The Near Memo: Recent Episodes
Greg Sterling, Mike Blumenthal & David Mihm
Exploring the big stories for the week at the intersection of local business & marketing across the spectrum of search, social and commerce. With Greg Sterling, Mike Blumenthal & David Mihm.
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We're on vacation this week, so we're re-running one of our favorite April conversations. It still speaks to our current series on brand in local, and a live panel on local digital brand strategy follows next week.
Cyrus Shepard (founder of Zyppy) joins David Mihm and Mike Blumenthal to unpack what the Google antitrust trial, the leaked patents, and the API leak revealed about how Google really ranks: user click data. They walk through the three signals that matter — clicks, long clicks, and the "last longest click" — why brand search keeps correlating with rankings, and what AI Overviews are doing to the click ecosystem, including how local businesses can still earn (and satisfy) the click.
Practical throughout: consolidating reviews and booking onto owned surfaces, using Search Console's branded-query filter as an AI-Overviews scorecard, and why a too-clickable title tag quietly costs you traffic.
Be sure to listen to our series on branding.
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Part 3 of the Near Memo brand-building series brings brand down to earth in professional services — specifically legal, where a client hires once in a lifetime, can't judge quality, and every ad on the screen looks identical. Gyi Tsakalakis, co-founder of AttorneySync, joins Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal to talk about what actually moves the needle for personal-injury and other high-stakes firms.
The throughline: you can't outspend a bad intake experience. Gyi makes the case for treating intake and even rejections as review-generation surfaces, signing prospects up before you qualify them, and manufacturing brand demand offline that you route back through Google Business Profiles. They close on AI — still a top-of-funnel research tool for most local consumers, while Google (and the GBP data ChatGPT scrapes) remains the last click.
Watch Part 1 (John Jantsch) and Part 2 (Cyrus Shepard) for the general and technical sides of local brand.
Links:
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AttorneySync: https://www.attorneysync.com/
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EP 265 — Decoding Local Branding with John Jantsch: https://www.nearmedia.co/ep-265-decoding-local-branding-with-john-jantsch/
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EP 266 — Cyrus Shepard: What Local Brand Actually Means to Google and AI: https://www.nearmedia.co/ep-266-cyrus-shepard-what-local-brand-actually-means-to-google-and-ai/
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Michigan Auto Law "3K for Free": https://www.google.com/search?q=3k4Free
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Kruger & Hodges, The Hometown Lawyers: https://thehometownlawyers.com/
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Lunch Hour Legal Marketing Summit: https://lunchhourlegalmarketing.com/
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Google ATLAS study: https://ai.google/static/documents/GoogleATLASv1.pdf
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Cyrus Shepard, founder of Zyppy, joins Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal for Part 2 of the Near Memo brand-building series — this time on the technical side: how Google and AI systems actually model a brand, and what a local business can do about it.
To Google, a brand isn't a feeling. It's an entity — an entry in a database, connected to your website, your Business Profile, and you. Cyrus walks through what strengthens those connections, why branded search volume is still the single best lever in SEO, and why the decade-old fundamentals came roaring back the moment AI systems started needing the same entity signals local search always needed.
We also get into why ranking first no longer guarantees you're recommended, why Google stopped wanting content and started wanting evidence, whether llms.txt is worth your time (Cyrus says no), and the surprisingly low review threshold where a local flywheel starts turning.
Plus: the cross-business referral tactic neither host had heard proposed before, and a plan involving an unreasonable number of pizzas.
▶️ Be sure to listem to Part 1 of this series, with John Jantsch on small business brand building
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What separates a commodity local provider from a business that easily commands premium pricing? In this kickoff to our four-part brand series, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal are joined by marketing pioneer John Jantsch.
John details how small businesses can harness real customer language using clinet interviews, reviews and LLMs to establish distinctiveness, why top-down strategic leadership is required to effectively implement AI, and how to navigate the emerging threat of "agentic flattening" as AI agents and structured protocols begin to alter direct website interactions. Streamline your marketing operations from strategy to final customer touchpoint.
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Are traditional websites dying, or are they just changing shapes? Hosts Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal catch up with serial entrepreneur and Mozilla VP of Product Raj Singh to discuss how AI search friction is changing the local web. Learn why small businesses must lean into "trust artifacts," how APIs and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) will surface local businesses to AI agents, and why human-in-the-loop authenticity is your best defense against algorithmic spam.
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Local SEO strategy often gets stuck playing a quantitative numbers game with review counts and velocity benchmarks. But what happens when you treat the collective text of your market's customer reviews as an ongoing, free focus group? This week, Celeste Gonzalez joins us to show how tools like Apify and Natural Language Processing (NLP) allow local agencies to scrape hidden market trends from Reddit, TikTok, and competitor Google Maps profiles. We break down exactly how to extract actionable copywriting blueprints from customer pain points, avoid confirmation biases, and keep your business answers consistent for modern AI search engines.
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What happens when federal regulators take on fake reviews and predatory AI applications? This week on NearMemo, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal host Michael Atleson, former Senior Attorney at the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices (now with DLA Piper). Michael walks us through the internal strategy behind the landmark Consumer Review Rule, the nuances of investigating multi-million dollar local business listing fraud, and how lawyers are using novel product liability theories to bypass Section 230 immunity. We also dive into the political shifts impacting AI enforcement, state-level legislation targeting companion bots, and the future of tech regulation in an era of congressional gridlock.
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Are your local search frameworks ready for a probabilistic, AI-driven Map interface? This week, Greg, Mike, and local search practitioner Craig Burton map out the massive influx of automated algorithmic categorization structures rolling across Google Maps globally. From "Trending This Week" hooks to deep "Curated with Gemini" vertical subcategories, Google is testing dynamic, phone-facing carousels that ignore standard business profile naming and keyword densities. The team discusses the mechanics of how Google tracks localized user interactions, reviews, citations, and even point-of-sale data to create these lists, establishing a new competitive framework called "Evidence Optimization
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How do you build brand permanence in a local market when web attribution metrics are fading? This week, we dive into Part 2 of our post-Google I/O masterclass with Cindy Krum, Krystal Taing, and Greg Gifford. The panel shifts completely from macro trends to hands-on execution strategy. We explore why search traffic is splitting across social apps and niche forums, how businesses can produce narrative-driven video assets that anchor themselves in AI overviews, and the structural limitations of using automated AI tools to write generic content. Plus, discover an exceptional, compliant framework for optimizing customer review acquisitions that subtly prompts consumers to write comprehensive, high-value keyword reviews without violating platform terms.
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The rules of user discovery are undergoing a massive rewrite. This week, the Near Media roundtable features top search minds Cindy Krum, Krystal Taing, and Greg Gifford to analyze the long-term strategic impacts of Google I/O and Google Marketing Live. The panel maps out exactly how Google plans to transform its core search application into a fully transaction-based ecosystem that handles everything from discovering local venues to completing checkouts natively inside the search framework.
Get an inside look at the technical mechanics behind Google’s AI infrastructure, the roll-out of custom Google Spark agents, and the game-changing conversational interface of Ask Maps. We explore how these tools handle multi-variable, highly contextual natural language queries that used to break traditional local search algorithms. Tune in to explore why data privacy boundaries are fading into predictive personalization, how businesses can remain visible when traditional website traffic metrics shift, and where the future of e-commerce stands as tech platforms push for direct digital checkouts.
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In this Duda webinar, Darren Shaw and Mike Blumenthal explore the paradigm shift occurring in local search as Google increasingly incorporates generative AI into Google Business Profiles and Google Maps. Through new features like "Know Before You Go" and the conversational "Ask Maps," local discovery is transitioning from a deterministic ranking model to a highly personalized, context-aware ecosystem. Blumenthal demonstrates how to leverage Ask Maps for deep competitive analysis to pinpoint market weaknesses and operational gaps. The speakers emphasize that while traditional SEO remains foundational "table stakes," long-term visibility in the AI era requires businesses to cultivate a deeply revered brand through comprehensive website data, widespread consumer sentiment, community engagement, and niche specialization.
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Google just revealed the future of Search at Google I/O and Google Marketing Live — and it’s far more personal, predictive, and invasive than most people realize.
In this episode of Near Memo, Mike Blumenthal and Greg Sterling break down:
- A massive fake Google Business Profile fraud case involving 15,000 fake listings and $79 million in alleged fraud
- How Google already infers your income, politics, preferences, and buying habits — even WITHOUT opting into “Personal Intelligence”
- The rise of AI-native advertising formats
- Why AI Mode may fundamentally reshape search, local discovery, Google Maps, and online commerce
- How Google’s ecosystem strategy could create unprecedented user lock-in
They also discuss:
- AI-powered personalization
- Google’s “good enough” AI strategy
- AI agents and transactional search
- Why antitrust rulings may have changed nothing
- The future of ads inside AI search experiences
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In Part 2 of Near Media’s conversation with Garrett Sussman, the discussion shifts from AI personalization theory to the real-world impact on local search, SEO, reviews, attribution, and marketing strategy.
Garrett joins Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal to explore how Google’s growing use of behavioral data, Gmail, Calendar, Maps, reviews, and AI Mode could fundamentally reshape local discovery.
The group discusses:
- AI-driven local recommendations
- Why direct mail showed up in AI Mode
- The future of Google Business Profiles
- How marketers should rethink SEO measurement
- Persona-based AI testing
- Reviews and reputation in AI search
- Whether AI will ultimately simplify or complicate marketing
This episode is both a warning and a roadmap for marketers navigating the shift from traditional search to the coming personalized AI-driven discovery.
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Is Google getting too personal? In this episode of the Near Memo, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal are joined by Garrett Sussman (iPullRank) to discuss his provocative 12-month study on AI personalization. We dive deep into how Google’s "AI Mode" uses your Gmail, Photos, and Calendar to tailor results—and why "unopened emails" might be influencing what you see next.
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Join our celebrity local SEO panel—Claudia Tomina, Adam Dorfman, and Darren "The Canadian" Shaw—as they explore "Ask Maps," Google’s AI-powered conversational interface for local search. We demo the new desktop UI, discuss how hyper-personalization is changing user behavior, and reveal why "content freshness" is now the most critical strategy for local businesses to stay relevant in an AI-driven world.
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Greg and Mike discuss the shifting landscape of local search. From the FTC’s latest crackdown on incentivized reviews to Yelp’s attempt to fast-forward their antitrust case against Google using recent federal rulings. We also explore the expansion of LSAs and the transition from the "Local Pack" to AI-driven "Ask Maps."
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Google just changed the rules on reviews—and businesses may already be getting penalized. Meanwhile, Meta is projected to overtake Google in ad revenue, despite ongoing legal battles and ethical concerns.
In this episode, Mike Blumenthal and Greg Sterling break down:
• Google’s new review enforcement signals
• Why marketers are frustrated with rising ad costs and unclear ROI
• The surprising shift toward AI-driven search (ChatGPT, Ask Maps)
• Who actually wins the AI race—and why it may not be who you think
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This episode explores how Google actually uses click data (despite years of denial) and how that reality intersects with the rise of AI Overviews. Cyrus Shepherd connects the dots between antitrust trial revelations, API leaks, and patents, showing that click behavior—especially “last longest click”—is a core ranking signal.
The discussion then shifts to how AI Overviews are reshaping search:
- Reducing traditional clicks
- Forcing Google to predict user behavior with less data
- Increasing the importance of brand, task completion, and engagement signals
For local businesses and SEOs, the takeaway is clear:
👉 Winning now means owning the user journey, driving brand searches, and optimizing for task completion—not just rankings.
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In Part 2, Steve Wiideman joins Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal to cut through the AI hype and explain what’s actually working in multi-location SEO today.
Despite growing attention on AI tools and “agentic commerce,” the real drivers of visibility are still foundational: intent-driven content, strong review signals, and brand awareness.
They also explore how zero-click search is changing attribution, why websites are becoming data sources for AI, and what local search will look like in the next 3–5 years.
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What does it really take to scale SEO across hundreds (or thousands) of locations?
In this episode of the Near Memo, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal are joined by Steve Wiideman to unpack the operational, strategic, and technical realities of multi-location SEO.
They explore testing frameworks, content strategies, franchise challenges, reviews, imagery, and the evolving nature of search behavior.
If you manage local SEO at scale, this is a must-listen.
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Google Business Profile impressions are dropping fast—but conversions aren’t.
In this Near Memo episode, Greg Sterling, Mike Blumenthal, and Adam Dorfman unpack BirdEye’s latest data and explore what’s really changing in local search.
From AI Overviews and LLM-driven discovery to Google’s new Ask Maps interface, they examine how search behavior is shifting—and why Google still controls the final decision point.
They also dig into:
- Category vs brand search behavior
- Industry-level engagement differences
- The evolving role of reviews in AI-driven results
- Apple Maps as a quiet challenger
If you’re trying to understand how AI is reshaping local SEO, this episode connects the dots.
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In this archive episode of the Near Memo podcast, Darren Shaw of Whitespark joins Mike Blumenthal, Greg Sterling, and David Mihm to discuss the influential Local Search Ranking Factors study.
The panel breaks down how the survey works, what has changed in local search, and how the rise of AI interfaces like ChatGPT and Gemini could reshape how businesses are discovered online.
They explore:
- Why review volume and recency drive rankings
- How behavioral signals may outweigh traditional SEO factors
- Whether links are becoming less important
- Why Google’s behavioral data advantage matters
- The role of expert lists and third-party citations in AI search
This episode offers a snapshot of local search at a moment of major transition that still resonates 6 months later.
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In this episode of the Near Memo podcast, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal host a panel discussion with Eric Levine (Leadwise HQ, former Google LSA team), Claudia Tomina (Reputation Arm), Matt Casady (Sterling Sky), and Crystal Horton (Google Business Profile Platinum Product Expert).
Together the panel explores how agencies are actually managing LSAs for clients today.
Topics include:
• The real ranking factors behind Local Service Ads
• Whether LSAs are still a DIY product or require agency expertise
• How agencies price and manage LSA services
• Fraud, verification challenges, and fake listings
• Lead quality and the removal of the lead dispute feature
• What separates successful LSA campaigns from failed ones
• How LSAs may evolve as AI search and brand discovery reshape local search
The conversation also dives into the agency economics of LSAs — from consulting models to flat fee management and performance expectations in competitive markets like personal injury law.
If you’re an agency, consultant, or in-house marketer managing LSAs for clients, this panel discussion offers practical insights into how the product really works.
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Google AI & Click Economics
Google is replacing structured GBP data with AI-generated summaries, nudging users into AI Mode, and expanding monetization pathways. Aleyda Solis’ study and Near Media research show ads — especially LSAs — are siphoning clicks.
Data Moats & Scraping Crackdowns
Google restricts scraping, disrupting SerpAPI. The move reinforces Google’s data advantage against ChatGPT and Perplexity while signaling an increasingly closed ecosystem.
Reviews, Inflation & Consumer Backlash (22:00–36:00)
Yelp’s Trust Report and BrightLocal’s 2026 study show persistent fraud, rising consumer anger, review inflation in legal, and AI becoming the third source of recommendations.
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In this episode of Near Memo, Rand Fishkin joins Greg Sterling, Mike Blumenthal, and David Mihm to unpack the future of AI search, brand visibility, and digital measurement.
Is AI rank tracking possible? Are zero-click journeys killing websites? And how should local businesses measure marketing performance in a world where attribution is breaking down?
Rand shares new research on AI brand visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, and Google AI, discusses why performance marketing metrics are eroding, and explains where brands should actually invest their energy in 2026.
This is a deep dive into the changing economics of search.
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Google Local Service Ads have become one of the most powerful placements in local search — especially in competitive verticals like personal injury law.
But what actually drives ranking and performance?
In this episode, we examine the real mechanics behind LSAs: review cadence, responsiveness, bidding structure, and the psychology of visual presentation. We explore how headshots and photo sequencing influence trust, why logos don’t convert, and how review manipulation creates competitive distortion.
LSAs reward operational excellence more than aggressive spending — and understanding the role of visual trust may be the difference between visibility and invisibility.
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Local Services Ads have become the “top-of-the-page” battleground for high-value local categories—especially professional services. In this episode, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal talk with former LSA team member Eric Levine about how LSAs evolved, what really influences rank, and how Google’s lead marketplace mechanics shape outcomes.
We break down “request multiple options,” lead billing, the big ranking signals (reviews, responsiveness, radius/service area), why LSAs often win user attention over the local pack, and how photos should be chosen and structured to match user decision-making.
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AI isn’t killing search — it’s reshaping how people discover, evaluate, and choose businesses.
In this in terview with Crystal Carter of Wix, we unpack how large language models, AI assistants, and emerging “agent” experiences are changing consumer behavior, local search, and brand visibility. From ChatGPT and Google’s AI-driven results to personalization, intent modeling, and task completion, we explore what actually changes — and what doesn’t.
We also dig into:
• Why AI acts more like a complement to search than a replacement
• How “choice” and “consideration” evolve in AI-first experiences
• What happens when interfaces collapse research, comparison, and action into one flow
• Why local, reviews, and brand signals still matter — just differently
• What businesses should prepare for as agents begin acting on behalf of users
If you care about search, local, UX, or how consumers actually make decisions, this is the conversation you want to hear.
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Claudia Tomina joins Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal to unpack what the Google API leak reveals about local rankings, why reviews are being removed at scale, and how AI Overviews, Gemini, and agentic shopping are pushing transactions into Google’s AI interfaces. A must-listen for anyone managing a Google Business Profile in 2026.
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AI tools are changing how consumers discover local businesses, but Google remains the system of record for trust, reviews, directions, and contact. This conversation explores how AI reduces cognitive load, concentrates visibility, and amplifies brand demand—forcing local marketers to rethink SEO beyond rankings.
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Local SEO, reviews, and Google LSAs are no longer working the way law firms expect. In this episode of Near Memo, Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync) joins Mike Blumenthal and Greg Sterling to explain why rankings and traffic are misleading, how LSAs reshape legal demand, why review cheating is rampant, and how brand trust has become the real competitive moat.
If you’re relying on Google visibility alone to grow a law firm, this conversation is a wake-up call.
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Google’s AI Mode and ChatGPT search are reshaping local discovery. This deep dive interview with Michel van Luijtelaar of GMBapi explains what’s changing, how users behave inside AI results, and what local businesses must do now to stay visible and trusted.
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In this episode of The Near Memo, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal talk with Michel of GMB API about what new data reveals regarding review removals, fraud detection, incentivized reviews, and regional legal differences across Europe and the U.S.
The conversation explores why reviews are increasingly central to AI-driven search experiences, how enforcement tools can unintentionally harm small businesses, and what this all means for trust, visibility, and competition in local search.
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In this episode, Jes Scholz joins Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal for a deep dive into the forces reshaping search: AI agents, the rise of conversational interfaces, the 60/40 brand-activation model, content freshness, multimodal distribution, and why your database — not your website — may determine your competitive future.
Jes explains what marketers must do now: update your content strategy, test your site with agents, fix your UX friction, and prepare your database for natural-language inputs. Essential listening for SEOs, CMOs, and local businesses navigating the next wave of digital change.
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In this packed episode, Jes Scholz joins Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal to explore where AI search is really headed. From conversational interfaces replacing the search box to the competitive implications of Gemini 3, Jes explains why Google’s index is shrinking, why publishers must evolve, and why consensus around brand salience — not keywords — decides visibility.
We also cover local search dynamics, review-based consensus modeling, multi-touch attribution myths, and how to create content that earns true distribution in 2025.
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In this episode of the Near Memo, Mike Blumenthal and Greg Sterling unpack Google’s dramatic shift toward an AI-first search ecosystem — including the rollout of Know Before you Go in Maps, ads in the new AI Mode in Search & Maps, and the introduction oof Gemini 3 what that means for personalization and marketers.
We explore:
• Google Maps’ new AI-powered interfaces — including Know Before You Go and the prominent “Ask” module that pulls data from reviews, websites, and third-party sources. We discuss how Google is reshaping the local experience by elevating AI-generated insights above traditional organic content.
• Google’s new reviewer aliases and their implications — from anonymity and fraud concerns to how aliases complicate trust, moderation, business intelligence, and the already-confusing review ecosystem.
• Ads quietly invading AI Mode — what early experiments show about ad placement, user behavior, declining click-through rates, and Google’s likely future ad units as the AI interface becomes the top of the SERP.
• Google’s monopoly strategy in the AI race — including how Google is leveraging its scale, distribution, defaults, and product integrations to push Gemini over ChatGPT, claw back market share, and extend its dominance into AI search experiences despite weak antitrust remedies.
Plus: The Near Media newsletter is going free.
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Greg Gifford joins the Near Memo to break down his large-scale Local SEO study of 3,000 personal injury law firm's Google Business Profiles. He reveals what #1 ranked PI las firms are doing that #10 ranked practioners are not. From review response rates and schema misfires to UTM tracking errors, the trio unpacks what’s real in local SEO and what’s hype. The episode closes with a lively debate about the AI-driven future of the SERP.
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Local SEO just got a major shake-up. In this episode, Darren Shaw of Whitespark joins Mike Blumenthal, David Mihm, and Greg Sterling to reveal key takeaways from the 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors study — including how AI search, behavioral signals, and reviews are changing the local game. Hear what really moves the needle, what’s fading, and where Google, Gemini, and ChatGPT fit into your future strategy.
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In this episode, Greg Sterling, Mike Blumenthal, and Celeste Gonzalez (Rickety Roo) dive into TikTok’s “Local Explorer” — a new review and discovery program inside the app. They explore how Gen Z’s shift toward TikTok and Instagram is reshaping local search, what the Adobe and SOCi studies reveal, and why authenticity may be TikTok’s edge over Google Reviews.
You’ll learn:
• How TikTok gamifies local reviews
• Why 62 % of Gen Z prefer TikTok for finding local businesses
• How to track TikTok referrals in GA4 & GSC
• Why review authenticity and AI are changing SEO’s future
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In Episode 229, Mike and Greg unpack Yelp’s revived antitrust lawsuit against Google and what it reveals about search dominance. They dive into Google’s “grounded” Gemini AI—supposedly tied to Maps data—and Mike’s test results showing how unreliable it still is. Finally, they explore ChatGPT’s new local results format, which borrows from Google Maps, and debate whether AI interfaces can ever be trusted to tell the truth.
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AI is reshaping how businesses manage their locations, from adoption challenges to AI Overviews in Google Search, to the renewed importance of citations and directories. Mike Blumenthal, Greg Sterling, and Ana Martinez from Uberall discuss AI’s role in visibility, customer journeys, and local SEO strategy.
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Uberall’s CTO Ana Martinez joins Greg Sterling & Mike Blumenthal to reveal how the company is going “AI native with their Local Platform location management.” From internal culture shifts to new client-facing tools like UBI and Location Performance Score, learn how AI is reshaping products, teams, and customer expectations.
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In this episode of the Near Memo, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal dig into Google Business Profile suspension increases over time, the broken state of reviews, and insights from Google’s Liz Reid on AI Overviews, AI Mode, and monetization. What do these changes mean for small businesses, SEOs, and consumers? Tune in for an unfiltered take.
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In this episode of the Near Memo, Mike and Greg break down:
- The rise of Google Business Profile review extortion scams 📉
- Google Maps’ new AR feature: See it. Snap it. Ask it. 🗺️
- Why ChatGPT still falls short for local search vs Google 🔎
- YouTube’s strategic role in Google’s AI & local marketing future ▶️
👉 Subscribe for more insights on Google, AI, and local marketing.
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In this episode, Greg Sterling, Mike Blumenthal, and Barry Schwartz discuss various pressing topics in the digital marketing landscape, including the rise of local review ransom schemes, the ongoing debate about the state of the open web, and the implications of AI on search interfaces. They explore how Google's recent changes and the introduction of AI features are reshaping user experiences and the future of search. The conversation also touches on the challenges businesses face with review moderation and the impact of spam on search quality.
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We discuss Google’s new guidelines for Business Profile action links, the company’s conflicting statements about the health of the open web in an antitrust case, and Apple’s rumored partnership with Google’s Gemini to power Siri. Together, these stories highlight Google’s tightening grip on local businesses, the shifting economics of publishing, and how Apple’s AI ambitions could reshape search traffic and advertising revenue.
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We dig into when/where Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs) appear in local, how people actually split tasks across Google vs. ChatGPT, what the DOJ’s remedies mean for defaults, and a fresh case where a brand-new local biz triggered an AIO—plus practical takeaways.
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Mike Blumenthal and Greg Sterling discuss three hot-button topics:
- Consumer vs. industry perspectives on Google’s AI Overviews
- How review expectations differ from actual behavior in the legal vertical
- Why Datos data shows AI growth isn’t displacing search usage
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Google is consolidating Local Services Ads trust signals into a single verification badge — but is it really about trust or revenue? Greg and Mike discuss Google’s evolving ad strategy, the ongoing degradation of organic results, their "dark patterns" that elevate LSA usage and new BrightLocal data showing less than half of small businesses have claimed their Google Business Profiles. Plus: why email remains an overlooked channel, and whether AI tools like ChatGPT can realistically challenge Google in local.
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In part two of this interview, SEO veteran Will Scott of Search Influence joins Mike Blumenthal and Greg Sterling to unpack how AI is reshaping search, why semantic SEO matters, and how to use no-code automation tools to scale content. Learn how to barnacle onto high-authority sites, repurpose content across platforms, and adapt to an AI-first search world.
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In Part 1 of this interview, SEO veteran Will Scott joins Near Memo to unpack the rise of Barnacle SEO in a world reshaped by AI. We explore how content visibility, listicles, and trusted sources like Reddit and Yelp are influencing AI-generated responses. Plus, we debate the viability of “GEO” as a term, Google’s evolving narrative, and the role of automation tools in SEO.
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Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal talk with mapping expert Goetz Weber about why today’s maps fail to deliver personalized, contextual experiences — and what needs to change. From intent modeling to the limits of monetization, from ChatGPT to Snap Maps, Goetz lays out a compelling vision for mapping 2.0: visual, social, and powered by AI.
For relevant links and a transcript visit our site.
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This week, Greg and Mike dissect new data from Pew and Ahrefs showing how AI Overviews impact user click behavior, local pack visibility, and publisher traffic. They explore the branding mess of “AIO” vs. “GEO,” ChatGPT’s growing usefulness, and YouTube’s quiet dominance. Plus: a burrito search showdown and dishwasher repair gone AI.
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In this episode of the Near Memo, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal dive into Google’s overhaul of its Business Profile dashboard notifications and why it's problematic, the rollout of Google’s AI-powered “Ask for Me” local quote feature, and ChatGPT’s growing impact on local search. Plus: Will businesses benefit from the Ask for Me feature?
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In this episode of the Near Memo, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal discuss fresh insights into how consumers engage with local AI Overviews, explore the theory that ChatGPT may be using Google's search index, and dig into the explosive growth and influence of Google's Local Guides program. The discussion also touches on zero-click search, ad transparency, and the implications for local businesses.
Sponsored by GatherUp.
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Greg and Mike unpack the latest in local search: an uptick in suspensions, why AI overviews are shifting lower on SERPs, and what local businesses must do to thrive in an AI-dominated search world. Also, a pig roas
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Darren Shaw of Whitespark returns to the Near Memo to talk with Mike and Greg about what’s actually working—and what’s not—in local SEO as AI begins reshaping consumer behavior. From the rise of first-party reviews to YouTube’s power for B2B lead gen, this episode tackles how agencies can prepare clients for a future beyond Google. They also dig into the limitations of ChatGPT’s local recommendations, where blogs still make sense, and what digital PR might look like for small businesses. Practical, honest, and forward-looking.
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In this episode, Mike and Greg break down three major developments shaping the local search and AI landscape. First, they tackle the growing wave of Google Business Profile suspensions caused by rigid, AI-driven video verification—where even legitimate businesses are getting flagged. They offer practical advice on how to avoid getting suspended and why field-based verification is now essential.
Next, they explore new consumer survey data showing a significant rise in people using AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini for local business discovery. But while AI wins early attention, most users still turn to Google Maps or Search to take action—creating a split-funnel dynamic that Google must navigate to protect its ad model.
Finally, they unpack Apple’s WWDC announcements, noting the glaring absence of Siri. Instead of chasing ChatGPT, Apple is doubling down on privacy-first, on-device AI. Meanwhile, Siri continues to underperform as voice UX expectations are being reshaped by tools like ChatGPT Voice.
This episode is for marketers, SEOs, and local business owners trying to stay ahead of fast-moving changes in AI, search, and platform strategy.
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In 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.
🔑 Key Takeaways:
- Google’s Gemini user claim is deeply flawed.
350 million “monthly users” likely includes passive, backend interactions across the Google ecosystem—not active engagement. - Gemini underperforms compared to ChatGPT and Claude.
Independent research and user experience both point to Gemini lagging behind in quality and versatility. - DOJ is pushing for serious remedies—like divesting Chrome.
The antitrust trial may force Google to give up core assets or radically change how it bundles and distributes products. - Google’s biggest moat might be local.
With 150M local guides powering Maps and local profiles, Google's real strength lies in place-based information no one else has. - The old web deal is dying.
Google's former value exchange—“we send you traffic in exchange for your content”—is being replaced with “we scrape your site, and you buy the ads.” - YouTube may become the dominant search engine.
