but I wanna put this out, and so we've gone through the concept, we had to do a bunch of work in organizing the data on the back-end. So a very long time of doing a lot of just difficult data mapping. So one of those where you do all that work and you really don't have anything to show for it, because there's nothing to show for it, until you create a visual display where it's gonna show. So you do all this work on the plumbing, data mapping, everything else, it's non-sexy, none of the world knows that you actually had to put in all this time to make that happen. Now, once it's done. There's a bunch of different things that we can do with it. It just needed to be done regardless of this report or not.30:04 AW: But then I took... Alright, I created the wire frame, the purpose, the feature spec, all that, took it to our design in front-end and got it put together. And so it's at that stage right now and close to probably going into a sprint for development, and I stumbled upon someone else doing something similar, and they're doing it like 10 times better. [chuckle] And I just... For a week now, I've been putting off telling my product manager... I've just been like, okay, we're already this far down, this at least gets us something here. The lift isn't too crazy with what it is. It's getting something out the door. But then when I see how these other ones done, I'm like, oh, this is so much better because of this and this, and it's more visual and tells a better story, I missed on how I put this together, and now someone else has shown me like, "Hey, here's what you should have done 10 times better. And so I'm trying to figure out do I just move it forward and take the win in a month that it's out there, or do I course correct, shut it down, re-wire frame, re-front-end Dev, and probably doesn't see the light of day for three months. What would you do? 31:26 DS: Yeah, right. And so is this a feature that you have pulled your customers, you know that they're all waiting for this, you have a lot of interest in it, and it will provide a significant additional benefit to your users, and in that case, it might be worth revisiting. If you think it is like a small percentage will even care, then maybe you just roll out the basic version of it. Right? 31:50 AW: Yeah, so we've definitely been asked for it. It's definitely something in the space is... It's not a table stake kind of thing, but it's not a like, "Oh, this is the only tool that has... " There's plenty of tools that have this, but it is something that's definitely beneficial in a number of ways, and I think the hardest part is getting to... You know how you have certain features that are expected must haves, no matter if people really leverage it or really love it. You know what I mean? And I feel like this falls into that category where a third will really love it and use it beneficially and it helps them. A third notice it, see it every now and then and they're happy that it's there. And then another third, it was like, "Yeah, it's a checkmark when we were choosing tools, but we don't leverage it or use it. It's not a main driver for us." So that makes it even a little bit more difficult. Like just saying, "We have it," and the basic one I put together, that's gonna meet two-thirds of that audience.33:02 DS: Well, there, I think you just answered it, right, 'cause you're not gonna go back to the drawing board on it, are you? Do you think it's gonna be worth it if it meets the need, and it'll also get to put the checklist on your feature list? 33:13 AW: I still struggle though, 'cause I... One of my personal mantras, right, is good is the enemy of great. And this is a perfect example of like yeah, the, what we have in the pipeline right now is good. It's not great. And especially, sometimes you get that feeling and it gnaws at you and you're like, "Alright, we'll work in some new features. We'll get to this as soon as I get this up, these other priorities done." But for some reason, because I got to physically see great from how someone else is doing it, I'm like, "Well, that's just going against my own ethos. That's pretty dumb." [chuckle]33:54 DS: Yeah, it's like you just can't get past your personal need to develop something that's great. You can't launch a, what you would now consider half-assed version of it.34:04 AW: Yeah. And when I look at it like, "Alright, if I'm costing two months or three months, well, what's gonna happen in that meantime that's so... Part of it is just this feeling to ship new code and ship new features, which I think anyone in SaaS, you feel it. Whenever I describe SaaS in two words, it's... Or in two main themes, it's ship code and sell. That's the two main jobs you have in SaaS, and so part of it, like bringing new features, new eye candy, things you get to blog about, tweet about, showing a demo, all those other things, you need that. It is part of your lifeblood. So part of me is like, "Oh, I gotta put that off. And it was slated to be in this spot for something we can talk about," so I think some of it's just getting past that pressure that you constantly put on yourself to whatever it is, 30 days, 60 days, you need something new to keep people talking about you and to keep improving the product.35:06 DS: Yeah. It's so hard, Eventually you end up like in our case, our dev team is just so... They're pulled in so many different directions, and it's hard to continue a fast cycle of shipping. Have you ever seen ClickUp? Do you use ClickUp? 35:22 AW: We do not use ClickUp.  