I have long found that the views metric inside Google My Business Insights ("Where customers view your business on Google") is one of the most misunderstood metrics in the local search industry. It also seems to be the one that…
**This is taken from my LocalU Presentation called "What Really Affects Local Rankings". Catch round 2 of this in Atlanta in March 2020 where I go through a whole new set of scenarios and questions to clarify what things impact…
I’m extremely excited to officially announce that Sterling Sky has acquired LocalU. It was founded in 2009 by several well-known experts in the Local Search world and our goal is to continue to make it grow & thrive while keeping…
If you work in Local Search, you probably noticed that there has been lot going on in the last week. The thread about this update at the Local Search Forum is currently our top trending discussion. I've been spending hours digging…
Earlier this year, one of our team members noticed that Google would display Unicode in the title tag for a website which caused it to stand out in the search results. We wanted to see how adding Unicode would impact…
Due to how often I get this question, and how frequently people ask about it on the GBP community forum, I'm creating a quick guide to explain how to delete a review you wrote for a business on Google or…
About a month ago, Google My Business support changed the process of how they handle practitioner listings. I did announce this to my local SEO training subscribers in May but also wanted to publish a public guide on it. Multi-Practitioner Businesses…
We often get questions about how Google Search Console tracks activity from the local results. I'm hoping this article will provide some clarity on many questions I've been asked over the years about it. Search Console does report on activity…
As someone who has been involved in editing on Google Maps for over a decade, I thought it was time to put some of the most-common myths to rest by laying out things that we have found are not commonly…
Yesterday, Google updated the Google My Business guidelines and has new information for seasonal businesses. Previously they used to tell these business types to delete their hours during off-season months. Now it says they should contact GMB support to have their…
As of Monday of this week we started to see Google roll out the new Site Manager role that was first announced back in November of 2018. What is New? For several large chains, we are now seeing a new…
Google My Business has just recently updated their guidelines to add more context around content that they don't allow. The guidelines previously stated that "Content promoting and encouraging violence or terrorist activities" was not allowed but have now expanded on…