For how-to content and product discovery, YouTube beats traditional search—and Google controls every part of it. - Rand Fishkin’s desktop-only data misses key insights.
App usage and mobile behavior are reshaping how users interact with AI, but current reporting often overlooks this. - The SERP is evolving into AI Mode.
Google’s current hybrid of AI Overviews + Knowledge Graph is transforming how users experience local and informational queries. - Brands must diversify now.
With Google traffic likely to decline, businesses need to explore YouTube, TikTok, Perplexity, and other platforms—fast.
🎧 Tune in for:
- Smart, unscripted analysis
- Honest takes on Google’s AI positioning
- Real-world marketing strategy implications
- Predictions for how the search landscape is evolving
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In 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.
🚨 Top Themes Covered:
- Google’s AI Overviews: Why AI is rewriting the search interface and what it means for local visibility.
- Urban vs. Rural Search Results: Why AI tools like ChatGPT might actually outperform Google Maps in lower-density areas.
- The End of Organic?: Google’s AI results are now 100% GBP (Google Business Profile) driven—with nearly zero room for traditional website links.
- Reviews Are the New Backlinks: How first- and third-party reviews (especially on platforms like Yelp and TripAdvisor) are now critical ranking factors in AI models.
- The Fragmented Funnel: TikTok and Instagram are eating the top of the funnel—Google is now the validator, not the discoverer.
- Metrics Reimagined: Why clicks are increasingly meaningless, and what to track instead—from CRM tie-ins to survey data and outcome-based KPIs.
- AI’s Role in Product & Strategy: How BirdEye and other platforms are rethinking their offerings to embed AI into every layer—from insights to actions.
- Old-School SEO vs. AI Optimization: Turns out, best practices haven’t changed much—good local SEO still wins, but it’s more critical than ever to focus on outcomes, not vanity metrics.
💡 Key Takeaways:
- Local search isn’t dead—it’s evolving. AI is changing the game, but the fundamentals still matter: strong reviews, simple websites, quality listings, and running a great business.
- Your website still matters, even if it’s not driving direct clicks. It’s a core data source for AI and a validator for customers making high-stakes decisions.
- Directory presence is back in fashion—especially for verticals like travel, dining, and services. Yelp and TripAdvisor are still powerful in AI outputs.
- Forget tips and tricks. Stop obsessing over how to game AI results. Focus on real marketing, customer feedback, and operational excellence.
- AI visibility tracking is a new frontier. Ranking reports may be making a comeback—not for traffic predictions, but for understanding how you show up in AI-generated lists.
📣 Whether you’re an SEO veteran, a SaaS marketer, a multi-location brand, or just trying to figure out where to spend your next marketing dollar, this episode offers tactical wisdom and strategic clarity on where local search is headed—and how to stay ahead.
🎧 Brought to you by GatherUp – our thanks to this episode’s sponsor and a trusted leader in reputation management.
Subscribe to The Near Memo for weekly insights at the intersection of search, social, local, and reputation.
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Have questions or feedback? Drop us a note at mblumenthal@nearmemo.co
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Welcome to Part 2 of our deep dive into the most revealing SEO and UX research of 2025.
In this episode of the Near Memo podcast, Greg Sterling, Kevin Indig, and Eric Van Buskirk break down how users actually interact with AI Overviews on Google—and what that means for your SEO strategy moving forward.
00:55 – “Trust over Traffic: The SEO Paradigm Shift”
02:10 – “SEO as Traffic Cop, Not Traffic Driver”
03:33 – “Reddit, YouTube & Beyond: Tactical SEO Musts”
07:20 – “Google Killed the Small Guys”
09:05 – “Google’s Fear-Driven Strategy”
11:14 – “Redefining SEO Inside the Org”
12:03 – “Click Recession and the Future of Metrics”
13:31 – “Pitching the New SEO to Leadership”
17:17 – “People Don’t Know LSAs Are Ads”
20:22 – “Gen Z, TikTok, and the Platform Migration”
22:23 – “ChatGPT Is the Train—You’re the Station”
▶️ Missed Part 1? Watch it here → https://youtu.be/pjE3MwOLYcg
⸻
🔥 What’s Inside This Episode:
In this second installment, we focus on the tactical and organizational implications of new user behavior patterns revealed through a qualitative usability study. The study recorded and analyzed nearly 30 hours of real-world search behavior, and the findings are reshaping how smart marketers think about organic search, AI, and branding.
From “click stagflation” to platform diversification, this episode delivers hard truths and actionable insights.
🧠 Top Insights You’ll Take Away:
• SEO isn’t dead—it’s evolved. Traditional traffic metrics are no longer reliable indicators of success.
• Trust is now the first filter. Users skim, scroll, and click based on what (and who) they recognize and believe in.
• Clicks ≠ Conversions. Welcome to the era of “click stagflation”—less traffic, but stable (or growing) business results.
• Google is reacting, not leading. The rise of Reddit, YouTube, and AI Overviews is a defensive move to hold onto users.
• Local trust signals matter more than ever. LSAs win clicks because users don’t realize they’re ads—they just trust the stars.
• Brand awareness is the new SEO moat. If users don’t know or trust you before they search, you likely won’t earn their click.
• SEO must align with social, content, and UX. It’s time for cross-functional “growth teams” that reflect real user journeys.
⸻
🔗 Links & Resources:
📄 Full transcript of Part 2 →
📄 Part 1: Study methodology + foundational insights → https://youtu.be/pjE3MwOLYcg
🧪 Read the study by Kevin Indig and Eric Van Buskirk → https://www.growth-memo.com/p/the-first-ever-ux-study-of-googles?ref=nearmedia.co
🎙️ More from Near Memo →https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmqwyOgNILWrALQo5FVdB6zlaEJiVyKS_
⸻
💬 What do YOU think?
Are you still measuring SEO success with clicks? Have you updated your strategy for AI Overviews and multi-platform journeys? Drop your thoughts or questions below—let’s talk.
⸻
👍 Like, 💬 Comment, and 🔔 Subscribe to get more straight talk on search, SEO, and local marketing every week.
SEO #AIOverviews #DigitalMarketing #SearchTrends #ContentStrategy #GoogleSearch #UserExperience #NearMemo #KevinIndig #EricVanBuskirk #GregSterling #UXResearch #ChatGPT #TikTokSearch #TrustEconomy
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🎙️ Trust Before Clicks: What Real Users Do With Google’s AI Overviews
We’ve all seen the headlines: Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs) are changing search forever. But how do real people actually use them?
In this episode of The Near Memo, we dive into the first behavioral UX study of Google’s AIOs, conducted by Kevin Indig and Eric Van Buskirk. The results? Totally eye-opening—and a little humbling for SEOs.
This wasn’t another clickstream analysis. This was watching users scroll, click (or not), skim, and decide across 8 real-world search tasks. Think local searches, health queries, shopping comparisons—all captured through screen recordings, scroll logs, and detailed annotations.
📊 Here’s What They Found:
1. Clicks Are Not Conversions
Only about 1 in 5 “final answers” came from AIOs. Most users finished their journey with traditional organic results, Reddit, YouTube, or maps. Clicking doesn’t always mean trusting—or converting.
2. Trust Comes Before Relevance
Users no longer scan the SERP for “the best answer.” They scan for brands they recognize and sources they trust. If they don’t know you, they scroll right past—even if you’re ranked #1.
3. Reviews Are the Ultimate Shortcut
In both local and shopping searches, people hunted for review stars. They scrolled back and forth just to find them. The takeaway? Reviews aren’t just helpful—they’re directional beacons in search.
4. Most People Skim AIOs
A whopping 86% of users skimmed AIOs. Unless the query was high-risk (think: health or finance), they treated the AI summary like a TL;DR intro and kept scrolling.
5. Risk = Depth
The more serious the query, the deeper the engagement. People spent more time reading, clicked more links to fact-check, and acted with more skepticism.
6. AIO Links Are Largely Ignored
Those little citation icons in AIOs? Most users didn’t touch them. Even large panels full of links got barely any engagement. Why? Because people didn’t perceive them as useful or actionable.
7. Users Are Skeptical—But Still Satisfied
Despite checking citations and bouncing around the page, users still reported high satisfaction with AIOs. Trust is sticky. If something “feels” complete, users stop looking—even if it’s flawed.
8. Google Benefits from the Illusion
Kevin and Eric argue that Google has long benefited from the mistaken belief that it’s the whole journey. In reality, search behavior is multi-touch, cross-platform, and often ends somewhere else entirely.
🎯 Final Thought: Trust Is the New CTR
If your brand isn’t already in the user’s mind, your perfect answer won’t matter.
Clicks are a vanity metric. Final answers are what really count.
To win now, SEOs must:
- Build brand trust before the search starts
- Be visible across platforms (Reddit, YouTube, forums)
- Focus on reviews and SERP presence
- Understand how different search intents drive behavior
This is Part One of a two-part conversation. In Part Two, we unpack the strategic takeaways and what marketers should do next.
Because in the era of AI Overviews, it’s not about ranking first—it’s about being the last place users need to go.
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In 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.
Takeaways
Cindy 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.
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00:00 GatherUp's AmpUp Webinar Overview
05:56 Yelp Antitrust Case Insights
13:32 Google Local Review's AI Overviews and Their Impact
26:45 ChatGPT's Shopping Capabilities and Future Directions
In this episode, Greg and Mike discuss the upcoming AmpUp 2025 virtual conference with Mel Atia of GatherUp, focusing on local SEO, reputation management, and the impact of AI on digital strategies. They delve into Yelp's antitrust case against Google, exploring the implications for local search and advertising. The conversation also highlights Google's new local AI feature, local brand summaries as well as changing consumer behaviors and the implications of ChatGPT getting into product search.
Takeaways
- AmpUp 2025 is a free virtual conference focused on local SEO and reputation management.
- The event will feature sessions on AI's impact on digital agencies and local search strategies.
- Yelp's antitrust case against Google could reshape the local search landscape.
- Google's dominance in local search raises questions about competition and consumer choice.
- AI overviews may simplify search but could misalign with user intent.
- Younger consumers are diversifying their search habits beyond Google.
- Businesses must manage their online reputation across multiple platforms.
- Engagement data is crucial for understanding consumer behavior in search.
- The future of search may involve more personalized and AI-driven experiences.
- Understanding audience behavior is essential for effective digital marketing.
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We discuss the latest developments in Google's antitrust trial and the introduction of new AI features in Google Business Profiles. They explore the implications of these changes for local SEO and user experience, as well as the potential future of search in an AI-driven world. The conversation highlights the challenges Google faces in maintaining its market dominance amidst evolving technologies and user expectations.
00:00
Exploring Google's New AI Features
11:17
Antitrust Trial Insights and Google Remedies
24:57
The Future of Search and AI Integration
Takeaways
- Google is introducing AI features to replace the Q & A and People Also Ask.
- User experience is suffering due to the cluttered interface of Google search results.
- User experience is suffering due to the cluttered interface of Google search results.
- The outcome of the antitrust trial could reshape the competitive landscape for Google.
- AI tools are seen as a threat to Google's traditional search model.
- The future of search may involve more conversational interfaces.
- Google's dominance in search is being challenged by emerging technologies.
- However, Google is the main game in town today but may not be as we transition to new hardware paragigms
- The integration of AI in search plus new hardwardcould lead to a more efficient user experience.
- However it is likely to be 5 years out. Will Google and Apple keep their dominant positions?
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Greg 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 Responses
02:59 The Importance of Customer Engagement
06:25 Common Mistakes Businesses Make with Reviews
08:24 The Future of Reviews and AI Integration
13:50 Trust and Alternative Sources of Information
17:42 The Role of AI in Review Management
22:43 Google's Trust Report and Review Management
27:27 The Impact of Reviews on Education Institutions
30:49 Final Thoughts on Reviews and Business Practices
Takeaways
•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.
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01:59 Evolution of Consumer Review Behavior
05:03 Trust in Reviews: A Declining Trend
08:14 The Impact of Fake Reviews and AI
14:18 Alternative Review Platforms and Their Trustworthiness
19:30 Key Findings from the 15-Year Review Study
22:07 Best Practices for Review Solicitation
29:22 Consumer Expectations and Business Responses
In 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.
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In this milestone 200th episode, the NearMemo crew unpacks Google’s mounting regulatory woes in Europe, including fresh scrutiny under the Digital Markets Act. Mike breaks down a storm of GBP bugs and business suspensions and ponders the fact that Google is actually admitting to them.. Greg steers the convo into the evolving future of search—where AI, chat interfaces, and user expectations are reshaping everything. From legal battles to UI battles, it’s clear: the search landscape is shifting fast.
00:00 Celebrating the 200th Episode (sort of)
01:23 Europe to Google: Play Fair or Pay Up
13:48 Google’s GBP Meltdown: Bugs, Delays & Suspensions—Oh My! And They Admit It!
21:42 The Future of Search: Bing’s Chance, Google’s Dilemma, and the Chat UX Revolution
Takeaways
- David discusses his recent trip to Europe and the implications of the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
- The DMA aims to create a fairer digital market, particularly regarding Google's self-preferencing practices.
- There is a lack of awareness among marketers in Europe about the DMA and its potential impact.
- AI overviews from Google may fall under the DMA's regulations due to their proprietary nature.
- The conversation highlights the need for businesses to adapt to changes in search interfaces driven by AI.
- Google's current challenges with Business Profiles are causing significant issues for businesses.
- Google, in uncharacteristic fashion actually admitted to these problems. Is this a new, more transparent Google or just a temporary change because so much has gone so wrong in such a short time.
- The hosts discuss the potential for Bing to innovate and capture market share in the evolving search landscape.
- Marketers should monitor traffic and visibility in AI platforms like ChatGPT and Copilot.
- The hype around AI in search is significant, but its impact on traffic is still developing.
- The conversation emphasizes the need for marketers to stay informed and adapt to rapid changes in the digital marketing environment.
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Greg 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 Search
11:27 Navigating the Future of Google and AI
16:56 Marketing Strategies in a Changing Landscape
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In this episode, Greg and Mike discuss the recent EU findings regarding Google's non-compliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the implications of algorithm changes leading to increased suspensions and verifications, and the evolving landscape of AI competition, particularly focusing on Google's strategies to retain users amidst rising AI technologies. They also explore the future of local SEO and its unique position in the market.
takeaways
- Google's violation of the DMA highlights ongoing regulatory scrutiny.
- Suspensions and verifications are increasing, indicating algorithmic changes.
- AI mode may be sufficient for many users, keeping them within Google's ecosystem.
- Local SEO is less impacted by AI than generic publishers.
- Conversions should be the focus for local businesses, not just traffic.
00:00 EU's Preliminary Findings on Google and Apple
08:51 Suspension Verification Algorithm Issues
16:08 AI Competition and Market Dynamics
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Buckle up for another Near Memo packed with search drama, AI experiments, and a high-speed Tesla takedown. Mike and Greg dive into Google’s ongoing Business Profile suspensions, unpack the latest AI-driven search changes, and speculate on whether Elon Musk has permanently tanked Tesla’s brand. Plus, a peek at Google’s antitrust battle and what losing Chrome could mean for search dominance.
00:00 The State of Google Business Profile Suspensions
09:39 Trump's DOJ to Force Google to Sell Chrome?
12:26 AI Mode and Local Search
24:59 Tesla's Brand Reputation Crisis
The State of Google Business Profile Suspensions: What’s Going On?
Google Business Profile suspensions are on the rise, and support is crawling at a snail’s pace. Mike breaks down why small businesses should not touch their listings right now (seriously, don’t even breathe on them). Is this a bug, a crackdown, or just Google losing control of its own algorithm?
Google’s Antitrust Battle: Will Chrome Be Sold Off?
The DOJ wants Google to offload Chrome as part of its latest antitrust smackdown. Google, of course, thinks that’s a terrible idea. But if the judge agrees, this could shake up search in a big way—especially since Chrome feeds Google a ton of juicy user data. The appeal process will be long, but this could be the biggest change to Google’s search empire in years.
AI Mode and Local Search: A Game Changer or a Mess?
AI-powered local search is officially here! Greg takes us on a tour of Google's experimental AI Mode, which is serving up completely different local results than the usual search listings. Businesses, buckle up—this could make optimizing for local search way more unpredictable. Is AI Mode the future, or is it just another search rabbit hole?
Tesla’s Reputation Crisis: Can the Brand Recover?
Tesla's reviews are tanking, and it’s not just because of Elon’s Twitter antics—customers are furious about service and quality issues. But now that Musk has also alienated half his customer base, things are getting worse. Will Tesla pull a Microsoft-style comeback, or is this the beginning of the end? Mike and Greg break it down.
Takeaways
There has been a dramatic increase in Google Business Profile suspensions since January.
Google's support is resource-constrained, leading to delays in addressing suspensions.
Businesses should avoid making changes to their Google profiles to prevent further complications.
The Department of Justice is pursuing antitrust actions against Google, which could lead to significant changes in the market.
AI mode in local search is showing different results compared to traditional search methods.
Tesla's brand reputation is suffering due to a combination of service issues and political controversies surrounding Elon Musk.
The correlation between Tesla's sales and declining ratings suggests a complex relationship between customer satisfaction and sales performance.
Google's algorithm changes may be causing unintended consequences for businesses.
The verification process for Google Business Profiles is often seen as irrational and overly rigid.
The future of Tesla's brand depends on addressing service issues and the public's perception of Elon Musk.
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00:00 Overview of Topics
01:07 Increase in Business Suspensions - Resinstatements very slow
06:27 Google's Search Query Insights - Is Google Cooking the Books?
21:03 Google's AI Mode as the Future of Search
We discuss the recent increase in suspensions and the delay of reinstatements on Google, the implications of Google's five trillion search queries, and the impact of AI on search. They explore the new AI mode being introduced by Google and how it is the shape the future of search experiences.
Takeaways
✓ There has been a significant increase in complaints about Google suspensions.
✓ Google's new one appeal and done process limits reinstatement attempts.
✓ The five trillion search queries reported by Google is a notable figure but hacked.
✓ User behavior is shifting away from Google towards alternative search options.
✓ AI mode represents a significant evolution in Google's search capabilities.
✓ Google is actively trying to retain users amidst growing competition from AI.
✓ Gemini, Google's AI, is still developing and improving rapidly but its still not as good as ChatGPT.
✓ The future of search will likely involve more complex user interactions.
✓ Google is experimenting with various user interface elements to enhance search.
✓ User engagement with AI tools is changing the way queries are formed. titles
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00:00 Introduction to Last Mile Retail
06:04 Evolution of the Business Model
11:35 Market Changes and Competition
17:03 Understanding Good Local SEO
23:03 Microsite Strategy and Implementation
29:47 The Role of AI in Marketing Strategies
37:30 Navigating Paid Campaigns and Google Optimization
45:55 Enhancing Customer Journey and Content Strategy
- Last Mile Retail started by addressing the challenge of local inventory visibility online.
- The company has evolved to serve enterprise clients with a comprehensive local marketing platform.
- AI is being used for content drafting and categorization, but human oversight remains crucial.
- User engagement is significantly improved with rich content and local inventory data.
- Local SEO is becoming increasingly important for businesses to remain competitive.
- Understanding customer journeys is essential for effective local marketing strategies.
- The integration of local inventory data can enhance visibility across multiple platforms.
- AI search platforms are emerging as valuable tools for local marketing.
- Businesses need to focus on unique, high-quality content rather than generic outputs.
- The future of local marketing will require adaptability to new technologies and consumer behaviors.
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The Near Media team + several Google Product Experts and Brad Wetherall discuss various aspects of Google Business Profiles, including internal mobility at Google, the challenges of maintaining institutional knowledge, and the complexities of review management. They delve into the recent discrepancies in review counts, the importance of communication from Google, and the impact of trust scores on local guides. The discussion also covers creative strategies for enhancing review authenticity, the challenges of video verification, and the implications of operating hours on business rankings. Additionally, they explore the quality of support across different regions and the potential for paid support options, as well as the influence of AI on local listings.
00:00 Introduction to Brad Wetherall and His Background
04:04 Google Personnel Policies Leading to a Loss of Google Local Institutional Knowledge
17:57 Communication Challenges During Review Issues
23:41 Trust Scores and Local Guides' Impact on Reviews
28:46 Identifying and Reporting Spam Listings
32:58 Engagement and Business Verification Challenges
36:44 Improving Video Verification Processes
41:17 Handling Duplicate Listings
44:07 Managing Business Hours Effectively
47:30 Differences in Support Quality between Countries
48:59 Exploring Paid GBP Support Options
53:27 Understanding Google’s Data Sources
56:34 The Impact of AI on Local Listings
57:19 Trust Score and User Management
takeaways
- Google encourages internal mobility to retain talent which might cause a loss of Local institutional knowledge.
- Documentation is extensive but not always utilized effectively.
- Algorithm adjustments can lead to review discrepancies.
- Proactive communication from Google is often lacking.
- Trust scores influence the acceptance of edits.
- Creative strategies can enhance review authenticity.
- Multiple signals are considered when identifying spam listings.
- Engagement signals impact visibility in search results.
- Maintaining a corporate email domain is beneficial for trust.
- AI-generated content is monitored and regulated by Google.
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Greg and Mike discuss various topics related to Google's recent changes and features, including issues with review counts on Google Business Profiles, the introduction of the Ask for Me automated calling feature, and the implications for small businesses. They also explore the new Gemini reasoning model and its potential impact on local search and consumer behavior. The conversation highlights the challenges and opportunities presented by these developments in the context of small business operations and marketing strategies.
00:55 Review Count Issues and Google's Response
06:29 Exploring Google's 'Ask For Me' Feature
18:20 Concerns About Small Businesses and AI Interactions
22:20 Gemini's New Reasoning Model for iPhone is the Future of Local Search
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In this episode, Greg and Mike discuss the 20th anniversary of Google Maps, highlighting its evolution and new features. They delve into the newest Map Top Lists feature, the implications of recent messaging features for businesses and the ongoing decline in consumer trust in online reviews. The conversation also introduces Google's new 'Ask for Me' AI feature, exploring its potential impact on local businesses and consumer interactions.
Takeaways
- Google Maps revolutionized navigation with its interactive features.
- The new restaurant Map List feature in Google Maps enhances visibility for businesses.
- Brand queries are crucial for businesses to appear prominently in Google Maps.
- Consumer trust in online reviews is declining significantly.
- People are increasingly relying on star ratings over review text.
- Google's new messaging features require businesses to respond quickly to inquiries.
- The 'Ask for Me' feature aims to streamline appointment bookings for consumers.
- Businesses need to build relationships with local media for better visibility.
- Trust in online reviews is now lower than personal recommendations.
- Google's rollout of new features should raise skepticism among local businesses.
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In 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 Company
00:23 Future of Review Integrity
08:40 Strategies for Businesses and Marketers
17:55 Optimism Amidst Challenges
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In 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 Company
01:48 Understanding Review Fraud: Types and Metrics
04:42 The Landscape of Fake Reviews: Business Practices and Impacts
09:11 The Role of AI in Review Fraud
18:27 Economic Impact of Review Fraud: Insights from the Report
25:32 The Challenge of Review Fraud
32:08 Learn about Part 2 of the interview
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In this episode, Greg and Mike welcome Brad Wetherall, former Director of Operations for Google Business Profile and now CEO of Bitwise Consulting. They discuss the challenges of fake reviews, Google's approach to detecting and managing them, and best practices for businesses to enhance their online reputation. Brad shares insights on the importance of engagement, the role of AI in review management, and the need for businesses to understand Google's policies regarding reviews. The conversation wraps up with Brad's advice for agencies and local marketers on navigating the complexities of online reviews and maintaining a positive digital presence.
Takeaways
00:00 Final Thoughts on Reviews and Trust Scores
06:45 Understanding Review Deletion and Algorithm Scrutiny
08:54 The Role of Review Responses in Business Rankings
11:44 Engagement and Its Impact on Reviews
14:32 AI's Influence on Review Management
17:07 Challenges for New Businesses in Review Acquisition
20:15 Best Practices for Managing Reviews
23:51 Google's Support Culture and Business Impact
26:28 The Future of AI and Local Business Visibility
googlebusinessprofile #fakereviews #reviewmanagement #localseo #reviewfraud #AIinreviews #reviewalgorithms #digitalmarketing
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Ever wonder how GBP twists the dial to approve an edit? Why they use video verification and what a trust score is? In Part 1 of this interview we learn the answers to those many questions and more.
00:15 Introduction to Brad Wetherall and His Journey
02:53 Transitioning from Google to Bitwise Consulting
05:34 Understanding Google Business Profile Support Structure
08:03d Support Strategies and User Journeys
11:08 The Evolution of Support Systems at Google
13:36 Challenges in Support: Suspensions and Verifications
16:45 The Algorithm Behind Suspensions and Reviews
19:29 Trust and Reporting Mechanisms in Google Business Profile
22:23 Review Fraud: Detection and Challenges
25:01 The Balance Between Fraud Detection and User Experience
27:46 Video Verification and Its Implications
30:41 Final Thoughts on Reviews and Trust Scores
Ep 189
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**Google Leaks & NavBoost: How Engagement & Brands Shape Local SEO Rankings in 2024:
Mike unpacked revelations from Google's algorithm leaks and their likely importance for Local SEO. We dove into "NavBoost," a technique where Google rewards high engagement and brand signals with better rankings. Think clicks, brand searches, and even driving directions contributing to a business's prominence.**
**Greg and David noted how brands dominate the search game. We broke down why engagement—real photos, reviews, and strong brand presence—creates a feedback loop that propels rankings. This led us to the age-old debate: does SEO success mean going beyond Google? Our consensus leaned toward balancing on-platform optimization with off-platform brand-building.
ChatGPT: A Game-Changer in Google's AI Playground:
We dove into the competitive shake-up in search, sparked by ChatGPT's rise since late 2022. This dynamic newcomer has lit a fire under Google, which has enjoyed dominance for decades. While ChatGPT hasn’t toppled Google’s traffic, its user base is reshaping behaviors, with 19% reportedly favoring ChatGPT over Google when forced to choose.**
Competition from ChatGPT has catalyzed innovation at Google, pushing AI tools like Gemini into the spotlight. Discussions about AI in search touched on knowledge graphs, generative AI, and how platforms like Apple are slowly carving their niches.
**One standout point? ChatGPT's integration into daily life for tasks like local searches and knowledge-based queries is altering habits, making Google more of a secondary option for some. We see these shifts leading to a long-term evolution in how people search—no seismic shifts yet, but wedges are forming in Google's monopoly. As AI-driven tools improve, we’re likely witnessing the beginning of a multi-player field in search and beyond.
DMA and the Search Transformation of 2024:
We unpacked how 2024 is shaping up as a pivotal year for search, driven by regulatory crackdowns and competitive pressures. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is taking center stage, with investigations into Google’s practices for flights, hotels, and shopping. We noted Google’s “malicious compliance” tactics—like reverting to ten blue links—to generate user dissatisfaction and push back against regulators.**
Amid the antitrust buzz, we reflected on the potential fragmentation of search. ChatGPT and similar AI tools are gaining traction, compelling Google to innovate under pressure. We agreed this regulatory momentum, alongside AI advancements, might dramatically reshape how we search and retrieve information in the coming years.
**With the possibility of stricter regulations in the U.S. on the horizon, the monopoly grip on search seems less certain. Looking ahead, we’re optimistic about the dynamic changes brewing in the industry—there’s never been a more exciting time to explore search innovation.
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.**
Ep 188
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Stephanie Verilhac of Siinda discusses the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) and its impact on search behavior. Siinda's research with Near Media showed Google's dominance persists despite compliance changes, with users favoring its ecosystem. Regional differences in search trends were highlighted, including Irish “near me” preferences, French brand loyalty, and Germans' ad clicks. Photos, reviews, and business websites play key roles in user decisions. Verilhac noted Google's partial adherence to the DMA and challenges for smaller businesses in competing with large aggregators. Future DMA updates and expanded research are expected.
In Episode 187 we interview guest Stephanie Verilhac of Siinda. Siinda is an industry association that brings together agencies and technology companies in the local search and “on demand” industry sectors. We explored the application of the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) and its effects on search behavior. Stephanie highlighted Siinda's role in supporting digital businesses across Europe and its interest in user responses to Google’s compliance measures.
We focused on joint Siinda/Near Media consumer behavior research, examining Google search results in Ireland, France, and Germany for kitchen remodeling services. While Google implemented changes to align with the DMA's anti-self-preferencing rules, the study revealed that user engagement overwhelmingly favored Google's own ecosystem, including its Local Pack and Maps. The newly introduced "Places Sites" module showed limited visibility and minimal clicks compared to Google's properties.
Stephanie emphasized notable regional differences: Irish users prioritized "near me" searches, French users leaned on brand recognition, and Germans showed a higher propensity to click ads. Cultural diversity across the EU proved significant in shaping search behavior. Photos and reviews emerged as key factors influencing decisions, with users frequently clicking through to business websites for final evaluations.
The conversation also touched on DMA compliance challenges, with Stephanie noting Google's approach often skirts full adherence. While ads are open to all businesses in theory, financial realities favor large aggregators over smaller players.
As the European Commission continues enforcing the DMA under its newly appointed leadership, Stephanie predicted more scrutiny on gatekeepers and potential updates in 2025. Siinda offers resources on their website, cinda.org, and plans to expand research to additional markets.
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.