Is ClickUp a...35:26 DS: It's like Asana and Monday. It's like a project app.35:29 AW: Okay, yeah. No, we use some Asana. We're more into using a lot of the other tools in like Atlassian now, so like...35:37 DS: JIRA and stuff, yeah.35:39 AW: Yeah. Confluence and stuff like that.35:42 DS: Yeah, well, ClickUp just blows my mind, because every week, every Friday, I get an email from ClickUp saying like, "These are the five new features we shipped," and I cannot believe how quickly they are launching features and they're good features. It's like they're serious things. They're launching new shit all the time. It's amazing.36:01 AW: Yeah, but that's where you have to ask what's that size of their engineering team, where you have these... They might have, I don't know, the... I have no idea what they have. But they could have five different teams of five that each one has a rotation. So you're building in your team of five and you release and then you have five weeks till you have to release again in your rotation, because the next team has week two, the next team week three, like...36:27 DS: Sure.36:28 AW: Yeah, if you have that cadence and you can do it, that's pretty awesome.36:32 DS: I want that. I want that, Aaron.[chuckle]36:34 DS: How do we get that? [chuckle]36:36 AW: You want that with not even five developers, though. That's the hard part.36:40 DS: I want that with my two full-time developers.36:43 AW: Yep. Shiny, wonderful things.36:47 DS: No. I know.36:48 AW: So wrapping this up, course correcting. To summarize, I guess I would say it's something you absolutely have to consider. Yeah, sometimes you just gotta cut bait, or as we talked about, you have to investigate enough to know like, "Do I need to put more into this as one last effort?" Because you just, if you have the feeling or you have the data that tells you, "This isn't going the right way. It's just not that used. It's not making me more margin, or more top line revenue." Those are all the wrong signals you want out of adding to your solution.37:24 DS: Yeah, so knowing that trying to predict it in advance, of course, is the best course of action. If you can definitely identify whether or not this feature is gonna provide value. And I think it's, the lesson for me is to invest more time investigating these features before I give them the go ahead and then, but I do feel like, "Hey, I caught this one and it's time to course correct and cut our losses on it and move forward so the team can focus on other things and we can save those costs, because it's not actually doing anything beneficial to the business."37:53 AW: Yep. You gotta have the backbone to do it when you realize it's not there, and sometimes some things just have to be cut and shut down and you move on, and then just as you're outlining, post mortem you learn. And I'm a big fan. I use this statement all the time like, "Being proactive is an investment in your business, so more research, more listening, more vetting, asking people what they pay for that feature, taking the right steps to validate, that's an investment and everything you do reactively is an expense." So when you're still trying to deliver it, when you're trying to make it work for people, when you're ignoring the fact that no one likes it or is using it, and it's causing roadblocks to other things, like you're getting the bill on that in more than just dollars. It's time, it's everything else.38:42 DS: Yep, 100%.38:44 AW: Alright. Well, maybe on the next episode I'll let you know if I decided to redo this report or if I just stayed with it, but boy, I sure feel like, especially talking out loud with this, I need to course correct and go do it the right way and go from there.38:58 DS: I'm curious, yeah. I'd love to hear it next time we talk, what you decide to do.39:03 AW: Okay. My goal is to have that solved, not eat any more gas station cookies, eat more salads like you, and then I should be in good shape in two or three weeks when we talk again.39:14 DS: Yeah, looking good, feeling good. [chuckle] Sounds good.39:19 AW: Alright. Anything in closing, Darren, you wanna share? Anything you're looking forward to, or anything coming up in the next few weeks? 39:24 DS: Oh, sure, yeah, there's one big thing. I presented it at the Summit, is our local search ranking factors survey results. So I basically hacked together a presentation last minute so I can present. But the full publication's coming out. So I'm looking forward to launching that, and then also measuring the marketing impact of that as well. It's a pretty big resource in our industry, and so it'll be interesting to see what kind of business that drives.39:50 AW: Yeah, as a sub-point, maybe something we talk about as a focus in an episode like I think sharing and using data as inbound marketing and as content people want is massive, and you do such a great job with that and having the local search ranking factors is massive. Those are the kind of things that attract dozens or hundreds of links and mentions.40:15 DS: Yep. It's massive.40:17 AW: Yeah, over and over and over again and that's something we should probably talk about sometime. I think a lot of people miss the boat on that, just how much data, surveys, expert surveys, things like that, can just really fuel what you're doing for your inbound marketing, so let's mark that down for another topic.40:35 DS: Yeah, and I don't do it directly to make money. I think that there is a money-making benefit, but I just wanna clarify. I do it 'cause I love it. It's like the local search ranking factors is a labor of love and publishing it, I'm sure it definitely impacts business, but I would do it anyways.40:51 AW: There you go.40:52 DS: It's just what I love to do.40:54 AW: Even better when you love doing it.40:55 DS: That's right. Alright, thanks, Aaron.40:58 AW: Yeah, great to catch up. Everyone, thanks as always for listening. We always appreciate if you reach out with any topic ideas via Twitter or via thesaasventure.com, and if you get the opportunity and we're living up to our end of the deal of giving you valuable content, please leave us a review in iTunes to help others find the SaaS Venture podcast as well. So with that until we talk again hopefully in the next two to three weeks, sound good? 41:25 DS: Sounds good.41:25 AW: Alright, thanks Darren and thanks everyone. We'll talk to you soon.41:29 DS: Thanks Aaron. Thanks everyone.[music]