EP 187 Near Memo
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**AI and Maps: Current Limitations (many) and Future Prospects (good):
We explore a recent piece by cartographer Kames Killick on how AI will be shaping the geospatial landscape & mapping, despite the mixed results today. Current tools struggle with complex queries, such as mapping open businesses along a route and broader queries that AI should be able to handle. Despite limitations, innovations like geo-trained AI and object classification suggest potential for enhanced location-based services, professional applications, and augmented reality. Emerging technologies may soon enable smoother interaction with geospatial tools and real-time location insights.
Search vs. AI: Consumer Behavior and the Future of Discovery:
Insights from a consumer survey shed light on the evolving role of AI in search. While 77% of users find Google easier than three years ago, many are exploring alternatives like ChatGPT for direct answers and conversational capabilities. Trust in AI is growing, with 67% believing it will redefine search within three years. The shift signals a fragmented search ecosystem, where convenience and reliability will shape user behavior.**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.
Ep 186
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**Extended GBP Business Names - Spam or Legitimate Descriptors?
We explore Google's growing tolerance for extended taglines & descriptors in business names via the Google Business Center and its impact on local SEO strategies. Examples include businesses embedding descriptors like “best plastic surgeon” or “sexual harassment lawyer” into their names that were escalated to Google but were deemed acceptable. These additions act as taglines and significantly boost search visibility by leveraging Google’s algorithm, which treats business names as ranking signals. This shift marks a departure from earlier strict rules, offering businesses a competitive edge when such names are left unchallenged.**
**Google’s willingness to accept these extended descriptors, even after they are flagged, suggests a prioritization of scalability over strict enforcement. While businesses may benefit from increased visibility, they must balance this tactic with potential risks, such as temporary suspension or muddling brand identity. The conversation calls for structured testing to understand the limits of Google's tolerance and how businesses can effectively navigate these relaxed guidelines without overstepping.
Rand Fishkin Research: Branded Queries Dominate Google: Insights from 300 Million Searches
Rand Fishin’s analysis of over 300 million Google queries reveals surprising insights into search behavior. A striking 15% of all queries consist of just 150 terms, primarily branded or navigational, underscoring the dominance of well-known names in search behavior. Informational queries represent 53% of the total, while commercial and transactional searches trail significantly, with less than 1% being purely transactional. This data suggests a need for businesses to emphasize brand building to thrive in Google’s search ecosystem.**
**The findings underscore the challenge of zero-click searches, where Google resolves queries directly, leaving businesses without traffic. The recommendation? Shift focus from SEO competition to brand building via alternative channels to drive direct searches. Ads, for example, can complement this strategy by enhancing brand awareness, leading to stronger organic performance and bypassing Google’s increasingly saturated search landscape.
AI vs. Google: The Rise of ChatGPT as a Search Alternative
We discuss AI’s potential as an alternative to search engines, with tools like ChatGPT emerging as viable competitors. A survey reveals that while 77% of frequent search users find Google easier to use than three years ago, AI tools are gaining traction, with ChatGPT ranked second in perceived usefulness. This shift reflects growing consumer trust in AI for specific tasks, such as shopping comparisons, where platforms like Perplexity accelerate decision-making.**
Despite Google’s dominance, dissatisfaction with its cluttered and spam-prone results is evident. Businesses face a dual challenge: leveraging Google for recovery searches while addressing consumers’ complex decision-making needs. AI's rise presents an opportunity for businesses to adapt, using diverse platforms to maintain relevance amid evolving consumer habits.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.
Ep 185
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**Google Business Profile Suspension Woes (01:32–11:03)
The discussion highlights rising frustrations with Google Business Profiles, focusing on increasing suspension rates and difficult reinstatement processes. Businesses face bottlenecks with video verification and unclear policies. Legitimate operations often fall victim, showcasing systemic flaws in Google's automated support and limited pathways for resolution.
Siri’s AI Search Evolution (11:03–20:35)
Siri’s transformation with AI and knowledge graphs marks a major leap in user interaction. Enhanced capabilities include text input, contextual responses, and real-time actions like map queries. Apple’s integration of personalized data in areas like news, sports, and local searches aims to deliver efficient and reliable information, rivaling traditional search engines.
The Slow Fragmentation of Search (20:35–End)
The analysis underscored search fragmentation, with Siri, ChatGPT, and social media peeling away queries from Google. Informational searches dominate, while platforms like TikTok and Instagram gain traction among younger users. Local traffic from tools like Apple Maps reveals unmeasured impact, signaling a shift toward more diverse, integrated search ecosystems over the next 2 to 4 years.**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.
Ep 184
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**AI Overview and Google Search Trends:
In a discussion on AI search trends, Mark Traphagen from SEO Clarity shared insights on Google’s search generative experience (SGE) and its limited functionality in delivering localized results. His analysis highlighted that SGE results in the U.S. tend to be highly informational (91%) and less transactional, especially for keywords related to products. According to Mark, Google’s AI-driven search lacks the capacity to enhance local search results, pointing out that traditional SERP results still perform better. Meanwhile, Google’s AI continues to evolve, with recent tweaks aiming to improve ranking relevance in AI responses.
ChatGPT Search Growth and Future Projections:
Mark noted a recent 10x rise in referrals from ChatGPT, suggesting growing adoption of OpenAI’s real-time web search capabilities. He indicated that this growth corresponds with ChatGPT’s recent integration of SearchGPT and its compatibility with Apple iOS, predicting further rises. While alternatives like perplexity show gradual increases, OpenAI maintains a stronghold, steadily reclaiming market share. For SEO professionals, Mark advises monitoring these shifts and tracking SearchGPT, Bing's Gen.AI, and other emerging platforms as they shape traffic trends.
Google SERP’s Dilemma and E-commerce Impact:
Mark discussed Google’s strategic challenges, balancing ad-driven revenue with user satisfaction in AI integration. He highlighted that Google’s “Popular Products” feature increasingly dominates SERP top spots, pushing organic listings down, especially on mobile. This shift affects e-commerce traffic significantly, as traditional organic ranking struggles against the prominent Google product listings. Mark encourages SEO strategies that embrace Google’s product features for better reach. Despite the influx of new platforms, he reassures clients that established SEO practices remain essential in the evolving landscape.**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.
Ep 183
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**Google's Antitrust Battle: Legal and Political Shifts: As Google’s antitrust trial unfolds, recent shifts in U.S. leadership may change the tech giant’s outlook. With Trump’s election win, the likelihood of drastic regulatory action against Google, such as a breakup, appears to be reduced. The new administration’s stance on big tech could soften the Justice Department’s approach, shifting from aggressive oversight to a more business-friendly posture. While there’s bipartisan support for reigning in big tech, motivations differ: Republicans often cite censorship concerns, while Democrats focus on monopolistic practices. Given these dynamics, Google may emerge with only minor restrictions—like changes to default search agreements—rather than a forced split. Despite some regulatory adjustments, the tech landscape now looks less likely to see major disruptions, leaving room for Google to maintain its market dominance.
Apple's Applied Intelligence Transformation: Siri's Leap to Intelligent Search:
We take a look at the iOS 18.1 Siri Beta. Apple’s Siri is evolving into a powerful AI assistant, moving beyond simple voice commands to provide advanced, text-based search capabilities and an app-like experience. With new features allowing Siri to pull information directly from trusted sources, users can get sports scores, local recommendations, and entertainment options seamlessly without going to the web. Apple’s focus on data privacy and ad-free interaction offers a distinct alternative to Google’s ad-driven models, emphasizing a cleaner, user-centered experience. Apple’s work on voice isolation is also enhancing Siri’s effectiveness, allowing smoother interactions even in noisy environments. Because of the many iPhones in the wild, Siri’s expanded abilities across the Apple ecosystem could lead to a shift in user habits, positioning Apple IntelligenceI as a viable alternative to traditional search.
ChatGPT Redefining Search:
The new SearchGPT feature might just redefine search by offering a conversational interface that maintains context across multiple queries. This functionality could make ChatGPT a compelling alternative to Google, especially in local search, where its ability to remember and refine previous queries sets it apart. ChatGPT’s clean interface and ability to deliver quick, relevant answers directly within the chat could attract users interested in exploring new search options. As Apple prepares to integrate ChatGPT into Siri, this AI-driven trend may drive additional “zero-click” behaviors—where users get instant answers without leaving the app. Search GPT also shows promise in e-commerce and product searches, delivering a streamlined experience that could change how users interact in this space and transform how consumers search.**
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.
Ep 182
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**AI in Local SEO: Challenges and Opportunities:
We dive into how AI is reshaping local search. Key insights from Andrew Shotland’s analysis reveal that Google’s AI overviews appear inconsistently in local searches, mainly showing up for broader queries, while lower funnel searches rely on the local pack. New platforms like Perplexity, with licensing from Yelp, seem to offer promising results for complex local queries, potentially challenging Google’s dominance in local search.
Apple Siri Finally Gets Local Search:
Mike showcases Apple’s upgraded Siri new features in iOS 18.1 that demonstrate a largely hidden but significant leap in local search capabilities. By allowing for text input and recognizing contextual cues, Siri can now provide tailored local results from any screen. Apple is taking a calculated approach to search and AI, suggesting it could take one of several directions. Long haul they appear to be banking on AI based search becoming a dominant model. They appear to be gradually developing a more functional search alternative. For it to be successful Apple needs the new SIRI to be successful and to increase its visibility. Apple, though recognizes that the change to new search modalities might take three to four and they are apparently leaving themselves open for appropriate partnerships if they lose Google’s ~$20 billion search payment.
ChatGPT's Growing User Base and Implications for Google:
ChatGPT's is experiencing escalating popularity as a search tool, with survey data indicating that nearly half of respondents use it weekly. This rising trend hints at a shifting search landscape, though Google’s latest earnings suggest minimal immediate impact. Google’s has made strategic AI cost reductions and is investing heavily in expanding capabilities, reflecting its response to AI-driven competitors like ChatGPT**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.
Ep 181
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Introduction and Background (00:01 - 10:30)
The conversation opens with Greg Sterling introducing Raj Singh, the founder of Soloist.ai, an AI-powered website builder targeted at small businesses and freelancers. Raj shares his background as a serial entrepreneur, highlighting his previous ventures, such as Pulse, acquired by Mozilla, and his journey through the tech landscape from file-sharing companies to AI-driven website creation. This segment sets the stage by exploring Raj’s entrepreneurial journey and interest in simplifying website creation for non-technical users.
Soloist.ai’s Purpose and Unique Features (10:30 - 39:00)
Raj delves into the features and goals of Soloist.ai. Unlike other website builders, Soloist.ai focuses on simplicity, eliminating design paralysis by limiting customization options and streamlining the site creation process. The platform is tailored for solopreneurs and small businesses needing a fast, functional web presence. Raj discusses Mozilla’s support and Soloist’s AI capabilities, enabling users to build single-page sites quickly. The conversation also touches on Mozilla’s broader mission to avoid dark patterns and keep the product free from hidden fees, making it accessible to freelancers and small businesses.
Future Directions and Local Marketing Challenges (39:00 - 59:39)
As the conversation wraps up, the discussion shifts to the future of Soloist.ai and the challenges of digital marketing for local businesses. Raj explains plans for monetization through Mozilla’s ad network and potentially integrating tools like invoicing and CRM into the platform. The team addresses concerns about fraud, site security, and SEO strategies, with Raj considering features for long-term growth while maintaining simplicity. Emphasis is placed on the importance of local SEO and building trusted partnerships, ensuring Soloist’s continued utility for small businesses seeking to establish an online presence.This structure highlights key discussion areas, showcasing the potential and challenges faced by Soloist.ai in its goal to support small businesses in a crowded website-building market.
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.
Ep 180
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**Apple Expands Business Connect Beyond Brick-and-Mortar:
It was announced that Apple Business Connect will now include a broader range of businesses, such as e-commerce, work-from-home, and service-area businesses. Businesses will still undergo the Apple verification process but will benefit from a consistent brand presence across apps like Mail, Apple Pay and ultimately Messages. While non-brick-and-mortar businesses won't appear on Apple Maps, their verified logos will be visible in key Apple services like Siri and Spotlights, enhancing brand trust within the Apple ecosystem. This move strengthens Apple's position as a trusted platform for businesses and customers alike, despite some limitations for smaller agencies and vendors.
BrightLocal Study: Which Directories Matter?
A recent study by Bright Local revealed that while platforms like Yelp maintain a significant presence in Google search results, the majority of high-ranking directories are vertical-specific, varying by industry. Key directories such as ZocDoc for healthcare and TripAdvisor for hospitality were identified as essential for consumer engagement. The study emphasized the importance for businesses to focus on directories that are relevant to their specific verticals, rather than relying on broader platforms.
SEMrush Acquires Search Engine Land & Third Door Media:
The acquisition of Third Door Media, parent company of Search Engine Land and Martech World, by SEMrush was announced this week. The move has sparked concerns about the potential loss of independent industry voices, with fears that SEMrush may shift focus toward promotional content. However, some view the acquisition as a strategic decision, allowing SEMrush to capitalize on the domain authority of these platforms. It is expected that the move will enhance SEMrush’s reach, particularly among beginner and intermediate SEO users, while maintaining a balance between transactional and informational content.**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.
Ep 179
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**Google Tests AI-organized Carousels in Local Search Results for Restaurants & Bars:
Recent test search results for local businesses on Google, particularly restaurants and bars, have been dominated by AI-organized carousels. Searches like “best cocktail bar” now return multiple carousels sequentially down the page, with categories such as rooftop bars, artisanal cocktail bars, and budget-friendly options. These results feature large visuals, ratings, and addresses, allowing users to scroll through various options to view and choose from local listings. Interestingly, the number of carousels varies depending on the location—New York City displayed more than 12, while smaller cities like Rochester and Buffalo showed fewer or none at all, with traditional results like Yelp or Reddit appearing so far down in the search results below the carousels that they are largely invisibile.
Facebook Tests New Local Tab, Aggregating Content from Reels, Marketplace, and Events:
A new local tab by Facebook has been introduced in several U.S. cities, aggregating content from Reels, Marketplace, and local events. This move consolidates previously dispersed local content, aiming to create a more streamlined and engaging user experience. Cities like Austin, New York, and Los Angeles were selected for the initial rollout. While no new content is being created, Facebook is leveraging its existing local data. The strategy is expected to enhance engagement by making local information easier to find, though questions remain about how successful this product will be in the long run.
Google Experiences Significant Decline in Customer Loyalty Rankings Over Past Two Years:
Google experienced the largest decline in customer loyalty among top 100 brands, dropping from 9th place in 2022 to 25th in 2023, according to a list compiled by Brand Keys. The annual report assesses nearly 1,500 brands across 140 industries using consumer feedback. While Google's decline was noted, YouTube rose from 21st to 6th place over the same period. Additionally, ChatGPT entered the list at 49th in 2023 and advanced to 40th in 2024. The rankings, based on customer feedback and loyalty metrics, suggest shifting consumer sentiment despite Google's continued market dominance.**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.
Ep 178
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**Google's Place Sites: A Compliance Gesture or A True Shift in Search?
Google is rolling out a new feature called "Place Sites" in North America, following its initial launch in Europe as part of compliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The feature presents a carousel of aggregator search results, such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, prominently placed in top positions for local queries like restaurants. The idea is to redirect traffic to competitors to address accusations of Google self-preferencing. However, our testing shows that user engagement has been very, very low, with people rarely interacting with the carousel despite its visibility.**
**This could be a preemptive move by Google to fend off similar regulatory pressures in North America, where laws against self-preferencing are still in discussion. Or it might be part of a larger strategy to boost Google’s new AI-organized search results that keep users within Google’s ecosystem. By offering the AI-refined, visually driven search results, Google could be aiming to increase search volume and maintain its dominance in the market. That all being said, the Places Sites feature is seen more as a compliance gesture than a game-changer for user experience.
Allure Aesthetics' Review Fraud Highlights Google's Inaction & Continuing Consumer Harm
Allure Aesthetics, a plastic surgery clinic in Seattle, has been caught in a major review fraud scandal. After being convicted in 2024 for illegal review practices—such as forcing patients to sign NDAs to prevent negative reviews and having employees post fake ones—Allure was fined $5 million. Despite this, Google has taken little action to remove the fraudulent reviews from its platform. As of now, the clinic still ranks highly in search results with an impressive 4.8 rating based on over 900 reviews, many of which were accumulated during the period of fraudulent activity.**
**Despite plenty of media coverage and efforts to report the fraud, Google has not removed the questionable reviews or penalized the clinic in its local search results. The scandal underscores a larger issue: Google’s inconsistent approach to handling cases of review fraud, even when businesses have been legally penalized.
FTC Targets AI Tool Rytr for Enabling Fake Review Generation
The FTC has taken action against Rytr, an AI-powered writing tool, accusing it of facilitating the creation of thousands of fake reviews. With a simple interface that allows users to generate human-sounding testimonials at scale, the tool has enabled some subscribers to produce over 10,000 reviews each. The FTC's complaint argues that the tool’s only practical use is to produce deceptive reviews, leading to an enforcement action that requires the company to shut down its review-generating functionality and undergo 20 years of monitoring.**
The case has sparked debate, with some FTC members arguing that the action is based on hypothetical harm, while others emphasize the risk of AI tools being misused for fraud. The FTC's move raises questions about the broader role of AI in generating content and its potential to facilitate large-scale review abuse, with concerns growing over how much consumers can trust online reviews in the face of increasing fraud.
AI Notes: These summaries were written by ChatGPT from transcripts of the recording. They were checked for accuracy and rewritten for tone. But if you disagree with the results, take it up with Open AI.
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.
Ep 177
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How Individual Hotels Can Win in EU Search:
Our research on hotel searches in Europe, revealed that Booking.com dominated user clicks, especially through ads, while Google's Hotel Finder and Business Profiles saw significantly fewer interactions. One surprising discovery was the prominent role of ads, with over 50% of mobile clicks going to ads, particularly Booking.com.
**We explore how Google’s algorithm and ad strategies favor aggregators like Booking, rather than individual hotel brands, who do however have an ad opportunity with the new(ish) carousel ad and the Google Business Profiles for visibility. While Booking.com often dominates ad spots, the landing pages sometimes confuse users by showing lists of hotels instead of the specific property clicked from within the Google Hotel Finder.
Google Updated Spam Guidelines: Helpful or FUD?
We discuss Google’s recently updated spam guidelines for web search. The new policy defines spam as content designed to deceive users OR manipulate Google’s search systems for higher rankings. While the term “deceive users” is clear, the use of “manipulate,” could be interpreted broadly to include legitimate SEO practices aimed at improving visibility.**
**How should businesses and agencies react when dealing with Google spam guidance? Google has a history of FUD. Both groups should be aware of the risks of pushing the limits of SEO. If you're focused on providing real value to users, the risk of penalties remains low, but it’s critical to stay aware of evolving rules.
When & What are we likely to see in the Yelp antitrust case against Google?
The Yelp case accusing Google of unfair business practices, specifically using its dominance in local search to disadvantage competitors like Yelp could provide plenty of insights which may uncover data related to Google’s local search algorithms.**
Yelp argues that Google’s local search and local ads operate as separate markets, using a unique algorithm and data set. However, like the Epic Games case against Google, it could take as long as three years for the case to actually go to trial and several more years to explore penalties and file appeals.
That being this case could impact future legislation, especially in light of the EU’s Digital Markets Act and its approach to regulating tech giants like Google.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.
Ep 176
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Google Testing Review Badge of Shame & More in UK for Review Abuses:
Google has rolled out a new review “badge of shame” and a new help document titled "Business Profile Restrictions for Policy Violations," introducing stricter actions for businesses engaging in deceptive review practices. Currently being tested in the UK, the policy includes a tiered system of penalties, such as preventing new reviews, unpublishing existing ones, and displaying a "badge of shame" for businesses caught with fraudulent reviews. This marks a shift in Google’s approach, as they historically removed fake reviews without directly accusing businesses of wrongdoing.
**The penalties, though designed to improve review integrity, raise concerns about fairness, particularly for businesses that may be falsely flagged. Google has implemented an appeals process, offering business owners a chance to contest these restrictions. However, with previous experiences showing delays in review processes, some wonder how effective the system will be. This effort aligns with broader global regulatory pressures, such as the UK's push against fake reviews and potential influences from European legislation like the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Google’s Antitrust Travails: What’s at Stake in the Latest Legal Battle?
Google is currently facing its second antitrust trial, focusing on its ad-tech dominance. The trial, now in its second week, follows an earlier case where Google was found to be an illegal monopoly in search and text ads. This new case explores the workings of Google's ad exchange and network, with internal documents revealing questionable practices like taking premium cuts from advertisers. Central to the case is how the market is defined—if Google can argue for a broad market with competitors like Amazon and Facebook, it could escape further liability. However, if the market is viewed more narrowly, Google may face more significant consequences, including potential divestitures of its ad business.**
**Beyond legal outcomes, this case, coupled with Google’s aggressive internal strategies, is tarnishing the company’s public image. Wall Street has already priced in potential legal losses, showing expectations of a major financial impact from a loss. Additionally, these trials may open the door to more lawsuits, including cases like Yelp's, which could bring greater visibility into Google's local search dominance.
Digital Agencies Highlight Disconnect in Local Marketing Priorities:
In a recent survey of nearly 300 digital agencies, a mismatch emerged between the services offered and what agencies perceive as client demand. Agencies commonly offer web design, social media marketing, and SEO, but client demand also includes email marketing and brand marketing—services not prioritized by many agencies. This gap raises questions about how well agencies understand their clients' evolving needs, particularly in small business marketing.
Small businesses also show a surprising lack of attention to crucial tools like Google Business Profiles (GBP) and review management. Despite the importance of local search and reputation management, only a quarter of businesses actively manage their profiles, a disconnect made more mysterious given that business owners frequently use Google for their own research. The data suggests a broader education gap around how these digital tools influence visibility and growth, with many small businesses over-relying on social media while underestimating the value of search and reputation management.
The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, a**
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**Google and Booking: The Symbiotic Gatekeeper Relationship in European Hotel Search -
We dive into our recent user behavior research findings about hotel searches in Europe. We recruited 100 users each from Spain, France, and Germany, asking them to find hotels in Paris or Rome, and observed how they interacted with Google's search results.
The European hotel market is quite distinct, with behavior in hotel searches differing drastically from other verticals, as well as across countries. This, coupled with Google’s persistent self-preferencing, poses challenges for fair competition.**
**EU Court Upholds €2.5 Billion Fine Against Google: Antitrust Ruling Could Shape Future Regulations:
In a landmark decision, the European Court of Justice upheld a €2.5 billion fine against Google for antitrust violations in its Shopping Search case. This ruling marks a significant win for regulators, setting the stage for broader action against Google's self-preferenc*ing practices across multiple sectors.*
The case, which dates back over a decade, focused on Google's practice of promoting its own shopping services at the expense of competitors. Despite Google's appeal, the court sided with regulators, reinforcing the original decision. While the fine represents a small fraction of Google’s revenue, the ruling sends a strong message about the EU's determination to hold tech giants accountable.
The key takeaway? The court highlighted that Google's use of "boxes" in search results, which showcase its own services prominently, was a major factor in the decision. This could have serious implications for other verticals like local and hotel search, where similar self-preferencing behavior is prevalent.
Moreover, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) gives the EU further tools to regulate Google’s behavior across sectors. Fines under the DMA could reach up to 20% of global revenue for repeat violations, raising the stakes significantly.
**With this ruling in place, it’s clear that European regulators are prepared to push harder on Google’s dominance, not just in shopping but across the entire search ecosystem.
Leveling the Playing Field: Remedies for Google’s Self-Preferencing Practices**
In the ongoing conversation about Google's self-preferencing, the focus turned to potential remedies in light of mounting regulatory pressure. We discussed various solutions that could address the issues raised by Google’s dominance, particularly in light of the European Court of Justice ruling.
**Ultimately, the team concluded that Google's self-preferencing creates an unfair advantage for itself and other monopolistic platforms. Remedies should focus on leveling the playing field, encouraging competition, and limiting Google’s ability to monetize every user interaction. As regulation heats up, Google’s dominance across industries—especially in search—faces significant challenges in the coming years.
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.
Ep 174 Near Memo**
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Google Review Fraud Landscape (10:04):
- Estimates that 18% of reviews across various platforms are fake.
- Home service industries, such as locksmiths, moving companies, and HVAC, are heavily affected.
- Legal sector is also impacted, with fake reviews prevalent among personal injury, criminal defense, and DUI lawyers.
LSA Review Fraud (21:25):
- Lead generation scammers are stealing business from ethical businesses using fake LSA reviews.
- They overcharge consumers and use higher ad revenue to improve their bidding strategy within LSA dashboards.
- Google's LSA program is designed to give consumers confidence in businesses by elevating them above spam and fraud, but it has not been successful.
Practical Advice for Business Owners to Cope With Fake Reviews (40:50):
- Gather evidence of fraudulent activity, such as fake reviews or stolen business licenses, to build a strong case.
- Report fake reviews to Google through the proper channels, but be aware that Google's response may be slow or ineffective.
- Consider legal action against fraudulent businesses, as it may be a violation of racketeering laws in certain jurisdictions.
- 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.
Ep 173 - vault ep 139
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**LSA Increasingly relying on GBP Features:
We delve into Google's ongoing “fixes” of LSA features, where reviews and booking tools for LSAs are being integrated from GBP. This move is seen as an attempt to streamline operations and reduce costs, especially in light of Google's recent staffing cuts as well as improve LSA’s ineffective review moderation. While operational efficiency might improve, Google’s tolerance of abuses in GBP means that the risk of review fraud in LSAs will persist.
Google Maps Gets a Makeover: Sleeker Design, but More Ads?
Google's latest aesthetic changes to Google Maps, which have rolled out across both mobile and desktop platforms, includes subtler colors and smaller, rounder pins that make the interface resemble Apple Maps. While the changes make the map less cluttered, they also seem to highlight ads and promotional content more prominently. This shift has led to concerns that Google is prioritizing monetization over user experience, as irrelevant ads are now more noticeable on the map.
Yelp Takes on Google: Antitrust Showdown Over Local Search Dominance
Yelp's recent antitrust lawsuit against Google, filed in federal court in Northern California, accuses Google of abusing its market position in local search, echoing similar claims made in the recent DC Circuit case where Google was found liable for antitrust violations. Yelp argues that local search is a unique market, separate from general search, and claims Google unfairly pushed its own products, like the "local pack," at the expense of competitors like Yelp. The lawsuit highlights how Google's dominance in local search reviews and advertising has stifled competition, a move Yelp sees as detrimental to the broader local ecosystem.**
The discussion also touches on the broader implications of this lawsuit for Google, which is already entangled in multiple antitrust battles globally and Yelp's timing might be strategic, capitalizing on the recent legal momentum against Google. With the case potentially setting a precedent in defining local search as a distinct market, the outcome could have significant repercussions not only in the U.S. but also in Europe, where Google has argued against treating local search separately.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.
NearMemo Ep 172
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Google's PR Smoke and Mirrors: Old GBP Phone Hacking Problems Persist Despite Promises:Spammers and scammers have been able to hijack business phone numbers on Google listings with alarming ease, despite Google's assurances that such problems were swiftly resolved. We conducted an experiment, changing a listing's phone number through a fake business listing. The results were shocking—within minutes, the suggested phone number change was accepted, largely due to the high trust Google places in frequent editors, even those located halfway across the world.
**This raises serious concerns about Google's handling of user-generated edits, especially when considering real-world implications, like the previous hijacking of major airlines' contact numbers. Despite Google's claims of quick fixes, the reality shows a continued vulnerability, with significant consequences for businesses globally.
Cracks Down on Fake Reviews with New Readily Enforceable Rules:
In a significant move, the FTC has officially banned fake reviews and testimonials with a new rule that allows for fines up to $50,000 per instance of abuse. This rule, unlike previous guidelines, has the force of law, giving the FTC more teeth in combating fraudulent online practices. The rule targets a range of deceptive behaviors, including AI-generated reviews, purchased reviews, and insider testimonials.**
Despite the tough stance, enforcement is expected to be limited, focusing on the most egregious offenders. Smaller players and offshore review farms might continue to operate with little fear of repercussions. The new rule marks progress, but without stronger regulations on platforms themselves, the battle against fake reviews is far from won.
**Segment 3 Title: SearchGPT & the Future of Search:
SearchGPT, still in its early stages, has shown promise in handling informational queries but lags behind Google in delivering robust local search results. Meanwhile, Apple’s strategic moves, such as making Apple Maps available on the web, signal its growing ambition to challenge Google’s dominance, possibly partnering with OpenAI to integrate local data into SearchGPT.**
**As Google faces antitrust scrutiny, the future of its lucrative default search deals with Apple hangs in the balance. The potential for divestitures of key assets like Chrome or Android could reshape the industry, but any significant changes are likely years away. With the rapid evolution of AI in search, the next few years could redefine how users interact with these platforms, setting the stage for a new era in digital search.
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.
Ep 171**
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**The Role of Brand in Seo:
We speak with guest, Mordy Oberstein on the role of branding in SEO, particularly how it has re-emerged as a significant factor in conversions and SEO. We explore the interaction between brand and user experience, and the introduction of Google’s emphasis on brand in its algorithms.
Brand Differentiation and Local SEO:
We delve into how brands differentiate themselves in the marketplace, particularly in local SEO contexts. What are the challenges small businesses face in building brand recognition? How do brand elements like reputation and local engagement impact SEO performance?
Practical Approaches to Brand Building and the Role of AI in Content Creation:
We focus on practical advice for SEO professionals on integrating brand-building strategies into their work. Mordy also explores the role of AI in content creation, highlighting the potential benefits and pitfalls of using AI tools in a strategic and controlled manner.**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.
Ep 170
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**Google's Local Business Service Woes: Persistent Bugs and AI-Driven Layoffs Spark Concern:
There have been ongoing support and technical issues with Google Business Profiles. Major bugs affecting local business profiles have persisted for months and in several cases years, including image misassignments and overzealous suspension algorithms that remove legitimate reviews. Google's support and engineering teams have struggled to resolve these issues, partly due to significant layoffs aimed at funding AI projects. While Google’s local business services might not generate significant revenue for Google, they are crucial for the company's differentiation in the market. Is Google killing the goose by milking traditional resources for income and not investing enough to stay ahead of the competition.
CNET's Future Under Ziff Davis: Challenges and Google Opportunities/Difficulties Post-Sale: Red Ventures recently sold CNET to Ziff Davis for around $100 million, a significant loss from the $500 million purchase price. Despite Red Ventures' strong SEO and digital product expertise, CNET struggled due to aggressive content strategies and controversies over AI-generated content. CNET, once a trusted tech review site, saw its reputation and traffic decline. Factors like Google's increased emphasis on shopping ads and affiliate revenue pressures contributed to CNET's struggles. The sale to Ziff Davis is viewed as a positive move, but the site's recovery remains uncertain and tracking whether CNET can recover in the SERPS is worth following to see if a well managed, strong domain with good content can overcome Google’s algorithmic whims.
Google's Antitrust Remedies: Implications for Apple, Mozilla, and the SEO Landscape:
What will the repercussions of Google's recent antitrust liability be?. The potential remedies, such as breaking up Google, ending exclusive default search deals with Apple, and implementing data-sharing practices, all have limits and issues. The big question will be the impact on Apple and Mozilla if Google’s default search deals are prohibited. Apple has the potential to develop a robust search engine, considering its existing search index and AI advancements. Perhaps we are seeing the outline of that via Apple’s announced relationship with ChatGPT. Given that the settlement could take 4 years and a similar amount of time for Apple to fully implement generative AI across their full user base, changes to the landscape will be slow in coming. The long-term effects of these potential regulatory changes could impact Google's market dominance. For now and the immediate future, SEO’s need not worry as things will change little and when they do it will be slowly.**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.
Ep 169
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Segment 1: OpenAI & MindTrip bring AI to search, will it matter?
Last Thursday, OpenAI made waves with an announcement about Search GPT, a prototype aimed at revamping the search experience for ChatGPT users. Promising a two-column format, it aims to ease the search process and challenge traditional search engines like Google. The prototype has the potential to streamline user experience while emphasizing publisher control and cooperation.
In related news, a new travel bot, MindTrip, emerged, offering a conversational approach to travel planning. Users can refine searches for hotels, activities, and dining options, echoing the AI-driven trip planning Google showcased at their IO event.
Clearly Google has the mindshare, the consumer usage AND the knowledge graph to fend off these new competitors, but Google’s increasing contradictions and emphasis on income rather than user experience may hurt them.
Segment 2: Google’s Search Shenanigans: Boosting Numbers with Tricks?
Is Google might be artificially inflating search volumes? One tactic involves generating new URLs for actions like clicking reviews in business profiles, which counts as additional searches. Another strategy is tweaking ad displays to change when users return to the search page, boosting ad inventory without increasing actual searches.
This behavior coincides with Google’s internal goal of increasing search volumes, potentially to impress Wall Street. However, this approach might be backfiring, frustrating users who have to perform multiple searches to find relevant information. This shift towards prioritizing revenue over user experience raises questions about Google’s long-term strategy and the potential need for new leadership to refocus on user satisfaction. How sustainable are these tactics?
Segment 3: Can You Boost Google Local Rankings via Engagement?
Recent revelations from API leaks and DOJ findings highlight that Google uses click-through rates and on-site engagement as primary metrics to rank sites, contributing up to 30% of a site's ranking factors. This suggests that improving user interaction—like enhancing title tags, adding images, and boosting on-site engagement—can significantly impact search rankings.
Does Google use similar engagement metrics to influence local business rankings? Actions like users interacting with business profiles, scrolling through images, and reading reviews might boost local search visibility. While photos play a critical role in attracting user attention, reviews and specific content like menus or price information can drive deeper engagement, do they potentially also elevate rankings?
This underscores the importance of comprehensive competitor analysis to identify effective content strategies, ensuring businesses stay ahead in the local search game. As Google prioritizes engagement metrics, businesses must understand and cater to user desires on a category by category basis going forward.
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**SEOs need to reframe how search ranking works - click thru data being the most important factor:
Click data is a cornerstone of Google’s ranking algorithm, as highlighted by recent DOJ findings. Google uses its heavy reliance on click data to grasp new trends swiftly as well as to “understand” page quality.
Traditional SEO elements like title tags, meta descriptions, scheme, great photos and content provide enduring value but with a new twist. These elements are tools to drive clicks and engagement and thus ultimately drive higher rankings.
Google Doubles Down on Tried & True Income Generators:
Big changes are happening in the search results whether its AI overviews, Bing’s Generative Search, Reddit’s exclusive relationship with Google and decision to exclude others and all seem related to the rollout of AI on Google. But Google’s has been scaling back AI overviews due to high costs and the need for better monetization. With AI responses being expensive, Google’s focus is shifting towards proven money makers like YouTube, Merchant Center and Local results. Krum highlighted Google's continued play on its “micro moments”—know, go, do, buy—each tied to different monetized Google services.
Is Voice Search Set for a Comeback? SEOs Should Stay Calm and Test:
With the evolving landscape of voice search and AI assistants, improvements in natural language processing and better ML programming could solve past issues, such as background noise interference. While voice commands for simple tasks like turning on lights or adding items to a shopping list have become second nature, using voice in public or work settings still feels socially awkward.**
Cindy Krum emphasized the expansive nature of what constitutes a "search" in Google's eyes. A simple voice command involves complex data retrieval and context understanding, transforming voice interactions into a broad and intricate type of search. This perspective shift means SEOs might need to rethink their strategies to include optimization for these varied and nuanced queries.
While voice won't ever entirely replace screen-based interactions, its role could significantly expand if user experiences improve. Despite past disappointments with voice technology, there's cautious optimism that advancements could lead to broader acceptance and use.
Cindy advised SEOs to stay calm amid Google's rapid and sometimes erratic changes. She recommended continuing with proven strategies while experimenting with new platforms and search engines. The consensus was clear: it’s a volatile time in SEO, but understanding and adapting to these changes is crucial for future success.
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.
Ep 167
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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 Insights
- 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
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**Seattle surgeon pays $5 mil fine for review fraud; What responsibility does Google have?
Allure Esthetics and its owner Dr. Java Sagan, were convicted of violating the Consumer Review Fairness Act. They forced 21,000 clients to sign agreements preventing them from leaving honest reviews and engaged in additional deceptive practices like paying for the removal of negative reviews and posting fake ones.**
Despite a $5 million fine, Allure Esthetics still shows high ratings on Google and Yelp. Google’s failure to address these fake reviews, raises questions about the platform’s responsibility under Section 230, which currently shields it from liability.
**This case highlights the need for changes to Section 230 to better protect consumers and maintain trust in online reviews.
Local Search increasingly shows Google GBP results & extensively highlight Google self preferencing
In a recent AI-driven experiment the local results included numerous horizontally scrolling pack of restaurant types and related local categories, with images and reviews. Most all results in this test took users to further Google searches rather than external sites**
In Europe, current local search results showed significantly more Google self-referencing content, raising questions about regulatory compliance. The variations in local search displays across different European countries, suggests that Google's approach might be influenced by regional regulatory strategies.
Despite the heavy Google-centric content, local businesses still benefited from visibility. However, the trend of zero-click searches, where users find all needed information without leaving Google, highlights the increasing prominence of Google's own services in local search outcomes.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.
Ep 165
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The big picture of review fraud - who does it and why:
We explore the full range of review fraud from fake positive reviews, black hat negative reviews and review extortion with Curtis Boyd of the Transparency Company. How widespread is it, is it growing, which categories are most likely to participate in it and why.
**How to deal with fake review attacks and competitors who use fake reviews:
If you are an honest business can you compete in a world rife with review fraud. We discuss how to deal with fake review attacks and how to get fake reviews that your competitors have gotten taken down.
The FTC and fake review guidelines and rules:
The FTC has been upping their enforcement game with new Guidelines which set a standard and upcoming Rules which will facilitate their ability to impose fines on buyers and sellers of reviews. The major platforms are largely exempt from any enforcement but their is language in the upcoming FTC rules that makes a business fully responsible for compliance.**
The Future of Reviews: What will see over the next 24 months in review spam & possible enforcement:
New rules from the FTC and better filters from Google might turn the corner on fake reviews but the lack of FTC resources and the lack of Google’s focus may prevent that from happeningThe 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.
near memo ep 128
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ep 164 from the vault ep 128
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L**eadferno: a better tools to capture website leads -
Leadferno is a conversion platform designed to transform website visitors into leads through seamless communication tools. Unlike traditional chatbots, Leadferno leverages SMS to facilitate human conversations, which studies show is the preferred communication channel for most people. It’s floating CTAs (Call-to-Actions) on websites encourage visitors to start conversations via text messaging. This approach helps businesses engage more effectively with potential customers by providing a more responsive and preferred communication method.**
**Leadferno offers various tools, including an embeddable contact form that initiates SMS conversations, request call-back options, and links to other lead forms and scheduling tools. It attempts to make businesses easier to work with by enhancing their ability to convert website visitors into valuable leads through better communication options.
Google nuking GBP & Business Messaging costs small developers:
Google's recent decision to axe its business messaging tools—Google Business Profile Chat and Business Messenger— hits particularly hard for niche players like Leadferno, a company that had heavily invested in integrating these tools. The discontinuation forces smaller firms to reconsider future integrations with Google, given the considerable time and financial resources wasted—six months and approximately $100K, in Leadferno's case.**
While it looks like Google will potentially integrate with WhatsApp or SMS, which could partially mitigate the blow for some businesses. However, for many, the sudden shift means lost opportunities and the need to reallocate development efforts. The most affected were businesses with significant Google Business Profile visibility and multi-location operations, which benefited from centralized messaging and automated replies. These features allowed for quicker customer interactions, a critical factor in Google's ranking algorithms.
**Google’s decision, like so many similar ones it has made in the past, leaves smaller, innovative companies grappling with the fallout, forcing them to navigate the challenging landscape of constantly shifting tech ecosystems.
Leadferno Research: Small Business Contact Form Failures -
Leadferno documented the startling inefficiencies of small businesses in responding to online contact forms, a crucial channel for new customer acquisition. The research, encompassing 225 businesses across home services, professional services, and medical sectors, highlights a significant gap between customer inquiries and business responses.**
Leadferno's Aaron Weiche and his team "mystery shopped" these businesses, submitting highly detailed and strong buying inquiries via their contact forms. The findings are staggering: almost 5% of forms were broken, failing to deliver customer messages entirely. More shockingly, only 15.6% of forms sent an auto-reply, a basic feature that acknowledges receipt and sets customer expectations.
The average response time to these contact form submissions was a lethargic 17 hours and 49 minutes, with professional services responding slightly faster than average, and healthcare lagging behind at over 19 hours. Yet, the most alarming statistic was that 42% of these forms received no response at all.
While small businesses consistently rank new customer acquisition as their top challenge, they are neglecting warm, ready-to-buy leads that land directly in their inboxes. This neglect is even more baffling given the simplicity of the solution: prompt and efficient responses to online inquiries
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**Google Expanding Local Results in the SERPS to the Exclusion of Organic:
While many SEOs have been focused on AI answers and how they are disrupting search, the story in Local search is different. AI Answers have yet to have any impact in Local but Google, over the past several years has dramatically increased their control & domination of the Local SERPS with Local Entity data and in doing so seem to be in the process of banishing organic results…. this is particularly true in Near Me searches and the EU results, which should be treated as the canary in the coal mine.
Agencies and businesses need to double down on real world activities that get reflected on line to succeed in these increasingly entity driven search results.
Cluttered Google Results Decrease Traditional Organic Traffic - How to Cope?
We have often mentioned the increasingly cluttered nature of Google's search engine results pages (SERPs). There has been a significant rise in various elements such as product listing ads (PLAs), image carousels, and video results, which diminish the visibility of organic search results. In a recent client analysis, David found that cluttered SERPs for that client, filled with multiple search features and reduced organic presence, were identified as a likely cause for their declining organic traffic.**
**In a world where Google's shift towards a more modular, AI-driven organization of search results leads to a disjointed user experience, prompting multiple searches to find relevant information, businesses need to adopt a multimodal approach, optimizing their digital assets across various SERP features. This includes using high-quality images with descriptive alt text, leveraging Google Merchant Center feeds for PLAs, and considering broader online channels to build brand visibility.
Google’s AI Overviews Make Search Worse - A Lot Worse:
SE Ranking conducted a study of Google’s AI Overview frequency, finding them present in only 8% of searches, a significant drop from earlier & much higher percentages. This decline is attributed to numerous errors and inaccuracies, causing Google to reduce their usage drastically.**
Jess Peck's article, "How and Why Google Made Its Own Product Worse," critiques Google's implementation of AI, highlighted inherent flaws in large language models (LLMs) and their unsuitability for delivering factual search results. Google's rushed deployment of AI overviews, driven by competitive pressure rather than product improvement, has led to a compromised search experience. Google should either refine the use of AI in a controlled manner or reconsider its placement within search results to mitigate the negative impact on its brand and user trust.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.
Ep 162
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In this week’s podcast we discussed the evolution of zero-click search and Rand’s upcoming study with Spark Toro's clickstream data provider, Datos, to explore the impact of AI overviews and changes in zero-click searches across different regions.
Rand argued for more stringent antitrust measures, drawing parallels between Google's practices and historical monopolies that unfairly leveraged their market power to move into new markets. His call for breaking up Google's core services—search, YouTube, and maps—into separate entities could spur innovation and competition.
He advised businesses that the best way to succeed at SEO was to adapt by focusing on diverse marketing strategies that go beyond traditional SEO. By creating content that gains traction on social media, earns media attention, and resonates locally, businesses can thrive even in a zero-click dominated landscape.
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.
Ep 161
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**GBP Chat is Dead, Long Live WhatsApp:
Google nuked both Google Business Profile Chat AND Google Business Messaging last week in a typical show of disregard for the product and the businesses supporting it. This decision comes amid concerns over increasing spam within the GBP chat service, which initially launched in 2017 with high hopes. Despite a significant initial investment, Google's inconsistent product strategy led to its downfall.**
Interestingly, Google is now introducing WhatsApp and SMS messaging integration to GBP profiles, suggesting an attempt to fill the void left by the discontinued services. This move highlights Google's long-standing struggle with a coherent messaging strategy, characterized by the launch and subsequent abandonment of numerous messaging apps over the years.
**The discussion underscores the broader issue of Google's top-down management style, which often leaves innovative projects without sustained support. Smaller SAAS businesses that invested heavily in integrating with Google's messaging API, like Switchbird and Leadferno, faced significant difficulties in adopting the Business Messaging API and expended considerable resources in doing so. Google's structural inefficiencies hinder its ability to dominate key markets but also damage the greater ecosystem that attempts to integrate with their products.
Scorpion Survey Highlights Growing Frustrations with Google Search:
In a recent survey by marketing firm Scorpion, consumers have voiced increasing frustrations with Google search results. The survey revealed that users are spending more time sifting through results than five years ago. Top complaints include the need to refine queries repeatedly, excessive scrolling, and visiting multiple websites to find desired information. This aligns with ongoing industry discussions about the declining quality of Google's search experience.**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.
Ep 160
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Rand helps us explore the implications of the Google Web Search leak and how it impacts our understanding of how the search ranking aglo actually works
This week we interviewed Rand Fishkin of SparkToro on the details and importance of the Google Search API leak. In discussing the “biggest leak of the last 25 years” we look at
- how it provides SEO practitioners with menu of possible experiments to explore
- the role of Chrome as a source for click through data and what it means for link builders
- How this click through data seems to be one of the most important ranking factors
- Why links on low performing pages have absolutely no value and thus why many citations no longer do either
- whether Ad clicks might in fact influence rank
- How should we think about “web references” aka mentions vs Links
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.
- Ep 159
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**New SAB Local Ranking Factor:
Service area businesses have long been a problem on Google Maps. Spam, privacy, suspension AND ranking issues have plagued them since the beginning. Now it appears that there may be hope on the ranking issue. Historically they were ranked around the location from which they were claimed regardless of the service area. Darren Shaw of Whitespark has uncovered some indications that this is starting to change and the ranking signals are more around the service area chosen. Stay tuned.
Interpreting Google AI Tea leaves & What it Says About Google’s Product Development:
Lots of questions swirled around Google’s AI Overviews: Would their effect be apocalyptic on publishers? What did Pichai mean when he talked about an increase in web visits? Was Google going to surface the data in Search Console?**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.
Ep 158
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**ChatGPT 4o Makes an Impression:
OpenAI, not so subtly, introduced improvements to ChatGPT 4.0 just before I/O Google's event. The presentation was crisp and focused highlighting OpenAI's ChatGPT 4o enhanced speech capabilities and creative functionalities, such as summarizing audio streams shows and organizing the resultant notes into coherent outlines. Despite some features demoed on Monday being API-exclusive, the potential for ChatGPT to rival Google's search, at least on informational queries, is becoming more clear. Speculation about a potential integration with Apple's iOS adds to this potential, as this could significantly boost ChatGPT's reach, access to training data and even possibly local search capabilities.
The Chaos that was Google I/O, is Google:
The recent Google I/O event, from the DJ to the presentations, felt chaotic much like the increasing complexity and seemingly disjointed nature of Google's product strategies. The showcase included a range of multimodal search results and demonstrations, such as trip planning and dining recommendations, which, while technically impressive, seemed to add to the cognitive load rather than streamline the user experience.**
**The event highlighted Google's shift from its original, simpler search interface to a more cluttered and multifaceted array of services and features, spreading functionality across various platforms without clear integration. In contrast, competitors like OpenAI are offering more straightforward, user-friendly interfaces, claiming a position Google once held. Discussions also touched on Google's potential in workspace solutions, which could transform into valuable tools for small businesses, though the realization of these potentials remains uncertain amid concerns about which products were real and which were vaporware.
How Will Users & SEOs Adapt to the New Google AI Features:
At Google I/O's announced the launch of AI overviews (SGE) in the U.S., theoretically aiming to improve user engagement by highlighting lesser-known sites. Users are already searching for ways to disable this feature, with over 2,000 downloads for a Chrome extension designed to do just that. Google's introduction of dynamically organized search result pages for categories like restaurants and recipes is another significant change. These pages adapt based on user queries, a move seen as both innovative and potentially disruptive for SEO.**
Meanwhile, Google's strategic vision appears unclear. As users habituate to the many new AI tools, with users gravitating towards simpler, more effective interfaces like ChatGPT, Google's position as the go-to search engine could be at risk.
Note: During the show David exponentially misstated the number of downloads of the chrome extension which hides AI overviews, conflating a completely different post on the number of SGE results in previous AI overview studies. The number of opt-out downloads is currently in the thousands, not 2 million as stated on the show. He regrets the error.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.
Ep 157
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**Is Google Finally fixing LSA reviews?
In a significant update for advertisers and businesses in the UK, Google has announced changes to its Local Services Ads (LSA) review system. Effective July 7, the existing LSA customer review URLs will expire and be replaced with URLs from Google Business Profiles (GBP), centralizing review management under GBP. This shift mandates businesses to have an affiliated GBP to run LSAs, integrating reviews on both platforms.**
**While it is unclear when or if this change will come to the US, it is likely given Google’s penchant for scale, to be rolled out worldwide. While the GBP review moderation and appeal process are significantly better than the current, totally lame LSA one, it still leaves a bit to be desired. These changes hint at Google's broader organizational challenges, including siloed product development and a lack of sustained oversight, which often result in suboptimal product evolutions.
How Google has Failed to Reward the Best Content:
HouseFresh, a small product review site known for its focus on air purifiers and home environment hygiene, has faced challenges due to recent Google algorithm updates, which have adversely impacted its visibility. Having lost 93% of their site traffic, they have detailed the many effects of recent Google updates on smaller niche sites that Google claimed they were trying to highlight.**
**HouseFresh clearly documents how large publishing houses leverage their strong domain presence and SEO strategies to dominate Google search results in profitable niches. This situation underscores the broader trend of niche sites being overshadowed by major brands, which have learned to effectively utilize SEO to their advantage and the problems present in the Google SERPS.
DOJ Slidedeck Detailing Google’s Abusive Monopoly Practices Kills it:
In a dramatic culmination to a three-year antitrust case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) presented a robust argument against Google, focusing on its dominant market practices with its advertising strategies. The DOJ accused Google of manipulating auction prices in paid search advertising to artificially boost revenue, a practice that arguably harms both competitors and consumers by stifling fair competition and transparency.**
The government's presentation, encapsulated in a detailed 143-slide deck, highlighted how Google's practices are designed to meet its quarterly financial targets and cater to Wall Street expectations, often at the expense of genuine market competition. The DOJ argued that Google has a unique hold over the search advertising market, distinguishing it from other forms of digital advertising like social media or display ads, which do not serve as direct substitutes. This market control, according to the DOJ, compels advertisers to maintain their spending with Google, lacking viable alternatives.
The deck painted a picture of a company that, while not illegal in holding a monopoly, is allegedly crossing the line into abusing that power through strategies like price manipulation—one of the classic signs of monopolistic abuse.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.
Ep 156
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Do Google searchers enter the Local Finder?
Local SEOs wonder whether searchers actually enter the Local Finder from the Pack results. We often think no but our research indicates that not only do searchers enter the Local Finder on a regular basis, they also scroll deep and often pick a business not in the top three.
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.
How many links does a local website need to compete in Local Search?
Local link building is hard but NearMedia research indicates that even in competitive markets in competitive categories it only takes several great local links to compete.
Google's BS around creating great content:
Google has created a world where focusing on search optimizations has rewarded businesses who have invested in SEO. Yet they consistently lecture users about the need for user centric content. The reality is that there is a great deal of hypocrisy on the part of Google in these matters. How should they deal with this reality?
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.
Ep 156 From the archives EP 126 Near Memo_Buzzsprout
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Dana DiTomaso brings her practical insights to the often murky waters of Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Dana, who wears multiple hats as the president and co-founder of KickPoint, shares candid thoughts on the challenges of demystifying GA4. She discusses the shortcomings of GA4, emphasizing its strong data collection capabilities but criticizing its reporting features. Dana emphasizes the necessity of understanding what GA4 and other analytics tools can and cannot do. She advocates for a realistic approach to data, encouraging marketers to focus on trends rather than absolute numbers. She discusses the integration of various data sources and the strategic use of analytics tools to provide actionable insights
If you sign for Dana’s courses with the coupon code: nearmemo you will get 20% off.
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.
near memo ep 155
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**Ad market dominated by a few players:
The Internet Advertising Bureau released their annual report for 2024. Digital advertising reached a record-high of $225 billion, with the biggest share going to search ($88.8 billion) & display ($66.1 billion). The bulk of this income is distributed across the top 10 advertising platforms and with the end of cookies, their dominance is likely to be reinforced. While paid search's (ie Google’s) share of total revenue declined, real dollars grew 5.2%. With a flattening of search demand, Google's new opt-in Ad Intents contextual format is an example of the "creative" monetization that we will increasingly see more of.
Seattle Physician Found Guilty of Violating Federal Review Law:
A federal judge found Allure Esthetic of Seattle wrongly prevented patients from posting negative reviews with illegal NDAs and issued a summary judgment in the case. Not only did this surgeon buy fake reviews and have staff create fake reviews, he forced over 10,000 patients to sign NDAs preventing them from post reviews of less than 4 stars without first consulting with the surgeon. If they did post lower reviews they also had to agree to their private health information being divulged in the response. The case, first filed in late 2022, will go to trial in September and the main purpose of the trial will be to determine the monetary damages. Given the large number of patients affected and the high costs in this vertical, the fine should be substantial.
If you content is only as good as ChatGPT you will fail:
Ten websites dominate search results for nearly all medical symptoms. This dominance is attributed to their substantial content libraries and extensive inbound links. Major names like Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins lead this group, often making it nearly impossible for other healthcare brands to gain visibility. Additionally, platforms like Quora and Reddit also appear frequently in search results, sometimes promoting questionable medical advice through user comments. This trend reflects a broader challenge within SEO practices where established brands with robust content and linking strategies overwhelmingly outperform newer entrants, reinforcing the need for strategic content investment and diversification beyond mere SEO tactics.**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.
near memo ep 154
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**Reviews are Like Death & Taxes & Should be Treated that Way:
Miriam Ellis wrote a great article at Moz providing small business owners tips on how to overcome their fear of reviews. But they really need to go further. Given that reviews, like death and taxes, are not going anywhere businesses need to not only remove their fear but create stringent business processes around getting AND contesting reviews that removes their emotions from the process.
Google Cries ‘Wolf” When it Comes to DMA Compliance:
Google's approach to DMA compliance seems to prioritize its interests, presenting a false dichotomy between new compliance changes and the previous state, which was more favorable to all parties. Google needs to innovate rather than blame DMA for negative outcomes, and to really increase opportunity within the search results there needs to be stringent regulation on self-preferencing, especially with first-party data, particularly entity data.
The Future of SGE:
Google’s SGE experiment is still just that; an experiment. There is speculation that it will be formally introduced during Google I/O in May. When it is, will it move behind a paywal, will it become just another universal result or will Google take some third path. Equally importantis whether Google generative AI will continue to receive legal protection under Sec 230.**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.
near memo ep 153
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**The need to move SMBs from Tactics to Strategy & how fractional CMO’s can do that:
John Jantsch is a seasoned consultant, speaker, and bestselling author, notably recognized for his Duct Tape Marketing brand. He shares his journey of owning an agency for 30 years, highlighting his affinity for small to midsize businesses and the challenges they face, especially regarding budget and focus. Jantsch's Duct Tape Marketing was his solution to the market's need for effective and straightforward marketing services. Over time, his approach evolved into licensing his methodology to other agencies and consultants.**
In the last five years, Jantsch has pivoted towards offering fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) services, capitalizing on the growing acceptance and need for part-time executive roles. He explains that the fractional CMO concept is cost-effective, providing senior marketing leadership at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CMO, particularly beneficial for companies with revenues under $30 million.
**Jantsch observes an increasing demand for strategic marketing services, partly due to the market's rapid changes and the desire for differentiation among agencies. He notes that while there is a prevalent focus on lead generation and short-term goals in the industry, there's a growing recognition of the value of strategic planning, especially for businesses crossing the million-dollar revenue threshold.
Helping agencies to increase profits by developing their own fractional CMO capacity:
In the second part of the interview, John Jantsch delves into the challenges and nuances of adopting a fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role within agencies. He acknowledges the difficulty agencies face when shifting from execution-focused services to strategic consulting, especially with existing clients who may not perceive them in this new light. Jantsch suggests that offering strategic services as an add-on and targeting a more ideal client base can facilitate this transition.**
He critiques the common misunderstanding of having a marketing "plan" when businesses merely execute isolated tactics without a cohesive strategy. Jantsch emphasizes the importance of a targeted approach, focusing on the top 20% of customers and aligning marketing efforts with the entire customer journey, which he represents through the "marketing hourglass" concept. This approach entails understanding the customer's needs, refining messaging, and integrating strategic content creation.
Jantsch also discusses the foundational phase of client engagement, where he insists on starting with a strategy phase, lasting about 45 days, to build trust and set the groundwork for further marketing efforts. This phase allows for the identification of a client's true challenges and needs, fostering a relationship where the agency transitions from a vendor to a trusted advisor.
**He highlights the importance of the CMO as the advocate for the customer within the company, ensuring that the entire customer experience, from initial contact through sales and service, aligns with the strategic marketing plan. Jantsch's approach underscores the need for a comprehensive understanding of the client's business processes, which is crucial for delivering effective marketing solutions and establishing a long-term partnership.
How to begin implementing a fractional CMO relationship with your client:
In the final part of the interview, John Jantsch discusses building trust and managing dynamics within client organizations as a fractional CMO. He notes the common presence of internal politics and resistance, but emphasizes that many organizations lack strategic direction, making them receptive to outside expertise. Jantsch highlights the**
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In this special edition, Mike and David discuss their visit to Brussels to attend Google’s report on their compliance with the European Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA, targeting large tech entities including Google, aims to regulate their status as gatekeepers to the internet. This session, specifically addressing Google's compliance, saw over 20 presenters from Google over an extensive eight-hour period, detailing their view of adherence to the DMA's regulations across various aspects of their operations.
The workshop was organized by the European Commission and attended by a diverse group, including industry trade groups, direct competitors such as DuckDuckGo, and consumer organizations. Discussions spanned from Google's dominance in online search and data portability to interoperability issues, with Google outlining its efforts in adapting its services to meet DMA requirements. Google specifically excluded Local, the Local Pack, Google Maps and entities from a need for compliance.
Google's argument primarily revolved around the challenges of balancing stakeholder needs while continuing to innovate within the constraints imposed by the DMA. Despite this, skepticism persisted among attendees and the commission regarding Google's compliance, particularly concerning self-preferencing. The commission's quick initiation of an investigation into Google's compliance post-workshop indicates both a rigorous approach towards enforcing the DMA and great deal of skepticism on the part of the EU as to compliance.
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.
near memo ep 151
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**What on-page factors are associated with sites that see big gains or declines after Google updates?
Cyrus Shepard explains his recent research looking at correlations between a range of on page factors that might affect Google’s perception of your site and analyzes which factors were associated with increases or decreases in site visibility. Are stock photos a death knell? Are ads a deal breaker? Should contact information be on every page?
What Cyrus learned from being a Google Quality Rater?
It isn’t easy to become a quality rater. It is hard work and pays beans but someone had to do it, right? Cyrus jumped into the breach and from his experience explained how these guidelines should inform your site.
What is the future of SEO?
Things are changing fast. Ai is stealing eyeballs and impacting search results. How long does SEO have and should we all be looking for other jobs or will generative AI solutions to search just increase the opportunities? Will Google continue to be the main source for leads going forward?**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.
near memo ep 150
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**Google’s March Core Update & FUD:
David Mihm sheds light on Google's March core update, marking it as an unusually impactful monthly adjustment from the tech giant. The update has sparked extensive conversation among SEO experts. He highlighted three key focus areas of the update: scaled content, largely driven by AI technologies; site reputation abuse; and what is known colloquially as "parasite SEO." The latter involves strategies to boost article visibility and rankings through dubious means, undermining the quality and reliability of search results.**
The concept of "scaled content" pertains to the bulk creation and dissemination of AI-generated articles, a trend that raises questions about content originality and value. Meanwhile, the term "site reputation abuse" remains somewhat ambiguous, with Mihm relying on insights from a LinkedIn post by Solis to decipher Google's intended targets with this update.
**How much of this is enforceable and how much is FUD is debatable.
Brightlocal Consumer Review Survey:
We discuss the key findings from the recent BrightLocal review survey**
- Trust in Reviews: The survey confirms that online reviews continue to be a critical factor in consumer decision-making, with a strong preference for businesses rated at four stars or above.
- Importance of Recent Reviews: Consumers place high value on the freshness of reviews, indicating the necessity for businesses to continuously generate new, positive feedback.
- Expectation for Response: There is a clear expectation among consumers for businesses to engage with and respond to reviews, signaling this as a factor in building trust and loyalty.
- Concerns Over Review Fraud: The survey highlights consumer concerns regarding the authenticity of reviews, emphasizing the need for transparency and authenticity in review management.
**How Often Do Searchers Use the Local Finder?
We discuss data from our recent search behavior study that sheds light on how frequently users access the Local Finder. Search behaviors diverge significantly across devices and verticals, with a marked preference for using the Local Finder feature more on mobile devices and more on queries that are less price sensitive and more reputation driven.**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.
near memo ep 149
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**Consumer Research Highlights Limited Impact of DMA Mandated Google's SERP Changes:
Near Media unveiled findings from their latest research on the restaurant vertical in Ireland, investigating the effects of Google's Search Engine Results Page (SERP) changes in light of the Digital Markets Act. The study aimed to ascertain whether Google's adjustments to its Irish SERP features influence user click behavior or choices, particularly in selecting restaurants. The UI changes implemented by Google, such as the Places Sites module intended to feature local directories and content websites about restaurants, received minimal engagement from users. Despite its visibility in 60% of searches, it was often overshadowed by the prominence of Google Business Profile results and the traditional local pack, especially on mobile devices where user scrolling was limited. This outcome suggests that while Google's efforts to adapt to the DMA's requirements are visible, they have yet to significantly alter user interaction with SERP features.
The Rise of Zero-Click Searches: A Challenge to Content Publishers and a Boon for Google Business Profiles:
zero-click searches refer to queries resolved on the search engine's results page itself, without leading the user to an external website. This trend, particularly pronounced in the restaurant sector, signifies a shift towards Google Business Profiles (GBP) as the primary source of information for users, sidelining traditional content publishers and third-party platforms like TripAdvisor and OpenTable.**
**Research indicates that approximately 50% of mobile searches for restaurants end without a click to external sites, as users find sufficient information within Google's local finder or GBP listings. On desktops, this figure slightly decreases but remains significant. Interestingly, when users do opt for external sources, TripAdvisor emerges as the dominant choice, overshadowing competitors such as Yelp, despite its historical association with restaurant reviews.
EU faces regulatory challenges vis a vis Google’s Self-Preferencing in Local search results:
The dynamics of zero-click searches and the role of self-preferencing by Google,has implications for competitors, consumer choice and regulators. The European Union faces significant regulatory challenges in addressing these issues, given the lack of clear success criteria and the general nature of current regulations. The visual dominance of Google's "pack" feature and its influence on consumer behavior, with a significant portion of users engaging with these results, denies any benefit theoretically invoked by Google’s SERP changes. Brands like TripAdvisor and ZocDoc manage to stand out through strong branding and SEO efforts, suggesting that a balanced approach is essential for visibility and engagement in the highly competitive digital landscape.**
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.
near memo ep 148
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**Long tail searcher behaviors: 10% of Discovery searches involve a brand search on Google:
In our most recent multi-location consumer Google search behavior research analyzing restaurant searches we saw roughly 10% of all searchers use the scrolling map for location precision and we saw an equal number of searchers do a local brand search as part of their discovery process. These brand searches seem to be either to better understand a location or to confirm their choice. Oftentimes it was a shorthand way for searchers to increase their confidence in the overall rating of a location without having to read the reviews.
Gemini search now a front and center toggle in the Google App:
The mobile Google App is now offering a toggle switch that allows users to easily compare traditional results with Gemini results. While search is the default, Gemini is readily available as an alternative choice. Gemini is more like the 10-blue links Google. The UI is cleaner and there's less "information clutter." It's not clear, however, that you can entirely trust Gemini. While interesting, it still seems to be more of a positioning ploy vis a vis ChatGPT and their recently announced search engine than a real alternative to search.
Content publishing being upended by search - Can it change?
Recent tales of Reddit content outraninking original content seems to belie Google’s stated intent of the Helpful Content Update showing smaller sites that demonstrate EEAT with real world experience and a singular point of view. While some are optimistic that new developments in Google AI will fix the results, the way that the algo works might doom it to a loop of brand mediocrity.**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.
near memo ep 147
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**Google adds Reddit to product searches and spammers follow:
We discuss a new study by Glenn Alsop that examines the prevalence of discussion and forum search features This module is a tacit admission on Google's part that its algorithm can no longer actually surface good organic content. LikeThe study, which analyzed 10,000 product review search queries, revealed significant insights into user behavior and Google's response to search result satisfaction.**
**According to the findings, the discussions and forums Search Engine Results Page (SERP) feature appears in 77% of the analyzed queries, with Reddit emerging as the dominant platform in this category. Alsop's research indicated that Reddit was present 98% of the time when the discussions and forums feature appeared, often occupying two out of the three results showcased.
Google announces review removals with PR puffery:
Google, according to their release, removed 170 million fake reviews last year. They blocked 14 million policy violating videos and 2 million attempts by bad actors to claim GBPs. And they blocked 12 million fake GBPs. These numbers sound like big numbers. But then if you actually think about the fact that there are over 230 million businesses in the world in Google’s index it comes out to less than 1 review per business. The same analysis can be applied to the takedowns as well. Despite the bluster the problem is getting no better and in some area like LSA’s its getting worse.
Google Maps AI (SGE) a hot mess: Google has rolled out a Google Maps AI experiment to a limited number of Local Guides. While holding the promise of delivering long tail results and providing meaningful improvements to Maps, the product is slow and non-rsponsive. While it might get better, it needs to do so soon as it is a significantly worse experience than Maps.**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.
near memo ep 146
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**Will AI Improve SMB Websites?
Consumers overwhelmingly prefer AI-generated content over human-created content across various formats, signaling a potential shift in online content creation. Businesses and agencies are adopting AI for content creation, citing effectiveness and cost reduction. However, concerns about the loss of human touch and authenticity persist, especially in personal brand building and influencer marketing. While AI can streamline information delivery, the rise of generic AI content may prompt a resurgence in demand for authentic, personalized content from individuals and brands.
Google Maps Getting Conversational AI:
Google introduced AI into Google Maps, allowing conversational queries about businesses based on structured data and user reviews. This move suggests Maps as a more effective platform for AI integration compared to organic search. The potential for personalized and detailed queries is high, with implications for local inventory and user engagement. However, there's a risk of commercialization overshadowing informative search results, as seen in Google Lens. Despite potential revenue growth, there's concern about the impact on Google's core search business. The integration of Gemini's conversational faceted search aligns with Maps' data structure, offering a promising user experience.
Bright Local Brand Survey Takeaways:
The BrightLocal Brand Beacon Report 2024 reveals insights into multi-location marketing strategies, with a focus on SEO, social media, and customer satisfaction. High-performing brands prioritize local SEO and understand the difference between traditional and local SEO, offering opportunities for improvement in average performers. Despite heavy investments in social media, email and SEO continue to drive significant results, highlighting potential areas for growth. Additionally, the rise of AI in email marketing suggests future trends in content creation. Overall, the discussion underscores the evolving landscape of digital marketing strategies for multi-location businesses and the importance of staying informed to adapt effectively.**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.
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What 10 years of changes to the SERPS mean for marketers today:
We discuss Andy Crestodina’s most recent article where he looks at 10+ years of changes to google search results and what they mean. He highlights the evolving dynamics of search engine optimization (SEO) and the importance of diversifying marketing strategies beyond just SEO and Google. It underscores the observation that while rankings can be stable over time with continued investment in SEO, changes in Google's algorithms mean that simply achieving a high position in the search engine results pages (SERP) isn't guaranteed. The advice given is to not solely rely on SEO or Google for online visibility, reflecting a broader strategy that has been advocated for some time. This diversification is crucial for businesses aiming to maintain and enhance their online presence amidst the ever-changing digital landscape.
David Mihm's insights further emphasize the growing necessity for businesses to engage potential site visitors with compelling results, based on an understanding of user behavior and preferences. This involves analyzing where users are most likely to click, whether it be on Local Search Ads (LSAs), Pack (PAC) results, or organic listings, and identifying the attributes that make listings more attractive, such as reviews, years in business, or proximity. Mihm's observations validate the approach of focusing on where to invest in search results—be it paid, local, or organic—and which themes to highlight in content to resonate with customers.
How the “Hidden Gems” update is impacting Local Search:
Google has rapidly been updating informational queries with content from forums and UGC. This has started to impact the local search results particularly around how to queries and points to the idea that marketers need to know which forums and platforms they can participate in that could drive this type of “barnacle seo”.
New EU Local Search Results:
Google has rolled out a number of updates and changes to the local search results to comply with EU requirements limiting the use of cookies and avoiding self-preferencing. The results seem to more of a passive aggressive attempt at compliance that will not generate much traffic for other sites and certainly won’t improve customer satisfaction.
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.
EP 144 Near Memo
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**Will Fired Google Raters Be Replaced with AI?
Last week Google terminated their relationship with one of the companies responsible for rating the quality of websites. Certainly Google has been on a cost cutting rampage of late with layoffs and product cancellations. But is the ending of one of their relationships with one of the companies responsible for quality rating just a cost cutting measure or a foreshadowing of Google using AI to perform this important task?
SEO Tools are just tools and should be used with care:
In a recent consulting gig, in analyzing a client’s ranking history, it appeared that their on-line Google presence had gone south. The rankings on all of their keywords in Google Maps were were disappearing and it had been getting worse since the second week of November. But the reality was much more subtle. They and their rank tracking tool had been bitten by a local Google algo update.
Hidden Gems and the Decline of Big Social:
Google and the internet are going through big changes. the large social sites are becoming less attractive and the SERPS are becoming more …. annoying? Google in an effort to address this changing reality has elevated niche forum sites. Will the same things happen to these forums now that Google is focusing on them as happened to a lot of the Google search results? Is Google just shifting the responsibility for moderating content off to the sites? How does this change affect your content strategies. All good questions we grapple with in this segment**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.
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**SGE has huge impacts but is still just a testing ground:
Some industries, like healthcare, are impacted by Google’s SGE (search generative experience) than others with 76% of queries analyzed being impacted by SGE. While other industries show lesser impact, it is still significant. But SGE is still just a test and one that impacts those likely to enroll in these sorts of experiments, like SEO pros. While many SEOs fear that SGE IS the future of search, it is more likely a testing ground as Google figures out exactly how AI will be integrated into search. Businesses need to be aware of what is going on with SGE but not change any behaviors or tactics.
What is the future of the GBP as a hub of SMB activity?
Historically, the GBP (Google Business Profile) dashboard has been the center of active development of tools to benefit local businesses of all sizes. The plans were always ambitious and new products were frequent. However since the rollout the NMX interface integrating basic functionality into the search and maps interfaces, we have seen more features disappear or be demoted and very few features being newly developed. What does this say about the role of the GBP within Maps specifically and search more broadly?
Google, distracted by numerous tangential projects, should be focusing on the basics to protect their franchise:
Given the belt tightening going on in Mt View and with the generally perceived decline in overall search quality, Google seems to be working around the edges of search with products that are newsworthy but not core to the search experience. They should instead be initiating an all hands on deck effort focusing on making their meat and potato Search Engine the best that it can be.**
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.
near memo ep 142
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**How the Google Guarantee Scam Impacts Honest Businesses?
The Google Guarantee Scam is frequently perpetrated by groups of foreign nationals working in relative anonymity and looking for a quick profit. While some blame goes to these actors, the ultimate fault and responsibility lies with Google. Honest businesses have been negatively impacted by the Google Guarantee LSA scam:**
- Loss of business: Some businesses have reported losing up to 70% of their business due to the scam. This is because potential customers are being lured away by fake reviews, fake business listings, and bait-and-switch tactics.
- Bait and switch scams: Many businesses have reported being victims of bait-and-switch scams. In these scams, customers are lured in by a low price quote and then charged a much higher price when the work is completed. This can damage the reputation of honest businesses and make it difficult for them to attract new customers.
- Damage to reputation: The scam can also damage the reputation of honest businesses. This is because many customers who have been scammed leave negative reviews online. This can make it difficult for honest businesses to attract new customers.
- Difficulty tracking down the scammers: Many of the people responsible for the scam are undocumented workers or do not have permanent residency. This makes it difficult for authorities to track them down and prosecute them.
**Did Google’s Dominance Result in a Shitty Internet?
A recent Verge article asserts that Google's dominance in the online information ecosystem has led to a homogenization of the web, with all websites looking and feeling the same and that Google's search engine algorithms reward websites that follow certain formatting and content guidelines, which discourages creativity and originality. The reality is more complex. New mediums of delivery require adopting to user needs and whether that is Google or Tik-Tok. Business content creators should focus on producing content that will perform well with their audience.
Generative AI and the Future of Consumer Preferences and its Impact on Search
The recent emergence of new generative AI devices and interfaces, like the Rabbit virtual assistant and the GPT store raises the question of what AI interface consumers will ultimately prefer and raises the question of AIs impact on Google search. Will they choose software, hardware, app integration or a stand along ChatGPT like interface? With Google search growth stalling even small losses of users to new ways to search might have an outsize impact on Google’s path forward.**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.
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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.
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**What Should Businesses Do About Google SGE?
Google has not yet announced any concrete plans for the future of Search Generative Experience (SGE), and it is unclear how it will evolve in the coming years. SGE is still in its early, very crude stages and it is not yet known how it will impact search traffic. Many SEOS reacted with fear and loathing but in the end the impact of SGE may in fact be minimal. However, businesses can start to experiment with SGE by:**
- Triggering SGE to appear by default.
- Optimizing the content on their websites to appear in SGE results.
- Monitoring the rankings of their websites in SGE results to see how they are affected.
Businesses should be cautious about heavily investing in or relying on SGE until it's more developed. The uncertainty surrounding its development and Google's missed deadline indicates a need for businesses to stay informed and adaptable.
**Google Goes All in On Interstitials on the iPhone:
Google, has long penalized interstitials as bad for user experience particularly when used on the mobile web to get people to convert to an app. There is no little irony that Google has now started doing just that on the iPhone when a user has Google search set as the default - nagging the user to switch to the Google App or Chrome for the iPhone. The fact that Google has been reduced to doing what they have long criticized implies that they think they will lose the DOJ Default Search Engine case and are running scared about losing iPhone market share.**
**Where is Bard Going?
A Bard product manager asked Reddit users for feature suggestions for Bard, leading to numerous responses. Participants noted that some requested features, such as document upload and image generation, are already available in ChatGPT. They anticipate these features will be added to Bard in 2024. The types of features requested by users—ranging from specific functionalities like coding assistance to more nuanced content moderation—sheds light on the diverse and evolving needs of users.**
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.
near memo ep 140
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**The Google Review Fraud Landscape in Maps & LSA and How a Business Should Respond:
Google Review Fraud Landscape (10:17):**
- Estimates that 18% of reviews across various platforms are fake.
- Home service industries, such as locksmiths, moving companies, and HVAC, are heavily affected.
- Legal sector is also impacted, with fake reviews prevalent among personal injury, criminal defense, and DUI lawyers.
LSA Review Fraud (21:38):
- Lead generation scammers are stealing business from ethical businesses using fake LSA reviews.
- They overcharge consumers and use higher ad revenue to improve their bidding strategy within LSA dashboards.
- Google's LSA program is designed to give consumers confidence in businesses by elevating them above spam and fraud, but it has not been successful.
Practical Advice for Business Owners to Cope With Fake Reviews (41:03):
- Gather evidence of fraudulent activity, such as fake reviews or stolen business licenses, to build a strong case.
- Report fake reviews to Google through the proper channels, but be aware that Google's response may be slow or ineffective.
- Consider legal action against fraudulent businesses, as it may be a violation of racketeering laws in certain jurisdictions.
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.
near memo ep 139
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Will Google's Reactive Behavior to Search Quality & AI Solve Their Problems?
- Google is struggling to adapt to the changing market dynamics, including the rise of AI, TikTok, and criticism of declining search result quality.
- Google's efforts to retain younger users by modifying its search results to include more engaging content like social media, short videos, and images.
- Google's algorithmic updates are aimed at improving search result relevance and combating the issue of low-quality AI-generated content.
LSA Ad Efficiency and Google's Transition to a UX That is AI Driven:
- Local service ads (LSAs) are outperforming traditional search results and organic traffic due to their higher efficiency in attracting clicks.
- The success of LSAs is due to their visual & emotional appeal, trust badges, and display of relevant information like star ratings, years in business, and the Google guarantee.
- Google is transitioning towards a new approach where search results will be tailored to users' emotional responses, leading to increased click-through rates on ads.
Google’s Incredible Notebook LM IS the Future of AI For the Rest of Us:
- Notebook LM is Google's most notable AI development this year, allowing users to create customized datasets and effectively build their own large language models.
- The accessibility of Notebook LM, makes this technology suitable even for non-technical users.
- Notebook LM has the potential to revolutionize various industries by empowering individuals to develop personalized AI tools and generate high-quality content with ease.
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.
Near Memo Ep 138
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**Can Gemini Fix Search?
Google’s current interface and attempts at query refinement are largely broken. Google’s new Gemini upgrade to SGE appears to offer advanced search query refinement capabilities and individualized user interfaces that could resolve both of those issues. The potential or customized and visually diverse search results when integrated into search could provide a much improved user experience.
The Impact of Google’s Rating Bias:
Google's more liberal grading scheme seems to inflate ratings compared to other platforms. This discrepancy leads to user confusion and skepticism about the reliability of these ratings. How do you reconcile these variances, considering how they can mislead consumers and impact decision-making processes. There is a need for more consistent and transparent rating systems across different platforms.
Reviewjacking Reflects Big Problems with Local Service Ads:
Google's due diligence regarding their Local Services Ads (LSA) program is severely lacking. The program, intended to guarantee consumers trustworthy services, has been exploited due to insufficient vetting processes. Some businesses, particularly in the HVAC sector, have manipulated Google's support system to attach unrelated but highly-rated Google Business Profiles (GBPs) to their LSAs, artificially inflating their reviews and misleading consumers. This exploitation points to a significant security flaw within Google's system, highlighting a disregard for safety and consumer trust. This oversight has allowed a few bad actors to significantly impact the market, especially in areas like Texas, where spam listings have become widespread.**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.
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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 Insights
- 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.
The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and C
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**Google’s Newest Search Features: “Whipped cream on S.H. I. .T”.?
While Google's new features aim to enhance user interaction and personalize the search experience, they may not address broader user concerns about search result quality and privacy. And in fact may, as David points out, might just be whipped cream on a not very tasty substrate. The success of these features will depend on their implementation, user acceptance, and compliance with global privacy standards.
Whitespark Research: Exploring the Landscape of Local Business Reviews across 1 Million Listings.
In the world of local businesses, customer reviews play a pivotal role in shaping public perception and influencing consumer decisions. Darren Shaw and Whitespark's comprehensive analysis of a million local businesses offers valuable insights into the distribution of reviews across various categories.
There is a lot of work to be done on the fake review front:
Google’s new review algo didn’t do a very good job spotting the many fake reviews on the physician’s practice recently fined by the NYS AG. The fine, $100,000, was hardly enough to pay for the time they spent analyizing the situation and certainly was not enough to deter someone that is making millions as an orthopedic surgeon. While the FTC and state’s AG are getting more aggressive bringing high profile cases, it is unlikely that is enough to stem the tide of fake reviews.**
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.near memo ep 135
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**Google Maps from useful to bloat?
Google Maps continues to add new features and functionality and as it has become a primary search engine for Google and its forward facing brand it has included so much functionality that it suffers from extreme bloat. The new immersive directions exemplifies the problem. but Maps is a deep moat and it is very difficult for others to challenge.
Citations and their value to Local Search:
In the past, citations from directories were crucial for local businesses, especially those without a significant inbound link footprint or a website. These third-party profiles often served as the only source of validation for Google to categorize and recognize the existence of these businesses. At that time, Google had fewer signals to rely on for local businesses, such as a less developed native review feature and a smaller corpus of reviews. This context made citations in directories like Yellow Pages, City Search, and Yelp significantly valuable, as they were well-ranked in Google's organic algorithm and helped propel the mentioned businesses in search rankings.**
**However, the landscape has shifted considerably. Nowadays, most businesses have claimed their Google Business Profiles and provide information directly to Google. A larger percentage of these businesses have their own websites with inbound links. This development diminishes Google's reliance on third-party directories for data validation, which was a significant role these directories played a decade ago. Furthermore, the authority and trust in many of these non-Yelp directories have declined, making citations in them less impactful for local SEO. The current strategy emphasizes identifying and targeting sites that rank for desired keywords, as these are more likely to draw clicks and direct customers. This shift highlights the need for local businesses and agencies to adapt their SEO strategies, focusing more on building a robust online presence and less on broad directory listings.
Google’s New Small Business Attribute: Helpful or Performative ?
This attribute aims to make it easier for consumers to discover small businesses online when shopping for products. Google defines a small business as an entity not part of a franchise, with fewer than $10 million in revenue and less than ten locations. However, there's a debate over this definition, as it excludes franchisees, who constitute a significant portion of small businesses in the U.S. Google plans to infer small business status from various signals and also allows businesses to affirmatively apply for the attribute.**
From a marketing perspective, this development is significant yet somewhat limited in its potential impact. The attribute is expected to help small businesses be discovered more easily, serving as a modifier or a long-tail tool in certain search contexts. However, there are concerns about the actual effectiveness of this feature in driving substantial exposure for small businesses. Critics argue that if Google were genuinely committed to enhancing small business discovery, this attribute would be more prominently integrated, such as in Google Shopping or as a filter in search ads. As it stands, the attribute may have a limited impact, appearing sporadically and possibly unnoticed by users. This suggests that, while beneficial, the attribute's impact on small business visibility and marketing might be more symbolic than substantial.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.
near memo ep 134
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**“Running a startup is like being in a knife fight,” BeanBox Co-Founder and CEO Matthew Berk unexpectedly says, as he describes the arduous but rewarding journey from the world of SaaS to making a real-world consumer product.
From Local Search to the Speciality Coffee Business:
Matthew Berk’s personal and professional path took him from a humanities degree to co-found a local-search startup (OpenList) and eventually to a more traditional real-world manufacturing and logistics business (Bean Box), where he’s the CEO today.
OpenList was ahead of its time as a local search engine and some of the things they did experimentally are now being deployed (e.g., generative-AI review summaries). OpenList was acquired by Marchex in 2006, to provide content for the latter’s extensive portfolio of local domains at the time.
Berk also explains why he loves to write code. And he talks about the steep learning curve in getting BeanBox off the ground, the hard lessons learned in the early days and how they’ve stayed true to their customers as the company has scaled.
Search, Social and Ads: BeanBox’s Marketing Surprises:
We discuss the similarities and differences between running a software startup and a more traditional business with a physical product. Berk also explains the challenges and satisfactions of building a consumer brand that touches people’s lives on a daily basis.
Another significant topic explores BeanBox’s marketing strategies and lessons learned. What worked in the past and what’s working today? Berk covers Amazon, affiliates, Google Shopping Ads, SEO, content and social/influencer marketing. He explains why BeanBox focused obsessively on SEO in the early days, but now not so much.
The company has decided to crowdsource its latest funding round. Berk explains the challenges of investing in growth but also building a sustainable business and maintaining product quality**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.
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**GBP Call History’s History - What does it say about Google?
Google Business Profile Call History has been problematic from the start because it made the business of calling a business more like roulette. When it disappeared after months of barely functioning every thought it had been nuked. But it's back. Its chaotic development, its checkered history, the lack of communication around it speaks to all of the things that Google does poorly and why any smart business would not put such a critical piece of infrastructure in Google’s hands.
Bright Local Local Business Discovery and Trust Report:
Brightlocal’s second discovery and trust report surveyed 1100 users in the US and looks at everything from the impact of inaccurate listings to which social sites searchers trust. People still trust Google and Google Maps while trust in Facebook, Yelp and the others is much much less.**
**How will Google’s SGE impact local search and what will it deliver?
Google’s Bard strategy of taking generative AI as a search tool into their productivity and assistant tool makes sense. But what of the Search Generative Experience in search? The test is coming to end in December and we ask exactly what can we expect and what should we think about as it relates to local search?**
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.
NearMemo Ep 132
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**Bulk Dashboard Comeback?, GBP listing cleanup, Alternatives to Google search
Segment 1 Title (100 chars): Will GBP rescue the multi-location Business Profile Manager dashboard from the trash bin?
Google recently added a new functionality to the Business Profile Manager dashboard: they upgraded the bulk Insights download to match the data points available in the API and the Google Maps editing interface. Is this an indication that Google is finally dusting off the dashboard and is going to make it fit for service?**
**GBP listing cleanup & more rigorous verification → less fraud but more work for honest businesses:
Over the past 15 years Google largely allowed fake businesses and fake reviews to persist in the Google Maps index. Starting 2 years ago Google started, finally, cleaning up listings and reviews. They have subsequently implemented more rigorous verification standards
If Apple builds it (a search engine) will they come (from Google)?
Roughly half of consumers are not satisfied with Google search. Apple, in recent testimony, claims to not be interested in building a search engine because Google is so good. And yet rumors persist that Apple has been doing the do to actually build a search engine. Google meanwhile with Bard and Google Assistant and hardware upgrades is trying to capitalize on the 45% that are Google devotees.**
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.
near memo ep 131
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**“Clicks Are Not a ranking signal” except that they are:
If we have learned anything over the years with Google it is that you need to take with a huge grain of salt. While they might not lie, they have such narrow definitions and unstated assumptions that you really don’t know what they mean. Recent evidence in the antitrust case reveals that to be more true than ever.**
**Google Comments on Review Fraud: “We are the victim here”:
In a shameless example of self interested BS Google suggested that the FTC should focus on the buyers and sellers of fake reviews in their new rule and NOT the platforms that caused the very problem. Given that Google did very little about fake reviews for over a decade and created the very incentives that they now blame merchants for taking advantage of, the FTC should look to both the buyer and sellers of fake reviews AND to the platforms that have caused the problems.**
**Bard extensions - Google’s local and travel data creates better AI experience:
Google has indicated that there will be a number of extensions from both themselves and 3rd parties to enhance Bard. This past week we saw the introduction of Google’s Maps, airline & hotel information into Bard. It seems that this is both a good way to limit the “hallucinations” of generative AI AND to extend their search prominence directly into their productivity tools.**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.
near memo ep 130
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**What Is Content?:
Purna Virji and I discuss what motivated her to write the book, how she defines “content” and why she took a very expansive approach to content strategy and marketing. She also discusses the foundation of great content and what digital marketers can learn from traditional marketing.**
**Creating ‘High Impact’ Content:
What exactly makes a “high impact” content? How do you differentiate your content, especially in a B2B context? Virji explains how to find the overlap between internal company needs and customer needs as the sweet spot and starting point for content marketing. Why you need to start with measurement and why marketers should always choose quality over quantity. Finally, how do you decide which channels and formats to pursue in a world of expanding content demands?**
**AI and the Future of Content:
AI will have a major impact on content marketing. Will it usher in a golden age or a tsunami of mediocrity? Will organizations downsize content departments but maintain the same output expectations? Can AI-generated content be differentiated? We also discuss SEO and why there’s a gap between “create content for people” rhetoric and the “facts on the ground.” Virji is ultimately upbeat and optimistic about the future and ends with a three-pronged framework for creating better content.**
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.
near memo ep 129
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The big picture of review fraud - who does it and why:
We explore the full range of review fraud from fake positive reviews, black hat negative reviews and review extortion with Curtis Boyd of the Transparency Company. How widespread is it, is it growing, which categories are most likely to participate in it and why.
**How to deal with fake review attacks and competitors who use fake reviews:
If you are an honest business can you compete in a world rife with review fraud. We discuss how to deal with fake review attacks and how to get fake reviews that your competitors have gotten taken down.
The FTC and fake review guidelines and rules:
The FTC has been upping their enforcement game with new Guidelines which set a standard and upcoming Rules which will facilitate their ability to impose fines on buyers and sellers of reviews. The major platforms are largely exempt from any enforcement but their is language in the upcoming FTC rules that makes a business fully responsible for compliance.**
The Future of Reviews: What will see over the next 24 months in review spam & possible enforcement:
New rules from the FTC and better filters from Google might turn the corner on fake reviews but the lack of FTC resources and the lack of Google’s focus may prevent that from happeningThe 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.
near memo ep 128
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**Upcoming Google Anit-trust case unlikely to change much of anything:
Google’s antitrust case is starting next week. Google filed for a summary judgment and some of the issues were decided in their favor. Only two remain; The payment to Apple as the default iPhone search engine and whether Google uses Search Ads 360 to thwart competitors. Even if the case is decided against Google, it is unlikely to change much in the world of search.**
**GBP support finally introduces a form to dedupe listings in Google Maps:
One of the long standing issues in managing large multi-location businesses in Google is the frequent occurrence of duplicate listings and historically, no easy way to get them merged. Now, likely in response to increased European regulations, Google has introduced a simple form to report and hopefully nuke listing duplicates. When combined with a product like Whitespark GPB duplicate notifications there is a real chance that large multi-location businesses, particularly hospitals and clinics, can actually get their duplicates under control.**
**When searching, consumers consider many results:
It has long been thought that the click through curve on the front page of Google was very, very steep with users primarily clicking the #1 result, fewer clicking on 2 and 3 with virtually none going beyond that. Our behavior research suggests that user behavior is much more complicated than that and that they will often examine 3, 4 or even 10 results if the local decision is important enough.**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.
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Local SEOs wonder whether searchers actually enter the Local Finder from the Pack results. We often think no but our research indicates that not only do searchers enter the Local Finder on a regular basis, they also scroll deep and often pick a business not in the top three.
Local link building is hard but NearMedia research indicates that even in competitive markets in competitive categories it only takes several great local links to compete.
Google has created a world where focusing on search optimizations has rewarded businesses who have invested in SEO. Yet they consistently lecture users about the need for user centric content. The reality is that there is a great deal of hypocrisy on the part of Google in these matters. How should they deal with this reality?
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How SMBs buy services:
Despite what we may think, neither word of mouth nor social are how small and very small businesses buy payment solutions. Search was where it was at. This survey likely can be extrapolated to any SAAS product or service. While it takes longer and is harder to gain search traffic, search and SEO ultimately pays off if you are trying to reach the SMB audience.
DSA is kicking in and we are seeing its impact globally:
DSA and the related P2B regulations become effective at the end of this month. Both sets of regulations require more transparency and accountability for business to business services like GBP. We have seen a number of support form upgrades and processes that enhance the flow of Google support. In Europe businesses are additionally offered the benefit of mediation services. Whether support will actually improve or is this just transparency theater is yet to be determined.
AI generated artwork is NOT covered by copyright:
We are at the beginning ogg generative AI for creative uses AND at the beginning of the process of establishing copyright around the creations generated. The Copyright Office first granted a copyright to a comic books whose images were created by Midjourney and then later reversed itself with respect to the images. They said that since these were created by AI, they're not copyrightable and that you cannot copyright something if there isn't sufficient human involvement. Ultimately these questions will be resolved in the Supreme Court.
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.
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**Google Ambassadors (ie Gig Workers) now staffing GBP support poorly:
Google Business Profile support has added a new layer of first level support using what they call Google Ambassadors. These are “passionate brand advocates” working as gig workers. While it provides a comforting, warm body to the chat support experience, it is likely to just waste your time. So be prepared to take a winding path to your answer and expect to be passed along without a conclusive solution.**
**New Google feature: Search Generative Experience while browsing:
This new generative AI search feature, adds automatic article summaries to a web page to quickly find the web page’s key points and jump directly to the relevant section to learn more. It works reasonably well on the desktop but is problematic on mobile devices. Google is attempting to insert themselves into your website and to direct users to other searches.**
**Are AI Generated review summaries the future of platform reviews?
Newegg, Amazon and others have started to use AI to create summaries of the typical user review. It will expedite purchases because people will get the information they need from the review summary without having to read the underlying reviews. It is an idea that possibly will make shopping more efficient and sets a trend that Google will surely follow.**
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.
near memo ep 124
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**Google VS Chat GPT Taste Test:
In blind testing, users appear to prefer ChatGPT search results over Google by almost 2:1. Those are the findings of the test's creator, ClickPop, which requires some caveats. Nonetheless, the outcome suggests the Google brand and familiar UI may be a bigger factor in Google's dominant search position than search quality**
**Google Ad Liaison provided bad pruning advice to CNET:
CNET was "busted" by Gizmodo this week for pruning a bunch of old content. The search liaison for Google came out and said: "Hey, you shouldn't do this. You shouldn't prune your content. The notion that Google doesn't like old content is just wrong".**
The takeaway from the comment is intended to be "don't prune content", which is a piece of very bad SEO advice. It sounds like CNET is, has a really good SEO team that clearly understands what they are doing. They noted: "Removing content from our site is not a decision we take lightly. Our teams analyze many data points to determine whether there are pages on CNET that are not currently serving a meaningful audience. This is an industry wide best practice for large sites like ours", whatever Google might say.
Consumers indicate that reviews are important but do they read them?
Our user research in YMYL local categories continues to show that reviews are incredibly important to reviewers; it is the single most mentioned criteria and probably influences even those searchers that don’t mention it. Yet very few people actually seem to read the reviews and primarily look at the rating stars and secondarily at the quantity. This should be a clarion call for the FTC to ban any review incentives rather than require that they be labeled.
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.
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New Local ad format, Updated GBP Guideline clarifies policies, Google SGE shows reference links:
New Local Ad format is a local ad as local ads should be
Google seems to have rolled out a new ad unit that relies on local assets like GBP photos for the the creatives. The ads include a map, review ratings and an image are very eye-catching and appear to be extremely easy to create and use. This is the ad that Google should have made available to local advertisers from day one.
New GBP Guidelines clarify long “secret” policies:
Google rolled out a number of new policy statements regarding the rules guiding suspensions and content take downs affecting Google Business Profiles (GBP). These guidelines, long the working rules that affected listings and listing content, now make explicit how a user accounts and abuses affect whether a business continues to have access to any given listing or whether that listing will be removed from Google. While this increased clarity is welcome the devil is in the details.
Google SGE finally includes reference links:
Rather than just straight up plagiarism of the recent past, Google’s new AI based search test is now testing three different ways of including links in the “search generative experience (SGE). Some of these link tests make the links more obvious than others. However none of this pertains to local as there Google solely references their Local Knowledge Graph and GBP listings. In most of these cases, to get to the business website requires 2 clicks (go figure). While the SGE experience is improving it still has a ways to go to be better than the current search experience.
3The 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.
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**Google continues to lose product search market share:
A recent quarterly survey from Jungle Scout indicates that Google and to a lesser extent Amazon are both losing product search market share. Google has lost almost a 7% share on a year over year basis despite massive investments in Product search related tech. Social media, particularly TikTok seems to be the big winner with an almost 6% gain. Does this reflect a growing consumer dissatisfaction with Google (and Amazon) or does it just reflect users default way that they are spending their time?**
**Scammers hijack Airline phone numbers on Google:
Last week, amidst massive flight delays, scammers hijacked the service phone numbers for a number of airlines listed in the Google search results. The Google friendly press reacted as if this was a one off occurrence and Google provided their standard: “We do not tolerate this misleading activity, and are constantly monitoring and evolving our platforms to combat fraud …**
our teams have already begun reverting the inaccuracies, suspending the malicious accounts involved, and applying additional protections to prevent further abuse.”
However given that this has occurred on an almost annual basis since 2008 and continues to this day, one has to ask if Google really cares or if this is just how they do business; collect data on the cheap and externalize the cost of their ML moderation to consumers and businesses?
**Yelp scolds businesses for soliciting reviews:
Recently a do-gooder Twitter user did some armchair activism and encouraged users worldwide to leave a review for her waitress at a local restaurant because the waitress would be “spiffed” $15 for each review. Yelp in typical fashion, slapped an Unusual Activity Warning Alert on the business and proceeded to lecture business owners about the evil of soliciting reviews.**
The case is interesting because both reviewers AND Yelp seem to be out of touch with what makes sense in this somewhat nuanced situation.
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.
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Apple Maps & Local Opportunities:
Apple Maps is ACTUALLY used for local discovery and it appears to be sending more traffic than either Yelp or Bing. According to Apple insights at least 28% of clicks came from category searches. While Apple Maps generates ~5% of the web visits and perhaps 10% of the phone calls of GBP, that is enough to put Apple Maps in second place as a source of local leads.
Interestingly having access to both Apple and Google Maps driving direction clicks we can estimate Apple Maps market share at about 40% of all iPhone users
Learnings from going undercover as a quality rater for Google:
Cyrus Shepard signed up to be a Google Quality Rater and doing so allowed him to provide additional insights into what Google thinks is important. The details of content, user intent, and web page quality understanding clearly inform the algo and provide a basis for Google’s results particularly in “your money and your life” categories.
Is Google’s AI based SGE a dead end or the future of search?
Initial excitement around Google’s AI response to bing chat raised hopes of a better user experience with search. The product, being slow and often not informative, has not really done that. And, at least according to this limited Twitter poll, users are using it less. Is it all just theater?
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.
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The enshittification of Google Analytics:
Google analytics, with their forcing of GA4 on an audience that doesn’t need, understand or want the complexity, has created an opportunity for the market to deliver simple, easy to implement and understandable analytics. Will this fall to a third party or will it surface organically within the CMSs and operational platforms that are currently available?
Twitter, where art thou replacement?
The enshittification of Twitter has moved along at a rapid pace and into that void we have seen numerous efforts to provide alternatives. With Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky (and a host of wannabes) vying for their attention it isn’t yet clear where anyone should focus and put their energies.
The FTC releases new review Guidelines & Rules for Reviews:
This week the FTC went wild and crazy and published numerous and voluminous treatises providing Guidelines and proposed Rules for endorsements and reviews. Reviews have clearly been elevated in standing and the new guidance focuses on trying to maintain their honesty and integrity. But given that the real problems lie with Google and Amazon, and these effort largely excludes them, it is not clear what the impact will be.
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.
NearMemo Ep119
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Tiktok IS about Local but not the way you think
While the Wall Street Journal thinksTikTok holds companies hostage and a small business in Philadelphia thinks it is unfair to get so many fake reviews, there is no denying that Tiktok has scale. While it hasn't really provided any real local discovery options, any given video can get so much traction that it can be felt at the most local of levels.
Google Perspectives: innovation for the SERPs or bandaid to prevent social media flight?
Google has rolled out a new mobile CTA at the top of many serps called Perspectives which provides a dedicated area at the top of the search result for social media related commentary on the topic of your search. Depending on the query intent it might show first in the radio buttons or it might be last but it includes YouTube, Reddit, Quara and Twitter (amongst others) commentary on the topic. Many think that things have become less useful on Google; too many ads, too much spam, et cetera, and Google has to respond to it. The question is whether this is an adequate response.
New Google GBP feature “By Owner” & new Whitespark tool reflect reality that GBP is rented not owned
Google is now highlighting “all” owner controlled GBP content in one tab; By owner in the mobile business profile. It includes the business description and their updates (aka Posts). It is not clear why a user would ever select or be curious about that tab.
Whitespark has released a new dashboard that tracks the changes that users and Google regularly make to all of the other data in the business profile like phone number, address, categories, URLs etc. and reports these annoying changes back to the business owner.
When viewed together, any rational business should be able to understand that they control very, very little of their own profile on Google and what they do control is unlikely to be seen.
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.
NearMemo Ep118
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Does the world need another mapping project and an open source one at that? Meta, Amazon web Services, Tom Tom & Microsoft think so and teamed up to create the Overture Maps Foundation, with Marc Prioleau at the helm.
The Overture Maps Foundation is a new organization within the open source Linux Foundation. It aims to improve mapping services by focusing on open map data that meets evolving market needs. By collaborating and sharing data, the foundation seeks to avoid duplication of efforts and allow businesses, governments, and organizations to concentrate on developing unique and value-added mapping applications. The foundation acknowledges the importance of proprietary data but emphasizes the benefits of open data for innovation and efficiency. While not currently seen as a major threat, the foundation's position aligns with the idea that proprietary mapping data should be distinct enough to provide value and not easily replaceable by freely available alternatives.
Introduction to Overture Maps Foundation 00:02
The Overture Maps Foundation is a new organization started within the Linux Foundation, aimed at open map data. It focuses on meeting the evolving market needs and improving map data quality. The foundation caters to individuals and organizations building map services, whether they are commercial entities, government entities, or NGOs.
Marc Prioleau's Background in Mapping 00:19
Marc Prioleau, the executive director of the Overture Maps Foundation, has a long history in the mapping world. He has worked in the GPS and mapping space for over 20 years, starting with Trimble Navigation and later working for companies like Telcantar, DeCarta, and Mapbox. His experience lies in developing large volume mapping applications and working with companies to improve their mapping services.
The Need for Overture Maps Foundation 02:41
The need for the Overture Maps Foundation arose due to the increasing demands of map data. As mapping applications have evolved, the requirements for map data, including attributes, refresh rates, and spatial accuracy, have continuously risen. To keep up with these demands, the foundation focuses on providing open map data to enable companies to build richer and more differentiated mapping services.
Changing World and Data 14:08
The world is constantly changing, and data plays a crucial role in keeping up with these changes. Different industries and sectors require specific data to meet their unique needs. Companies, businesses, and governments utilize data to make informed decisions and build upon existing data layers.
Collaboration and Open Source 14:32
Collaboration and open-source initiatives have proven to be valuable in enhancing data quality, efficiency, and resource allocation. Open data, when combined with other data sources, becomes even more powerful. Removing barriers and sharing resources can lead to collective improvement and focus on more innovative aspects.
Utilizing Ambient Data for Map Building 23:18
AIS is exploring various sources of ambient data to enhance its map building capabilities. These sources include GPS traces, imagery, computer vision, and other signals. AI technology, such as computer vision, can extract valuable map data from imagery. Additionally, signals like movement d
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Google LSA reviews come, they go but LSA still sucks:
**Last week we saw seismic activity in the disappearance of Google Local Service Ads (LSA) reviews and there was hope, however faint, that they were fixing their fake review problem. But like with so much around Google local efforts, that was not the case. Fake reviews in LSA are emblematic of Google’s lost opportunity with these ads. They offered up the promise of Google being able to track the whole consumer journey and being able to verify reviews as authentic.
We discuss the many reasons contributing to why Google’s LSA is has failed to live up to its promise of vetted businesses and verified reviews and to a large extent has just become another spam vector.**
Localized stories and visualizations are a path to SEO success for National Local Brands:
Buzzsumo did a broad linking study to understand which news sources linked to which and how to best leverage that knowledge to increase the likelihood of content placement to generate backlinks.
What stood out was the fact that localized stories and visualizations are the most likely to be syndicated in top-tier media. And this is a tactic that any national firm with a local presence can leverage to achieve branding, links AND local visibility.
Are AI driven personal assistants the future of search?
AI is dramatically changing the nature of search. Will Google’s SGE define that future or will it be something like Mustafa Suleyman’s Inflection? Inflection is Mustafa Suleyman’s new company that he founded with Ried Hoffman after selling Deep Mind to Google and working for Google. He believes that Google’s vision is fundamentally flawed.
What will replace search, if anything and how long will it take?
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.
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When should you ask for reviews?
Common wisdom in the world of reputation management is that you ask for reviews immediately following a client transaction. Research from the University of Nevada seems to indicate otherwise. But like many things in marketing, it depends. It depends on your demographic, your product or service and likely on the relationship you have with your customer. Test it, is the best advice.
Is Google SGE a headfake?
With the rollout of Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) Google seems to have staunched the flow of the movement to Bing. But the product is flakey, shows sometimes and not others, provides mediocre results and is generally an unsatisfactory experience. Was this just a way to keep users and Wall Street on board until Bard is integrated with apps and they can better deliver on AI in search?
Apple Vision Pro - Truly a vision - With the high price & the size it is easy to be skeptical of Apple’s Vision Pro. Reports from actual users paint a different picture, one of a desktop replacement that seems to provide a metaphor for the next generation of computing.
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.
near memo ep 116
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Segment 1: Activist investor suggests Yelp sale
Eric Semler of TCS Capital Management criticizes Yelp for not delivering enough value to its stockholders. He suggests that Yelp should sell itself to Angi, citing Yelp's strong services business and potential for synergy in a merger.
While Yelp has found some success in its services business and transitioned to a SaaS model, there are concerns about its long-term viability. Will Yelp survive as a stand alone company?
Segment 2: Google Merchant Center Next - a cool product without market?
Google's Merchant Center can be likened to an e-commerce content management system with a focus on generating AI-driven ads. It allows businesses to create products and easily gather information from their websites.
Clearly Google is investing heavily in SMB local inventory and this contrasts with the disaster that is GBP. But while Google's Merchant Center appears to be a commendable product, the challenge lies in identifying its precise target customer. Without a clearly defined target audience, it becomes difficult to determine the success of the product.
Segment 3: Bard's Journey as an Alternative to Google Search
Bard has been positioning itself as an alternative to Google, offering users an alternative search experience. While it is still a work in progress and may not be at par with Google's capabilities, Bard shows promise for the future. As Bard continues to integrate various components of Google, such as the knowledge graph and maps, it aims to become a robust alternative search engine.
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GBP Image Not Approved, a bug or feature & how to tell:
Google Business Profile image upload has long exhibited a bug that prevents images from being published. The problem is that Google uses the exact same messaging for many conditions that lead to Google not publishing the image. How does a business know if they have broken often unstated rules or if they are experiencing a bug?
We discuss how to tell and what this really says about Google’s Business Profile efforts.
**ChatGPT has added plug-ins & the web integration and it sucks:
ChatGPT generated excitement and discussions around its impact on search because it was such a great first release. The addition of web access and plug-ins though put a chill over the party as they are slow and cumbersome.
This calls into question whether ChatGPT can ever challenge Google? While still useful, this “upgrade” certainly doesn’t threaten Google’s position and seems more hype than improvement.
Yelp integration with Google Reserve reflects their weakened position:
Over the past several years, Yelp has sought to diversify revenues away from advertising, including through new merchant fees and SaaS tools. In the latter category, Yelp Guest Manager, its front of the house system for restaurants, is integrating with Toast and Reserve with Google.
Yelp, despite their size and public stature, currently only has ~10,000 restaurants using their Guest Manager product and it barely impacted Yelp’s bottom line. The fact that they chose to integrate with Google speaks volumes.**
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.
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Google I/O - How to make the interesting seem mundane:
We discuss the highlights of Google I/O, focusing on search and local search. While the hardware announcements, such as the foldable phone and affordable Pixel, were interesting, the overall event lacked excitement and vitality. The emphasis on AI felt overplayed, and some announcements seemed more suitable for a Wallstreet audience. Despite this, there were notable features like the integration of the knowledge graph into Google's search tool, Bar.
While Google I/O seemed more geared towards impressing the market than delivering groundbreaking innovations it is clear that Google has put a stake in the AI ground and Search with AI and with that their war with Bing, ChatGPT and even Tik-Tok has been declared
Google search and AI = SGE:
Google introduced two new features in their search results: an AI snapshot and an expanded version of Bard. The AI snapshot provides a generative AI description of potential models, along with shopping ads and follow-up queries. It aims to enhance the search experience and remember previous information. Bard, on the other hand, integrates different content types, allows third-party extensions, and may become a new SEO target. While these changes may not affect all searches, they could compress the buying journey for users and potentially lead to more transactional interactions. The impact on local search and the prominence of the local pack is still uncertain. Overall, it remains to be seen how users will react to these updates and whether they will result in more zero-click actions. The speed of the generative AI feature and its overall user experience are also points of interest.
The Rise of Bard: Expanding the Boundaries of Search:
Bard represents a significant step forward in the realm of generative AI and has the potential to reshape the way we interact with search engines. We explore its capabilities, implications for users, and its integration with Google's existing ecosystem of applications.
**Can Bard can serve as a valuable substitute for many search queries?
The Future of Search & Implications for Local:
Recognizing the threat posed by Bing, Google has taken steps to match its competitor's features. Amidst these developments, search engine optimization (SEO) professionals and local SEO experts may find themselves uncertain about the future. The knowledge graph, a structured and reliable source of information, becomes even more critical in the age of AI-driven tools.
That being said, the integration of plug-ins from 3rd party sites such as Zillow and OpenTable, raise questions about the future of third-party sites.
In an era of AI generated content Brands face special challenges. In this environment, brands that prioritize and protect the integrity of their content become essential refuges for users seeking reliable information.
Adapting to the changing SEO landscape, and safeguarding brand integrity are essential for businesses to thrive. Embracing AI technologies, prioritizing user experience, and cultivating strong customer relationships will be key strategies to navigate the uncertainties and position businesses for long-term success in this dynamic environment.**
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.
NearMemo Ep 113
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The integration of AI into the SAAS world has unleashed unprecedented innovation and transformation. Darby Sieben discusses how Unbounce started using AI to improve their core products and to build additional products to help businesses achieve higher conversions.
Companies that effectively harness AI capabilities can expect significant drivers of differentiation
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Understanding and managing the ever expanding Google Local Knowledge Panel: Google's Knowledge Panel and Business Profile are essential components of a local digital marketing strategy. The Knowledge Panel is a rich search result that appears in response to a user's query and provides relevant information about the queried entity. On the other hand, the Business Profile is a free listing provided by Google for businesses to manage their online presence, which feeds into Google's Knowledge Graph and its understanding of an entity.
The Knowledge Panel draws information from various sources, including Google's Knowledge Graph, Wikipedia, Google Scholar, Google News, and other third-party sites. It is dynamic and ever-changing, with the information displayed depending on the user's location, the entity in question, and the search query. However, businesses have little control over the information displayed on the Knowledge Panel.
**Tracking your way to success:
Tracking user engagement and conversions is essential to understanding which components of your Google My Business Profile are driving user actions. We discuss some best practices for tracking user engagement and conversions across both Google Insights AND your website.
By implementing best practices such as UTM tracking, analyzing user actions, and focusing on the primary website link, businesses can better understand their audience's behavior and make informed decisions.
Beyond Google Local - being ready to live without Google:
While Google may dominate the search engine market, it is crucial not to rely solely on Google and to diversify your online presence. By focusing on people, controlling your digital assets, maintaining close customer relationships, and trying different services, you can build resilience and prepare for any changes that may come in the future.**
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.
near memo ep 112
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Will AI totally destroy the review economy? What will replace reviews?
The appearance of AI-generated reviews on Amazon has significant implications for the future of reviews and will aid in increasing the scale of an already serious problem. While Google has attempted to combat this somewhat with critic reviews, the decimation of local news will make it challenging to highlight authoritative reviewers for restaurants and other businesses. Reviews will remain relevant for low consideration purchases in categories where they can be trusted but will likely decline in overall importance in the local ecosystem
**Does declining Google Business listing totals reflect “peak” GBP?
Google's annual economic impact report revealed that the number of businesses with claimed Google Business profiles dropped from 20.2 million in 2021 to 18.7 million in 2022, leading to a few theories including Google having reached “peak” SMB and Google's crackdown on spammy profiles and the erosion of consumer search behavior. However, the U.S Census Bureau reported an increase in new business formations in the same period. The discrepancy in the numbers highlights the difficulty in identifying an addressable market for small businesses.
As social media fueled news sites fail opportunity abounds for sites willing to build own audience:
The decline of Facebook's promotion of news and external links has led to the failure of news businesses that relied solely on the social media platform, such as BuzzFeed, Insider, and Vice. This shift in social media highlights the importance of owning one's presence and building a loyal audience through channels such as email newsletters, which offer opportunities for ad revenue and sponsored content. Local news and businesses should embrace this new reality and adapt their efforts accordingly to avoid vulnerability to the changing social media landscape. Local media brands still possess a trust factor that presents certain opportunities to be exploited despite limited resources.**
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.
near memo ep 111
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Consumer Reports new app, Permission Slip eases privacy requests but is still a baby step:
Permission Slip from Consumer Reports simplifies the process of making data deletion or "don't sell my data" requests to third-party websites and retailers. It is an elegant first step solution for individuals to navigate privacy exposures in states with stricter criteria. It centralizes the process and simplifies the burden on the end user. But privacy is still too complicated and put much of the burden on the end user in this case to download an app, and figure out where they need to take action. Consumer Reports, as a respected organization, has not stepped up on the privacy front. There is the need for privacy controls to be simple and global and enforced.
Consumer Reports' app 'Permission Slip' centralizes and simplifies the process of making data deletion or 'do not sell my data' requests. | 00:49
The app seems to be legitimate and points towards something much simpler and easier to use for the consumer. | 01:53
Consumer Reports' new product, which helps consumers delist their personal information from various online sites, is a great concept that resonated well with users. | 03:07
Consumer Reports is well positioned to lead the charge for opt-in privacy and has been remiss in not doing so. | **06:19
TripAdvisor Review Transparency Report highlights 2022 review increases but hides declining reviews:
TripAdvisor has released their 2023 Review Transparency Report which revealed that reviews increased by 20% between 2020-2022, with 30.2 million total reviews in 2022. Business owners responded to one-third of the reviews, and there was a 16% increase in the total number of businesses listed.**
While the press release took a bubbly positive tone, reviews have decreased by almost 60% since 2018, suggesting that the industry may have reached "Peak reviews."
TripAdvisor received 30.2 million reviews in 2022, which is a 20% increase over 2020. | 00:02
One-third of the total reviews were responded to by business owners, indicating high engagement. | 01:10
Travel industry has been disrupted by Covid and reviews have decreased, though air travel has returned, review rates are still significantly below 2019 levels | 03:28
Reviews may have gone to other platforms like Doordash or OpenTable | 03:53
Google AI PR push masks lapses and fear:
Google is responding to the threat from chat GPT and Bing by releasing Bard, an AI language model, and Magi, a project combining traditional search with Bard. The recent PR push from Google seeks to reassure investors that they are still the top dog in search, although they were caught flat-footed by the AI competition.
The emergence of verticalized search engines, combined with the use of AI language models, has lowered the barrier to entry for new search engines, making it unlikely that Google's push will scare away new entrants.
Google's response to threats from chat GPT and Bing has been incredibly clumsy and transparent, as evidenced by the recent wave of PR and their upcoming release of Magi project. | 00:02
Google may be facing potential loss of revenue from competitors rather than cannibalizing their own ads clicks in traditional search, representing a mental shift for the company. | 03:20
Using search engines like Google for general high-level questions and research inquiries, rather than business lookups. | 06:37
If you're a business and you just want somebody to call you, zero click is actually a good thing and local. | **10:05
Disclosure: Note that while the summaries and**
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Unpacking OLAs: The Pros and Cons of Google's New Ad Type for Local Businesses:
OLAs, a new ad type that appear on the business profile for local businesses, have been formally released. These ads are independent of the business and can be placed by allowlisted companies. Google has a whitelist to get into this program, and the ads can be placed by companies such as Groupon, Michelin, or a hair product company. The ad targets specific products, such as hair treatments, tires, or events, and appear on the business profile of local businesses that carry these products.
From a business point of view, Olas can be problematic since businesses have virtually no control over them. There is no easy way to opt-out of the program, and businesses have to go back to the original vendor running the ad to get taken off the ad.
Bard's Local SEO: Implications for businesses:
David recently conducted an experiment with Bard's local search capabilities. He searched for specific categories of businesses like lawyers, golf courses, and breweries and he found that Bard's results were close to what you would see on Google's local pack and organic search results. However, the results were not exactly the same. Upon further investigation, Bard relied on leading directories like Yelp, Avo, TripAdvisor, and vertical directories to gather its data.
What are the implications for Local SEO and what do you have to do now to be ready for AI driven local search on Google?
The Impact of Chat Engines and Virtual Assistants on the Future of Local Search: Challenges, Promises, and Possibilities:
The future of search is uncertain, but it is clear that search engines will continue to evolve to provide users with the most accurate and relevant results. The integration of chat engines, local search, AI, and virtual assistants may play a significant role in shaping the future of search. The adoption and success of chat engines and virtual assistants will depend on their integration with traditional search engines and the level of trust users have in their results.
How does E-EAT impact AI results? How will Google surface Bard in the context of search? Is the quality ready? Is the layout easy enough to succeed in local?
Disclosure: Note that while the summaries and titles may have (actually were) created by AI the videos are the real deal
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.
near memo ep 109
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Will Google merging Bard into Assistant resurrect assistants from the ashes?
Google Assistant, offered up by Google as the future of search, has never fulfilled its promise. Will the integration of AI finally free these assistants from their constraints? And will this integration of AI & Assistant with search help or hurt Google as the dominant search engine.
Wix integrates AI for SMB content in a way that will helps the SMB:
Wix is one of the first web platforms that has integrated ChatGPT as a content creation tool for SMBS. The speed of getting to market is impressive and way that they integrated with prompts makes it much easier for the very small business owner to create content.
Can GM build a better CarOS & throw CarPlay away?
Starting in 2024 GM is integrating their own car os into their EV platforms. Is GM solving a consumer problem or a problem that GM has? Can GM succeed with subscriptions, ads and a new OS that excludes iPhones?
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.
near memo ep 108
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Local Search Ranking Factors - Big Takeaways and big changes from previous years:
In this segment we take a bird’s eye view of the survey, how it was crafted, its history and the big takeaways.
What has changed the most? What is new? What are the LSA ranking factors? What are the basic must do activities to get started in the ranking arena.
Local Search Ranking Factors - Difference makers & lesser known tactics:
The factors we explored in segment 1 are essentially table stakes. If you really want to compete in local search rankings it is important to implement the difference makers. These efforts are reflected in survey answers 11- 30. This applies to both the local pack and the organic results.
Beyond the difference makers in local search activity, we explore some of the dark horse tactics. These are factors that are buried and may only work in certain markets, verticals or a particular situation. But when they do work, they work very well.
Local Search Ranking Factors - Conversion factors and myths:
Not every activity will lead to increased ranking but could very well lead to increased conversions. It doesn’t matter if you are ranked #1 if the supporting information doesn’t reinforce your position, the searcher will just scroll past you and land on someone else's listing. The days of searchers blindly picking the first result are long gone, so we explore those attributes that make your GBP listing THE most appealing.
And don’t forget the myths. Like an imperfect process, many techniques lead nowhere but sound good. The problem is they waste your time. Learn which are tactics are really just not effective despite what some say
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.
near memo ep 107
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FTC proposes new rules to rein in subscription abuses: The FTC has been on a roll fighting the many “dark patterns” of the internet. Last week they added a $245m fine for Fortnite to pay for consumer restitution of inappropriate charges incurred after a single misleading click. This week they proposed a rule to eliminate abuses of the “Negative Option rule” which requires consumers to proactively seek out and navigate complicated scenarios to cancel subscriptions. The rule when approved will give the FTC to impose requirements across a large number of industries that will hopefully rein in subscription abuses.
The Bard goes local, sort of: Bard, despite hallucinations, was competent at making local recommendations and that use case could be expanded. Is a chat interface the best way to surface local data or is Maps really the best search metaphor?
The Bard use case is more generative and less searchy: Google is positioning Bard for more creative uses and unlike Bing is NOT integrating it into search in any meaningful way. This may be because it behooves them financially to not do so. Regardless, Bard is capable of some things that Bing just can’t do. While Bing is controlling the conversation about AI and search, Google seems to be heading in a different direction, one that leverages AI as a content creation tool.
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.
near memo ep 106
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Google LSA expands to new categories & faces spam:
Google has added new, high value categories to their Local SErvice Ads program. They continue to target ever more service type businesses. While the pricing for this simpler product has gone up due to the added auction capabilities, in many markets it is still a good value. It is also important for service type businesses to watch for first mover opportunities in their local markets. With this link: Local Service Finder - Pro List businesses can assess which categories in which geographies have more opportunities.
However in some urban, highly competitive markets like personal injury law & locksmiths, not only has pricing gone crazy, spam has as well. Google has added a new LSA spam review reporting form to cope with some of the fake review issues.
ChatGPT making rapid and differentiating inroads into SASS tools for Local:
The players in the local space have all become pretty similar to each other offering listings, review management, Google Posts with little to distinguish them. But with the advent of large language models in general and ChatGPT specifically, many have begun to offer unique tools on top of their core products that leverage the generative AI capabilities.
The value of generative AI will first be realized in the SAAS world where the benefits can be easily added to existing products to increase business productivity. Hubspot’s ChatUX shows how this can be integrated into a CMS and Uberall shows how it can improve access to a company’s granular data like inventory.
Why every company needs a “how we use AI” FAQ:
Wired recently published an article on how they will use generative AI tools vis a vis their written and visual content. They detail whether they will use AI to write or edit articles (they won’t), whether they will use it to generate ideas and headlines (they might) and whether they will use it to create story graphics (they won’t due to artists not receiving royalties).
Jennifer Slegg on Twitter, using a creative Google search, demonstrated just how many businesses are currently using generative AI and blindly copying and pasting it onto their websites.
This raises the question of whether not just Wired but everyone that creates content - writers, SEO firms, SEMs and more - should consider both an internal code of ethics and a forward facing statement of those values.
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.
NearMemo Ep105
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Google LSA expands to new categories & faces spam: Google has added new, high value categories to their Local SErvice Ads program. They continue to target ever more service type businesses. While the pricing for this simpler product has gone up due to the added auction capabilities, in many markets it is still a good value. It is also important for service type businesses to watch for first mover opportunities in their local markets. With this link: Local Service Finder - Pro List businesses can assess which categories in which geographies have more opportunities.
**However in some urban, highly competitive markets like personal injury law & locksmiths, not only has pricing gone crazy, spam has as well. Google has added a new LSA spam review reporting form to cope with some of the fake review issues.
ChatGPT making rapid and differentiating inroads into SASS tools for Local: The players in the local space have all become pretty similar to each other offering listings, review management, Google Posts with little to distinguish them. But with the advent of large language models in general and ChatGPT specifically, many have begun to offer unique tools on top of their core products that leverage the generative AI capabilities.**
The value of generative AI will first be realized in the SAAS world where the benefits can be easily added to existing products to increase business productivity. Hubspot’s ChatUX shows how this can be integrated into a CMS and Uberall shows how it can improve access to a company’s granular data like inventory.
Why every company needs a “how we use AI” FAQ: Wired recently published an article on how they will use generative AI tools vis a vis their written and visual content. They detail whether they will use AI to write or edit articles (they won’t), whether they will use it to generate ideas and headlines (they might) and whether they will use it to create story graphics (they won’t due to artists not receiving royalties).
Jennifer Slegg on Twitter, using a creative Google search, demonstrated just how many businesses are currently using generative AI and blindly copying and pasting it onto their websites.
This raises the question of whether not just Wired but everyone that creates content - writers, SEO firms, SEMs and more - should consider both an internal code of ethics and a forward facing statement of those values.
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.
near memo ep 104
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Bing isn’t a Google killer but it is important for a number of other reasons: Bing’s inclusion of ChatGPT has positioned Microsoft to take over the search conversation even if it doesn’t unseat Google. Bing has done a thoughtful job of integrating chat into search but it remains awkwards and still lacks significant value to the search experience. This is particularly true with local searches.
Yelps’ remote work report likely indicates declining Yelp market share: Yelp used the relative increase of rural searches to indicate that users had moved to rural areas. These low volume searches showing an increase is better explained by Yelp’s declining market share in the urban centers.
How to deal with fake review attacks at Google: Google recently announced that they would filter fewer Local guide reviews. This appears to have led to an increase in fake review attacks. We detail the many arcane steps to increase the likelihood of fake review attacks being taken down.
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.
near memo ep 103
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Google Business Profile services positively impact rank:
In a recent test by Joy Hawkins at Sterlingsky demonstrated that having services identified for your profile influences rank. How does Google generate these categories? How does this fit into the long term trend of Google adding ever more granular detail for businesses? Will custom services have an equal effect? Will this appear world wide? Businesses need to make sure that Google has applied the correct categories.
Which geo title tags have the most impact on local search rank?
A title tag needs to be as long as it needs to be but longer title tags don’t perform as well. Which location terms should you use? Near me in a title tag only drives a small increase in rankings. The biggest driver (2.5x improvement) is the use of the city name in the title name.
Impact of Google easing review filter to placate Local Guides:
Earlier this month, Google noted that there had been a lot of Local Guide complaints about review filtering, that Google had been removing too many Local Guide reviews and they were going to update the filter to let more reviews show and go back and release any that they erroneously filtered.
Hypothetically doing this would decrease complaints in the GBP forums about missing reviews AND increase complaints about fake review attacks. Our research confirms that is the case
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.
near memo ep 102
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Microsoft’s transformation of Bing with AI & some smart moves: There are now millions of people on the BingChat waitlist. And many have noted a positive reaction to the bot. But the compressed hype cycle around the release of ChatGPT and BingChat, a series of stories bemoaning the “nature” of the chatbot.
Will users start shifting their searches to Bing? Has Microsoft pulled off the search coup of the decade?
Walmart overcomes stigma of evil & appeals to upscale shoppers: Walmart, under the direction of CEO Doug McMillon, has overcome a terrible reputation and built out effective online-offline commerce capabilities. Using groceries as their ‘hook” they are attracting more upscale customers with easy online ordering and curbside pickup. To further engage this long elusive audience, Walmart is not building out stores with a more Target (or as my sister say Targeé) like feel.
100 Ecommerce execs are investing more in SEO & PPC: With fear of recession, paid search increased 12% while influencer marketing and paid social were both down. SEO and PPC high ROI investments and demonstrate the importance of search when you need to acquire new customers and increase sales.
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.
near memo ep 101
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In this extended episode we explore the role AI in general and ChatGPT is having on the work within digital agencies. What are the opportunities and challenges that agencies face when using it?
- Are either of you currently using ChatGPT or AI tools in your daily work? If so, what and for what purposes?
- How have ChatGPT and related tools changed your work?
- What is the biggest opportunity you see with tools like ChatGPT and the many others that are quickly emerging? Name some concrete use cases. Anything you’ve seen that’s really impressive/effective?
- What about general SEO and local SEO use cases? (if we haven’t gotten into that yet.) What are the most immediate applications?
- Slightly farther out, how do you think people will be using these tools? What “manual” or tedious tasks will AI replace? Other use cases?
- Do you think AI tools make smaller agencies more competitive with larger ones? How do you think AI changes the economics of SEO?
- How might clients (large and SMB) themselves use AI tools/content? Will AI tools make clients less reliant on agencies; will it lead to more in-housing?
- How should you talk to clients about AI/ChatGPT tools and their future role in marketing, content creation, etc.?
- What concerns, if any, do you have about ChatGPT and related tools? Dependence on these tools? Quality? Factual errors or bias?
- We’re now seeing screenshots of Bing’s new AI-search integration, and this week Google will preview its own search-AI mashup (speculating). While we don’t know exactly how this will play out, how might a radically different search interface impact the future of SEO?
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.
near memo ep 100
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ChatGPT and similar generative AI tools can write very credible reviews, very quickly and easily. The number of fake reviews could possibly explode in numbers.
While multi-location businesses care about reviews they don’t really put any energy into them. Is Google equally unconcerned about reviews?
How will this impact the review ecosystem and how will Google respond?
It can seem like Google controls the fate of small businesses with zero click search, erratic review policies and control of your business profile. Miriam Ellis points out at Moz that while Google’s behaviors create stress in the end almost all searchers in the local ecosystem end up on your turf. Whether that is a call, coming to your location or on your website the business controls the interaction. Google customer experience doesn’t require a latte with every haircut but it does require that your systems for client communications work and work reliably.
AI and Automation is now officially a thing in SEO, and not just for writing:
The amount of data SEO tools provide is overload and forces users to create custom workflows to make sense of it. Agencies and in-housers can gain a competitive advantage by building their own automation systems to ingest SEO data (rankings, GSC, etc.), analyze it at scale and turn it into actionable insights.
The SEO of 2023 will arm themselves with these tools and systems to create better outcomes for themselves and their stakeholders.
If you are going to crank out a lot of content via AI, the key is how you train the model, how you mix in data from other sources, how you edit it, plus how you structure it to make it seem like it's not written by AI. Hint, write for a 6th grade level.
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.
near memo ep 99
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Mailchimp launched Campaign Manager, a way for marketers to plan, execute, and track their marketing campaigns across multiple channels—like email, text messaging, social media ads, and direct mail—and view how their campaign is performing in one calendar view.
But Intuit’s ads are positioning this tool for the smaller business with one or two employees but in reality is for more sophisticated businesses with dedicated marketing staff.
Growing visibility of copyright implications of generative AI precedes solutions:
Generative AI is trained using other’s creations. This often leads to plagiarism and excessive image re-use. Current copyright law is not up to the snuff in terms of defining when this is fair use and when it is copyright violation. The suits have started and it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will punt on this or create clarity.
Google’s GBP forums provide insights into bugs, practices and policy:
The Google Business Profile forum is where folks end up that Google has decided are too expensive to provide support to. Analyzing this data provides insights into bugs, Google’s AI false positives and problems caused by Google’s actions. It is also clear in this data that Google has managed to externalize costs of their “release early” philosophy on the small businesses they claim to serve.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.
near memo ep 98
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Failings in Apple Business Connect Agency Model:
While the Apple Business Connect Dashboard is well designed and the new API is significant, the product really fails smaller businesses that want their smaller agency to manage their listing for them. As the system is designed, a small business has to get an Apple ID, verify their own listing and then share the admin privileges with their small agency. Too many steps and too much work for most small businesses to engage with.
Big agencies define local as a fad in CallRail survey:
In a Callrail survey of 600 agency employees that work for larger agencies respondents thought that metaverse marketing and voice search are better long term investments while localization and AI were fads. Hello?
SEO’s don’t get respect:
SEO’s highlighted their greatest difficulties, In a recent Aira & Women in Tech SEO survey of smaller agencies and freelancers, were "getting my recommendations implemented" (33%) and "showing the value of my work" (23%). They also noted a lack of resources, technical debt and lack of bbuy in as reasons for not accomplishing their goals.
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.
near memo ep 97
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Why the new Apple Business Connect is so important:
Apple Business Connect is both a small business interface AND an API. The small business interface is very elegant and supports very hi res imagery as well as a Post-like product called Showcases. The bigger news is probably the roll-out of the API. This is the first time Apple has allowed third parties to directly interact with Maps. When you realize that Business Connect is positioned as a way to integrate your business Place Card with a whole suite of Apple products including iMessage, Apple Pay, Siri and more you have to wonder what role this will play in Apple’s coming augmented reality play.
The value of stack ranking as a way to prune employees:
The tech industry over-hired during the demand created by Covid. With a recession on the horizon and growth constrained, many tech companies including Google are looking to become more efficient and are using stack ranking as a way to identify low performing employees. Will this lead to an exodus of good employees or to a loss of morale?
AI’s rapid advancements and easy implementation will impact everything from audio chat bots to Excel:
Vall-e translates text to speech based on a person’s actual voice. The quality of AI voice generation based has implications across a range of applications from chat bots to deceptive scams. The Neeva search engine shows the way how it will be integrated into search. The growing productization points to the integration of these new capabilities as a feature in a range of software features. Whether this commodifies AI or leaves it in the hands of a few dominant players remains to be seen.
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.
near memo ep 96
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Washington AG sues plastic surgeon for review fraud:
Allure, a chain of Seattle based plastic surgery centers, has been sued under the federal Consumer Review Fairness Act, HIPPA and state law for significant fraudulent activities in the review space. Requiring NDAs prohibiting negative reviews, bribes to take reviews down, photoshopped before and after consumer images and stealing consumer rebates, this practitioner apparently never got the memo. Penalties in the millions of dollars were discussed. Does it portend a jump in review fraud enforcement or just the once every couple of years enforcement chest thumping?
Shopify targets enterprise retail with modern, composable stack for enterprise:
Shopify is making a strong show to improve their stock price entering the new year. The most recent Commerce Components is targeted at making integration of the Shopfiy checkout with enterprise backend software. This seems like a smart strategy to help Shopify move into the enterprise space.
Bing to integrate ChatGpt & what that means:
ChatGPT has been discussed in great detail over the past few weeks. With the announcement of Bing’s intention to integrate ChatGPT with their search engine and Google moving full speed ahead on a competitor, it seems that the chat model will make its way into search. What are the implications for the business model of search engines? What are the implications for searchers?
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.
near memo ep 95
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In this 44 minute interview, David, Mike and Greg interrogate Barry Schwartz about algorithm updates, the SERP and the future of Google in an era of AI-generated content. Here are the topics in roughly the order they appear:
- Google UI changes and Universal Search
- Why Google makes SERP design changes
- Major algorithm updates in 2021 and 2022
- Helpful content update, spam and product review updates
- Is Google really trying to make search better?
- How the SERP has become more competitive
- Future viability of content written to rank
- The problem with recipe blogs
- Keyword stuffing and gaming the algorithm
- YMYL content and ranking
- Google quality raters and E-E-A-T
- AI and the Local Review Update
- AI and image moderation
- ChatGPT and its impact on Google
- Is Google getting worse – or is it the web?
- Why search is better today
- Google negative PR and regulatory pressure
- Staying ahead of spam
- How will Google handle AI-driven content?
Near Memo Episode 94
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How different age groups think about reviews: In a recent, large scale survey of attitudes and behaviors around reviews, Miriam Ellis uncovered some interesting facts about the different behaviors in different age groups
Evolution of Apple’s Business Register - Why isn’t Apple targeting the Enterprise: A great listing management interface particularly compared to Google’s new (but flawed) experience. Apple hasn’t gone after enterprise brands and suggests that the register be limited to 20 locations. Apple Maps is fully indexed in the Google search results. Apple’s could provide a viable alternative to Google and Yelp but the lack of investment and marketing seems to be holding them back.
Google’s Visual Elements Gallery demonstrates just how complicated search has become: Google’s newly announced Visual Elements Gallery, while an attempt to help developers understand the many elements in search, demonstrates just how complicated search has become. Does this complexity serve the search or confuse them?
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.
near memo ep 93
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How ChatGPT’s breakthrough ability to create content will significantly impact local: ChatGPT seems to provide a quantum leap in quality and speed AI generated content. How will this impact not just content, writers and thinkers in local but how it might actually, some day, provide a better local search experience.
A deep dive look at factors in Google Local’s new AI based review filter: After examining almost 300 cases of Google erroneously taking down local reviews, we can start to see some of the factors of their new AI first approach to moderation. We explore which business categories and profiles are most impacted. And we discuss the confusion caused by Google’s “false positives”.
Google nuke a joke location that promotes a lame basketball tame: The King’s, in creating the Beam, have created a common theme for its fans. Its presence on Google inspired a level of ironic worship that seemed to be fun for all. Google, however, didn’t see it that way, and despite all Google’s many issues, they found time to throw water on the fire.
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.
near memo ep 92
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74.3% of link builders pay for links and 89.1% of link builders say nofollow links have an impact on rankings. David reviewed a new survey of ~800 link builders by Authority Hacker. Regardless of what Google proclaims, buying links is a tried and tested way to gain site benefits in less than 6 months and it's here to stay.
Alexa pullback by Amazon points to difficulties with Voice.
It is estimated that the Alexa unit had a negative $10 billion impact on Amazon this year with no significant contribution to increasing sales. As a result many of Amazon’s layoffs occurred in this department. This calls into question Amazon’s strategy of attempting to create a new platform and highlights the problems that are yet to be solved with voice computer interactions.
Content Moderation will be at forefront of Sec 230 Fight in 2023
With new laws in Fl. & Texas demanding that platforms allow everyone to express their opinions heading for a Supreme Court day in court, advertisers fearful of blowback and the EU stepping up to insist that Twitter actually moderate speech, the stage is set for a tumultuous 2023. Lawsuits, government intervention or Sec 230 reforms are all possibilities but the problems will escalate before a solution is found.
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.
Near Memo Ep 91
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Google has finally admitted to the bug that caused local businesses to lose all of their reviews AND rank visibility. Google appears to have fixed many of those businesses reported over the weekend. But as is typical with Google it took public embarrassment to get them to acknowledge and fix this serious bug. It highlights both their PR strategy and their totally inadequate customer service. Included are tips on how to distinguish this bug from the many other reasons your location is currently losing reviews.
This Moz survey cataloging user motivations around reviews confirms what we know about user behaviors. What is the number 1 reason that users leave bad reviews? What does “Peak Reviews” mean in terms of user behaviors? Why is this and how will it impact reviews going forward.
Google promotes lame store finder to bulk GPB users, adding insult to the injury of NMX interface
Google introduced a Store Finder product in June and in a typically bad timing twist, just started promoting it to bulk Google Business Profile accounts. The Store Finder is a poorly executed product with bad SEO and no target audience except those users that rely on the bulk interface and. To add insult to injury they are promoting it while simultaneously forcing bulk users in the new search interface aka NMX (New merchant experience). This new search interface is disorganized with a terrible UI. But it is particularly difficult for Google Bulk accounts that attempt to manage their listings via the location dashboard as they need to continually move back and forth between two dramatically different interfaces searching for hidden features.
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.
Near Memo Ep 90
Google has been on a review tear of late and many reviews are being nuked that the new filter “thinks” violates the TOS. But not all review take downs by Google are legit. And a new bug seems to be affecting Google Business Profiles: when Google pushes a Suggested edit update, the profile changes CID numbers and loses their reviews. Businesses that lose reviews need to be prepared for this eventuality and put in place a plan to recover the reviews if lost.
Darren Shaw of Whitespark discovered a new test by Google that shows how many in market reviews a reviewer left. On the surface this would appear helpful to shoppers looking to validate the reviewer and the reviews more easily. But like all reviews it is probably a false hope as location can be spoofed. Regardless, it surfaces the fact that Google is closely tracking and using the physical relationship between the reviewer and the business. In the forums, it is apparent that Google has consistently nuked more reviews from service type businesses which don’t get reviewer visits and the further that reviewer is away, the more likely it is to be filtered.
Most internet companies pay lip service to brand building but continue to favor short-term performance marketing. That typically means paid-search and paid social. AirBnB offers an interesting counterpoint and case study in decreasing reliance on paid search. The company just reported its "biggest and most profitable quarter" to date. On the company's Q3 earnings call, CFO Dave Stephenson said AirBnB's focus has been "on the overall brand ... and to be less reliant on search engine marketing." He explained that 90% of of the company's traffic is "direct or organic."
Can other companies do the same? Yes but it requires a true commitment to puting the customer first and building a strong relationship based on trust and not just giving that idea lip service.
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.
Near Memo Ep 89
**Marcus Tober, SVP of Enterprise Solutions for Semrush, joins Greg and David for this episode of the Near Memo.
The trio discusses Semrush’s recent zero-click search study in depth. Conceived as a slightly more nuanced follow-up to Sparktoro/Rand Fishkin’s provocative original look at this concept, Marcus takes us through some of the important high-level findings. There’s of course plenty of discussion around what this means for locally-oriented marketers, and how marketers should use the results of the study to inform their overall SEO strategy.**
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.
Near Memo Ep 88
Description
Shopify 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 king
SEMRush 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 Europe
Segment 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.
**Krystal Taing, Director of Pre-Sales Solutions for Uberall and Google Business Profile Platinum Product Expert, joins Greg and David for this episode of the Near Memo.
The trio discusses Google’s latest visually-significant ad update and implications for both paid and organic marketers. David then laments the rapid increase in GBP-related bugs and complaints over the course of the last several months and the team discusses GBP’s strategic place in Mountain View. Krystal closes the show by highlighting the acceleration of the store-within-a-store trend and how brands with outlets that fit this model should think about their local listings.**
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.
Near Memo Ep 86
Allie Margeson, Director of SEO Services for Whitespark, joins Greg and David for this episode of the Near Memo. She takes a deeper dive into the logic behind, and the mechanics of, Whitespark’s new three-tiered service offering which involves not just Google Business Profile optimization but website updates and linkbuilding.
Allie and Whitespark have a unique perspective on serving small businesses that most agencies and SaaS companies ignore, due to the difficulty of serving them profitably. She shares some behind-the-scenes information about Whitespark’s delivery model and go-to-market strategies that make this service effective for its clients and profitable for its bottom line.
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.
Near Memo Ep 85
“Mike’s Excellent European Adventure” continues this week, so Nick Brackenbury, CEO of SaaS company NearSt joins Greg and David for a fast-moving conversation about his company’s growth curve alongside the explosion of “near me” searches and Google’s appetite for local inventory in search results since 2015.
Nick takes listeners through how NearSt came to be, a major pivot in NearSt’s trajectory, its partnerships with Google and other major platforms, the current penetration of digital inventory solutions among brick-and-mortar stores, and the latest local commerce-related announcements from Google.
Editor’s note: Unfortunately we weren’t able to mitigate the choppy quality of David’s recording in post-production of this episode. Apologies to listeners in advance.
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.
Near Memo Ep 84
This episode breaks from our typical Near Memo format in two big ways: 1) at 50 minutes, it’s roughly double the length of a typical episode, and 2) rather than a roundtable discussion, it’s a deep-dive interview with a single entrepreneur.
Craig Mount, Co-Founder and CEO of peanut butter (and media) brand Nerdy Nuts takes us through the trajectory of his company – from starting up selling a handful of jars at a farmer’s market to doing $80,000 in ecommerce sales in just two minutes.
Craig goes into great detail about key moments for his company, from a seminal conversation with a friend in PR about how to position his business, to the company’s first big break on Fox Business (and how they got it), to his wife’s intuition in the early days of Tiktok, and so much more.
It’s a terrific story of contemporary entrepreneurship with a number of practical takeaways for marketers and entrepreneurs.
Nerdy Nuts’ current tech stack:
Shopify
Klaviyo
Community
Tiktok
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.
Near Memo Ep 83
Google doubles down on SMB deception to achieve political goals - Google recently sent out an email to its massive base of business clients asking them to Tell us what policy issues matter to you and your business. It directed businesses to a survey which told the real story of Google’s intent: Tell us which policy issues that are important to us are you willing to shill for us? Google has stooped to new lows and that is hard as they have already moved pretty far down.
iOS 16 elevates search but still fails at local and internet search - Apple has elevated a long hidden search feature to the main screen of their iPhone, making it more visible and likely more used by most users. While the feature offers good on device searching it is sorely lacking for internet, entity and local search. Apple plays the long game but we keeping asking, when will Apple search grow up? Is their financial relationship with Google holding them back?
From Andi to Apple there are suddenly new options for searching the internet. Competition with Google has long been moribund but over the past few years we have seen numerous entrants beyond just DDG from Neeva to Ahrefs. Do any of these have a chance?
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.
Near Memo Ep 82
On October 16th, hearing aids for folks with low to moderate hearing loss will now be sold over the counter, no longer requiring testing, visits to the audiologists or a prescription. The influx of major brands like Apple, Bose and probably Amazon (hey Alexa, what did they say?) on the low end portend a major shift in how many of these devices are purchased. Local audiologists, many of whom run local businesses predicated on the high margin hardware & training model, will likely shutter their doors. Will privacy compromises become an issue with this burgeoning market?
Local news journalism is disappearing with massive layoffs and cutbacks. Will automation and ai come to the rescue of local news? How pervasive will this be for a local news creation strategy? Is it just an excuse for the many PE owned news organizations to layoff staff? How will all of this interact with Google Human Content Update that prohibits ai generated news stories.
Neighborhoods, Facebook’s clone of NextDoor, was recently nuked. Its origins as a clone of NextDoor as a minimum viable product might work sometimes but when you have the installed user base as large as Facebook’s a level of corporate support would have created a strong and successful product. This reflects an on-going pattern at Facebook of a failure to understand and leverage the local opportunity.
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.
Near Memo Ep 81
Google is testing a new label associated with content that is quick to read on both mobile and desktop. The label appears with either the text ‘Quick Read’ or ‘< 5 Min Read’, with several different combinations of each. Is this test, so close to the Helpful Content Update, a way to signal busy readers and garner their attention or is it a useful way to segment content so that searchers looking for in depth content can more easily find it?
Why Google Posts are rejected - Another Google AI first fail - Google Business Profiles recently updated Posts guidelines to prohibit poor quality images and re-use of images. Simultaneously there has been a huge increase in the forums of reports of Posts being rejected, no reasons given. Turns out that there are three explanations for the many rejections; there is a new Posts image bug, some images are duplicates AND some images are deemed too “racy” by an AI system that seems more prudish than cautious. However in all of that businesses are left to fend for themselves when their posts are rejected. There is no indication of what caused the rejection and no path given for on. Once again a Google AI first solution seems to be shifting costs downstream and making for unhappy businesses.
Nearby , Tiktok & Instagram need local seo now - Nearby, TikTok and Instagram have oodles of truly relevant local content and yet none of them has leveraged that valuable content into an SEO strategy that could attract new readers from Google local searches.
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.
Near Memo Ep 80 v2
Shopify Cretes an Influencer Marketplace - Of all of the networks that have attempted to create a way for businesses to easily connect with influencers to help market their products, Shopify’s newest effort, Collabs, seems like the most logical fit and the easiest to use
Google’s Human Content Update; Why now? Google’s language in announcing the Human Content Update, that is rolling out this week and next, largely reflected the language that the marketplace has been using to laud Tik-Tok and to criticize Google’s search efforts. We look at a number of questions surrounding this rollout and what it says about Google’s needs and their practices.
Google’s AI First Approach is wrong - The recent case highlighted by the NY Times of a parent who sent photos of his child to their nurse being investigated by police AND having their lifelong Google accounts canceled point out the many problems of an AI first approach to societal issues. We see similar issues happening every day in the GBP forums around images, reviews and suspensions. We discuss ways that Google might be able to achieve scaled moderation AND live up to their obligations to society.
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.
Near Memo Ep 80
Yelp has recently publicized their newest revenue stream; selling merchant data to marketers. It seems sleazy and is likely just a money grab by Yelp
Day in and day out, small businesses are flocking into the Google Business Profile forum to complain about their legit reviews being nuked by Google’s effort to limit review spam.
**Tik-Tok is still not being heavily used by brands. Brands can create their own content or team up with Tik-tok creators, for which Tik-tok has created a marketplace. In travel, restaurants and beauty site visitors are using Tik-Tok for discovery. Many small businesses have done well there but brands have an opportunity to leverage this audience which is shunning search.
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.
Near Memo Ep 78**
After dozens of failed messaging starts, Google has been on a campaign to get Apple to integrate with their telco favored RCS messaging service. It's not clear why Apple would want to do that and the campaign by Google is almost laughable.
Local growth highlighted in Axiosacquisition by Cox for $585 million.
With the ascendance of Google and Facebook advertising, local newspapers have been on the ropes. Cox, originally a newspaper company, exited that world for digital properties and broadband services. It appears that they are making a jump back in with the Axios acquisition. Axios Local, highlighted in the press release for the acquisition, currently operates in 24 cities and plans to expand its coverage to 30 U.S. cities by the end of 2022. Eventually, it hopes to be in hundreds of cities. It will be interesting to watch if a nationally run local news organization can find a successful monetization strategy.
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.
Near Memo Ep 77
Segment 1: Shopify’s investment in Klaviyo improves Shopify’s enterprise cred & may signal acquisition
In a move to protect and enhance their core product with enterprise, Shopify’s strategic investment in Klaviyo indicates a
Segment 2: The golden era of hyper detailed location data intelligence is coming to an end
The marketplace for highly granular location data, fed by smartphones, cars and cell companies, is coming under scrutiny by both Congress and regulators. Despite the value to society that this data might have, its abuse and invasive practices seems to have finally led to some constraints and oversight. If we are lucky, we may be given the ability to opt into surveillance instead of just having to accept it.
Segment 3: At Covid start E-commerce was eating retail, turns out it is retail
In early Covid, pundits talk up the idea that e-commerce had leaped 5 years ahead in its “battle” with retail only to talk up the idea that in store shopping has returned and the e-commerce lost all that it gained. But a closer examination of the data shows that e-commerce did make and sustains real growth but that retail has returned stronger as well. The problem seems to be with comparison between the two. In the end, e-commerce is not really a separate segment from retail but one in the same.
Amazon AND Google both try to demonstrate their anti fake review bonafides. Both fail to do their job and offer little in the way of substantive reform to prevent review abuses.
The American Data Privacy and Protection Act (.pdf) looks like it will make it out of committee, a watershed moment and a step toward a floor vote. This moment is a byproduct of significant compromises and amendments.
Instagram has introduced an upgraded, interactive and searchable map experience. Users can now search, browse and drag maps to find things nearby. Results can also be filtered by categories such as restaurants, hotels, cafes, sights.
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.
Near Memo Ep 75
Amazon AND Google both try to demonstrate their anti fake review bonafides. Both fail to do their job and offer little in the way of substantive reform to prevent review abuses.
The American Data Privacy and Protection Act (.pdf) looks like it will make it out of committee, a watershed moment and a step toward a floor vote. This moment is a byproduct of significant compromises and amendments.
Instagram has introduced an upgraded, interactive and searchable map experience. Users can now search, browse and drag maps to find things nearby. Results can also be filtered by categories such as restaurants, hotels, cafes, sights.
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.
Near Memo Ep 74
In the past year somewhere on the order of 300 independent bookstores have opened. The need for discovery, serendipity, community and increased opportunities are all likely factors in this resurgence
Amazon is illegally sharing Ring data with police while ICE is accumulating dossiers on 3 out of 4 Americans with no oversight.
Google’s disclosure that 40% of Gen Z’ers prefer Tik-Tok & Instagram to Google when searching for lunch restaurants, surprised many but puts their long term emphasis on images in the search results into meaningful relief. It also explains new search units that are primarily visual like “Find places through photo”. While the comment appeared to be off-hand it likely reflects an intentional effort to offset antitrust scrutiny as well.
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.
Near Memo Ep 73
The Digital Markets Act attempts to create a new framework for understanding and regulating digital monopolies to improve competitiveness and create opportunities for smaller online businesses. Amongst its targets: self preferencing, access to alternative payment systems and messaging services interoperability. The fines for non-compliance are a non-trivial 10% of annual sales.
Dark patterns that mislead consumers will be banned, ads that target children or on the basis of religion, gender, race and political opinions will also be banned. “Users will have new rights, including a right to complain to the platform, seek out-of-court settlements, complain to their national authority in their own language, or seek compensation for breaches of the rules.”
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.
EP 72 Near Memo
Time to stop lamenting “zero click” search and to embrace the “messy middle” of Google’s entity search and barnacle SEO. Understanding how Google has remade all of search from inventory to brands into entity search as a way to help consumers make a decision is key to building out a successful search optimization strategy.
Google is leveraging ever more granular product entities and product information to create a local product search experience that Amazon can’t compete with.
Privacy should be a right not a convoluted opt out process. Most users, in choosing to not allow Apple’s app tracking show the way forward on privacy - opt in not opt out. While it is unlikely the federal government will go there states will. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
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.
Near Memo Ep 71
There's a growing perception that Google is in decline or dying. In an article in the Atlantic, Charlie Warzel interviews Marie Haynes, Dannie Sullivan and Rand Fishkin to try to understand his growing dissatisfaction with Google’s results. Is it too commercial, too corporate or too sanitized? He is not sure but he does know its not what it used to be.
What would Google local search results look like if Google couldn't put the Local 3-Pack at the top of search results? A recently discovered test may give us a clue. New 'Local Cards' have appeared in organic results. They offer less information but still link to GBP pages, not local websites.Even if this test is abandoned, we need to be prepared for change in local SEO and local marketing if the anit-self-preferencing act passes Congress. .
There is growing anecdotal evidence that users are switching to alternative methods to discover local goods and services. Is GenZ ready to abandon Google? Have they already moved on to TikTok and Instagram? Google has lost other search battle before but have managed, by hook or by crook, to stay relevant.
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.
Near Memo Ep 70
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.
Amazon has been posting new job positions for “rare opportunity to join a start-up business within Amazon Ads and play a strategic role in building the future of Local Ads”. It is hard to know exactly what it is they are building but talk of building relationships with agencies, clients, and service providers to scope solutions, partnerships, and business opportunities that result in the acceleration of Amazon's Advertising growth in New York City, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago. Regardless, it is clear that they are looking to grow their ad business via local and looking to take Google (and perhaps Walmart) on directly in the space.
Can Yep It get off the ground and sustain an income stream or is it just another “ankle biter”. There are many wannabes in the search space with many different models, Yep It is trying to partner with content creators first and foremost. Although the question remains how will they get consumer uptake to make it work?
There was a great deal of speculation about an “Apple Search Engine” with dreams of a Google competitor that actually had consumer support. What Apple in fact did do was elevate Spotlight to a place of prominence and use AI, the Siri Knowledge Graph and local access to deliver on an improved “federated” search as a feature not a destination. While they were at it they rolled out an incredibly consumer friendly buy now pay later plan that apparently does not get reported to the credit bureaus if you drop the ball
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.
EP 68 Near Memo
Rumors have surfaced that Apple will roll out a general purpose search engine at WWDC this week. Will it be browser based? Available on the desktop? Apple has historically favored “search as a feature” over the years as they have slowly built out Siri, Spotlight and Safari search. The UI/UX could use a refresh and it could become more obvious but will it be a Google replacement? Probably not.
The disappearance of the Product feature from the Google Business Profile caused lots of speculation.
Whether it was a bug or a very small test that was not meant to be seen, the removal of the Product feature from the Google Business Profile (and to be replaced by Merchant Center) last week lead many to soul search about the role of real time inventory in Google’s push for ever more granular data. Google has been taking a holistic commerce strategy (online and in-store inventory) to create a more complete consumer offering than Amazon.
Walmart announced that they will offer last mile same day delivery to 3rd parties from their stores
Walmart continues to push the boundaries of on-line/offline commerce and publicly shared that they will be using their many locations as a warehouse and point of delivery for 3rd party resellers. Can their retail stores efficiently function in this capacity? Can they compete with both Google AND Amazon with this strategy?
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.
Near Memo Ep 67
Walmart announced that they were rolling out drone delivery in 6 states this week, offering upto 100,000 picked in the local store. Meanwhile Gorrila (Europe’s largest food delivery company announced massive layoffs and UberEats continued to struggle to find a profitable path forward. Walmart’s many rural & suburban stores gives them a unique advantage in driving their own, same day delivery service. Interestingly Amazon’s drone work seems to have stalled.
Google is moving full steam ahead on a vision of search and advertising that includes an ever increasing amount of AI driven automation and an ever increasing amount of images and other visuals in the search results. They noted at the GML event that “we're transforming the SERPS into an endless stream of visual ideas”. Google sees automated retail ads and local as their path to compet with Amazon
Google testing new Local inventory ad unit that looks like the 3-pack
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.
Near Memo Ep 66
Bill was instrumental in helping me understand Local search. Over the years he shared his knowledge willingly and unsparingly and he will be missed.
My Ad Center - will people use it or is it just another data harvesting tool?
Shotland showed a radical increase in rankings for a particular page on a client's website that was talking about baby formula. Over the last X number of weeks, he said the page was on page two plus, and it's now skyrocketed up to the top. His theory? That top ranking national retailers were out of formula and when users left those sites and found the lower ranked ones that did have formula, they stuck around leading to a ranking increase. Shotland made some astute suggestions on how to quickly cope with shortages.
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.
Near Memo Ep 65
SMB more successful with content, typical looks at SMBS often undercounts total
Google spent much of their I/O talking about their grand vision for integrating software and hardware as well as Local developments. Most of the hardware is about a future where they hope to compete while Local is moving clearly to a focus on a visual approach to local search. Many of these announcements are likely to not be universally adopted.
Wil local visual search near me drive the future of local commerce? Or is visual search just a subset of what folks really need?
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.
Near Memo Ep 64
In three consumer surveys it became clear that a significant minority (~25%) of the buying public thinks ill of companies that use Earth Day to sell things. But almost 33% noted that when Amazon engaged in Earth Day marketing to sell more products that they were less likely to do business with them.
Whether it’s a review rating or an NPS score, all too often businesses focus too intently on the number and not on what's behind the number. Businesses should listen to all feedback wherever it is from and then make the changes so that it improves going forward. And STOP asking for answers to 30 question surveys.
With In store shopping up & e-commerce down and ever increasing consumer expectations, for SMBs to survive they need an integrated digital approach. Between supply chain issues, inflations and on-line competition it has been a struggle for SMBs but those that have survived and those that will thrive have done so by doubling down on technology to drive point of sale, the web and their marketing.
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.
Near Memo Ep 63
It is generally assumed that the ratings aspect of reviews is what drives conversions and thus they are typically emphasized. However it would appear that in many cases that the content of the “top 3” most visible reviews actually influence purchase decisions more than the star ratings. In a clever study design these researchers were able to disentangle the relative importance of ratings versus the text in the top 3 reviews.
Google announced upgrades to their Performance Max product and that it will provide a one-click upgrade (and replacement) path for both previous Smart Campaigns and Local Campaigns. Google Ads have long been moving towards an automated model to maximize effectiveness and away from the need for curated ad management. This is another step on that path and seems to make product ads almost as easy as their hands-off LSA ads. There is a need for rigorous A/B testing by enterprises to determine the value of each approach.
Even though Twitter is making user gains, it is likely that advertising on Twitter will be negatively affected by the types of changes that Elon Musk is suggesting. Obviously depending on specific product changes that Musk might make, it is an open question whether data licensing or advertising will be the primary path to profits.
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.
Near Memo Ep 62
Amazon’s bold play to push Prime benefits across all of e-commerce is not only a direct threat to Shopify but UPS and FedEx as well. While it will bring trust and convenience to small and local websites, which types of businesses will actually benefit from Buy Prime on their site?
Google’s has stated that AI generated content is against their guidelines. But their guidelines are not so clear as they seem to imply that human edited content will be ok. What is the future of on-line content? Will Google be able to moderate the coming tsunami of AI generated content?
Very small businesses want to do their own research when buying SAAS products but which sorts of content do they use to do that? There isn’t really a single content source that drives uptake. Perhaps AI driven content might be able to allow content to be more easily repurposed across content types.
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.
Near Memo Ep 61
According to the 2021 IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, online ad revenue grew at the fastest pace since 2006, 35% year over year. In real dollar terms that translated into a $50 billion revenue increase from last year. Mobile revenues comprised roughly 71% of the $189 billion total, while the desktop contributed 28%. Paid search was the largest digital ad revenue category (41%, $78.3 billion), followed by display (30%, $56.7 billion) and digital video (21%, $39.5 billion).
Google has been updating business data for year, not due to AI but because of their massive access to data. This trend is increasing which is both annoying and reflective of their failure to engage SMBs to keep the data updated themselves.
Over the past 5 years images have moved from virtually 0% oif the mobile search results to almost 40%. Google is using AI to understand the content of these images and changing them based on the user query. This points towards a new aspect of technical SEO, image optimization, to improve rank, visibility and conversions for local businesses.
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.
Near Memo Ep 60
Google’s Local help files have been updated to note that providing real time inventory via Merchant Center will result in increased rank. Anecdotally, we are seeing the 3- Pack populated with more real time inventory over the past several weeks. Google, often accused of self-preferencing, did so again by highlighting their own Point POS product as the only solution.
At LocalU’s last virtual event, Joy Hawkins shared insights spam prevalence by vertical and whether agencies should continue to fight it, as a service. Curtis Boyd described the results of a 1000 review case study of takedown and what worked and what didn’t. And there was a discussion of a new update to the Vicinity update which allowed many businesses to gain more visibility.
GApocalypse will soon be upon us and Google Universal Analytics will soon be sunset and replaced with GA4. Since GA4 is so bad and agencies seem to have developed reporting chops with Google Data Studio, is it time to look at other base analytics programs and build your own reporting dashboard?
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.
EP 59 Near Memo
Last week the European Parliament completed work on its Digital Markets Act. The legislation targets major US tech "gatekeepers" and prohibits app bundling, app store monopolies and so-called "self-preferencing," among other things. In the US, the American Competition and Innovation Act (ACIA) is similar and also seeks to prevent self-preferencing – think: Google Shopping or Maps at the top of search results. Google et all have ramped up the astroturf.
Google has announced the ability to schedule an appointment to book with a doctor directly from a Google business profile. Initially as a pilot with CVS Minute Clinics, it is likely to expand. Google has once again picked winners and losers as opposed to making the feature generally available although due to the complexities of the medical arena, this project may face tough sledding.
Trust in reviews has been declining since 2017, but consumers still rely on them to make decisions. Businesses must adapt review strategies and embrace the negative review.
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.
EP 58 Near Memo
Most featured snippets come from what would have been organic results 1 through 3. However 20% of featured snippets come from results 6-10 and while featured snippets do not offer the click through rate of a #1 organic result, if you can answer a question query well and jump from a position down the page, it can be a huge SEO win and a quick way to the top of the rankings.
Consumers had much higher expectations of chat response than SMS. With live chat, users expect responses within minutes and with SMS there is a much greater latitude. What does this mean for business responses to customers when the number of messages coming from different sources? By switching to asynchronous messaging businesses can gain an advantage in responding to customers that customers might prefer.
A hallmark of Google’s competition with Amazon strategy is their integration of local product search with local business search. This development, of showing products and product availability in the 3 pack, is a tell of both Google’s product search ambitions and of the direction of their local search results. The ability to integrate real time product availability directly into local search results indicates Google's aggressive move into a local search result that is both more visual AND more transactional.
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.
Near Memo Ep 57
Google, in competing with Amazon product search, has taken a local approach with their Shopping tool. While the approach makes sense strategically it isn’t clear whether it is enough to gain the traction in real time local inventory that Google needs to compete with Amazon.
In a 3 count complaint, the FTC has accused HomeAdvisor of charging more than promised, delivering crappy leads and making it difficult to get refunds. HomeAdvisor says that they “will fight it vigorously” but the FTC is looking to make an example
A recent Breeden survey was asking how businesses prefer to deal with sales people or whether they preferred to do research on their own. Over 70% prefer to start the exploration for software on their own. This attitude is leading to a product led sales model.
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.
Near Memo Ep 56
Restaurants sue Google for adding Order buttons through 3rd parties to their Business Profile.
In 2019, Google automatically added DoorDash/GrubHub order buttons to the Google Business Profile for thousands of US based restaurants. Now the company is being sued over "order online" in federal court, in a potential class action. The plaintiff, Lime Fresh Mexican Grill, accuses Google of creating an "illicit storefront," unauthorized use of restaurant names and IP and deceiving consumers.
Publishers argue ad providers are scraping too much content to deliver contextual ads
Newspapers are suing the companies that are providing them with contextual advertising, claiming that these very same companies are scraping more content than authorized and selling ads to national clients that the newspapers want.
Yelp’s 2021 showed solid financials but user declines and review acquisition headwinds.
Yelp, after layoffs, changing sales models and rolling out new products, Yelp had a bang up 2021. But Yelp user traffic peaked in 2017, was flat or down pre-pandemic and plummeted during the past 2 years. Where user growth will come from is not clear Meanwhile their review growth has slowed and their review corpus has become stale making user growth even harder.
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.
Near Memo Ep 55
The consumer review paradox.
More than three-fourths (77%) of consumers now "always" or "regularly" read local business reviews, according to a recent BrightLocal survey. That's up from 60% in 2020. At the same time, more of them (62%) believe they've encountered fake reviews. Where will this lead?
Despite surprise, Amazon’s closure of non-grocery businesses indicates they are getting serious. Is Amazon groceries really just an expensive hobby? Or is it the still developing the unique value (logistics & tech) add that Amazon needs to make a dent in the grocery world.
Nextdoor has never developed into the alternative local social network & their numbers show it.
After 12 years, there is still only $59m in quarterly revenue. While that represents a significant 47.9% increase, losses are up 100%. Their 36m weekly active users doesn’t bode well for their success as a social alternative or ad platform either.
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.
Near Memo Ep 54
Yelp Elite reviews for sale
According to a local NBC affiliate investigation, brokers are paying a subset of Yelp elites to post fake reviews: "one former Yelp Elite told us he was part of an invitation-only online chat that included a few thousand Yelp Elite members who are paid $25 to $50 per fake review." It would appear that despite Yelp’s claim of better reviews, their is mischief afoot and that Yelp review averages reflect low cost filtering rather than a better review corpus
Core Web Vitals: No impact on Local ranking, Google offering SEO training,
An interesting and large scale study from Tomas Acuna of whitespark looked at 4500 local listings across 15 verticals and 15 meteor areas to determine that, in fact, Google’s web core vitals have virtually no impact in the local search algo. Is this due to local sites not being well done or does it just reflect the fact that the local algo is so biased towards location and relevance that it just doesn’t have much impact?
Where will Google search be in 10 years?
A Reddit thread about increasingly poor search results, led an informal Near Media twitter survey about the future of search. While it is difficult to predict there are current efforts to fundamentally change how and where we search. Regardless of changing search paradigms, Google is likely to remain a domineering tech company
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.
Near Memo Ep 53
**Segment 1: Will Google’s Increasingly good ability to summarize with AI make SEO superfluous?
Marie Haynes highlighted a new Google Docs feature that summarizes your document using Google’s AI/ML. This ability may provide SEO's with insight into how Google "understands" your page and helps content writes create better copy.
Google’s capabilities in this arena and their ability to “understand” the web May portend a time when SEO will offer less value.**
Segment 2: Google’s recent Android Privacy Sandbox announcement: Something real or is it just more Google PR?
Google’s plan is to create a plan and rollout out a beta for Android privacy in 2 years. They promise to be much more sensitive to social networks’ need to snoop than Apple was. How much of this is really about privacy and how much is about convincing the public and the governments of the world that they “care” about privacy?
Segment 3: Wix reported their Q4 & 2021 earnings. What to make of their 123 million small business websites in the US?
Wix, while not yet profitable, reported sales of just under $1.3 billion. What is most interesting is their report of having over 220 million small business websites with over 50% of those in the US. It raises the question of exactly how big is the addressable SMB market in the US.
Obviously feeling nervous, Google is intensifying its anti-antitrust campaign, lobbying SMBs to "take action" and automating their emails to their representatives in the House and the Senate.
Amazon disclosed the value of its ad business for the first time. The company made $9.7 billion in ad revenue in Q4 and $31.2 billion in 2021. As GeekWire points out, "Amazon’s advertising arm is eight times as large as Snapchat’s entire business, and nearly seven times as large as Twitter."
Apple, leveraging a purchase that they made in 2020, will be rolling out the ability of more recent iPhones to process credit card payments without any additional hardware. Stripe will integrate the tool for businesses first, including Shopify's Point of Sale app this Spring, and other payment platforms will adopt it later this year
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.
Near Memo Ep 51
We discuss the reasons behind Meta’s terrible 4th quarter and stock fall. Was it really Apple’s fault? Will people in the universe buy into their universe?
Yelp and Google both try to establish their review narrative with virtue signaling while the FTC sends letter to 10 companies that skirt the review guidelines
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.
Near Memo Ep 50
After a brief discussion of Google My Business losing control of their previous FB page, we cover how Google, in formally abandoning their FLOC replacement for cookies. is attempting to implement a new API, Topics, that provides websites with 3 weeks of user interests for targeting advertising. Clearly the world is moving toward contextual advertising and away from behavioral targeting but whether Google can get this effort off the ground is another matter
In a high profile case, the FTC fined Fashion Nova for hiding hundreds of thousands of
Studies show that gating actually impedes review volume speaking to the benefit of review transparency and doesn’t prevent negative reviews. The new guidelines will not change small business behavior but the review platforms will have to comply with the guidance.
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.
Near Memo Ep 49 s2e3
This bill, largely in response to the growing sentiment that large digital companies are spying on every day Americans for profit, is unlikely to pass but is indicative of growing discontent with the impact of current ad tech. It foreshadows the likely move away from personal targeting towards contextual advertising.
96% of respondents had implemented new tools in the past year. But the number of tools that businesses were using was small. 60% said they were only using one to three different tools to run their business. Email was preferred communication channel by businesses three to one over texting
Niantic is building out a development platform to make AR experiences more widely available while providing a successful sponsorship model within Pokemon Go.
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.
Near Memo Ep 48
Vendasta, which provides an app store for agencies, has acquired PPC pioneer MatchCraft. The acquisition will fill out Vendasta core marketing offerings with paid ad campaigns and allow more traditional media companies to transition more easily from an ad model to a full service digital marketing model.
Despite Supreme Court refusal to require businesses to vaccinate their employees, those companies that are requiring vaccination are seeing success despite Omichron. Case in point is United Airlines which has 3000 of their 47,000 employees out with Covid has seen no hospitalizations or deaths since requiring the vaccine. Previously one employee a week was dying from Covid. Airlines though are the perfect business to require vaccinations and doing so will increase those willing to fly.
The TLDR Act, which stands for "Terms-of-service Labeling, Design, and Readability Act," would require any website/app – SMBs are explicitly exempted – to offer an easy to understand summary of key terms. And it would have to appear at the top of TOS pages. While a step forward it is unlikely to change user behaviors as the companies will still hold the power.
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.
Near Memo Ep 47
Using a traditional golf course model with an NFT twist, over $10 million was raised in 48 hours. The project got lots of media coverage even though no golf course has yet been purchased or even identified. However this type of activity might point the way towards crowdfunding other start up ventures.
Google, by degrading the user experience and being unwilling to get into the nitty gritty of real world retail has lost the battle for high value intent driven product searches. Can they regain this market? What would it take?
In this recent Washington Post poll only Amazon garnered trust amongst more than 50% of US consumers. The rest all were trusted by less than half of the population and some significantly less. Yet the numbers indicate that despite this mistrust we continue to use these services and products.
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.
Near Memo Ep 46
Last week, Google released a new, more horizontal Local Map Pack with more white space, a bigger, squarer map and bigger images. How will this impact ads and ranking?
New Yelp consumer survey indicates that over 90% prefer written reviews over just ratings. This survey is ostensibly aimed at Google and their lower review and rating standards but in some ways might also be targeted to their partner Apple that might be considering dropping Yelp. Interestingly the reviews that Yelp says consumers prefer are not the reviews that they typically highlight. Go figure
New research from SOCI that looked at 1.1 million business locations across the US and analyzed 169 million reviews associated with them. The research found that over 60% of all reviews are written by Local Guides and that those reviews tend to be shorter than reviews written by regular users. Is this due to gamification of the fact that non Local Guide reviewers are the more emotional reviewers?
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.
Near Memo Ep 45
In this interview with Darren Shaw we take a deep dive into the Local Search Ranking Factors. We look at the key take aways, the strengths and weaknesses of the survey and areas that Local SEO’s should focus on.
In this interview with Darren Shaw we take a deep dive look at the results of the recently released Local Search Ranking Factor survey and explore the key takeaways to good ranking and conversions. We discuss:
- what a citation means in 2021
- the growing impact of images on local search
- the top myths of local search and
- the things that Darren (and most of us) think are a waste of time.
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.
Ep 44 Near Memo
After the release of iOS 15 it has become clear that Apple is not just a wannabe in the mapping space. As they move towards AR, Maps has become a discovery platform and a fully functional travel tool. Mike, attempting to eat his own dog food, takes it on his cross country journey as his sole mapping and discovery tool.
Twitter, despite its outsized role in our news focused culture, has long underperformed financially. Whether Dorsey left willingly or was forced out, there is an opportunity to redefine how it can survive and thrive. Is that a subscription or is a better API model?
Greg Sterling highlights how the maturation of Google has led to inevitable ethical conflicts. Is this unique to Google or part and parcel of a larger pattern? Is it an inevitable outcome as the fair haired offspring of
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.
Near Memo Ep 43 12-03-21
In this recent Uberal study conducted by Greg Sterling consumers confirm the importance of local search with over 50% of their searches being local and that they trust local businesses more than they do internet only brands.
Apple, with their consistent and regular builds for Apple Maps has increasingly included new features on Maps to both aid business discovery and to provide a transaction layer that is fast and easy for the consumer. Apple Maps has increasingly become an important source for new customers and these developments are likely to continue as Maps takes its place in the real world.
Apple’s long term development of Apple Maps when viewed together with the many other cross product developments point to an Apple AR future which looks quite different than Facebook’s metaverse. In that future it is likely that local businesses will have increasing opportunities for consumer discovery as Maps will likely play a critical role in
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.
Near Memo Ep 42
VistaPrint in creating its new brand, Vista showed how to elegantly rebrand a legacy company that has become digital. It created a new umbrella brand for its many acquisitions and space for future brand building. Vista is another company that demonstrates the possibilities in the very small business market.
With some notable funding You.com released its new search engine. Can any of these new search engines make progress against Google? Why are so many coming to the fore now? What exactly is the future of search? Is privacy enough of a differentiator?
Google has pulled out all the stops in its propaganda crusade to convince small business owners that SMB interests in fighting possible Google ant-trust regulation align with Google’s… in doing so Google has expanded their campaign from Google My Business to now include Adwords clients and domain registrants. Is Google running scared?
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.
EP 41 Near Memo
This week we discuss but one topic, the rebranding of the Google My Business tools to the Business Profile. With enhanced in-search and in Maps editing, Google is trying (once again) to lure small businesses to edit their listings via new features. The GMB API will become the Business Profile API and they claim that the GMB dashboard will become the Business Profile Dashboard in 2022. But they also announced the sunsetting of their GMB app. Join us this week as David and Mike bet on the outcome.
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.
Near Memo Ep 40
Largely uncovered in the news, Amazon has announced a new program, Local Selling, that allows local merchants selling on Amazon to apply for the ability to take an order on Amazon and deliver curbside from their location or to deliver via their own delivery process. Clearly this is a response to Google’s successful push of Product Merchant center into local and might lead to additional local relationships for Amazon.
Google is understanding more and more about the content of images using their Cloud Vision AI and this understanding of entities, labels, logos, sentiment and text is being leveraged to use images to answer searcher intent in ads, local and the mobile web results. This is part of a long arc where Google will now start using images to not just answer queries but to ask them as well using their new MUM AI/ML and is likely part of their AR future.
Google Local has been “stealing” local conversions for years. Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky recently reported that Google local leads are both the dominant source for leads as well as the fastest growing source for leads for most of the verticals that she works in. What does this mean for local businesses?
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.
Near Memo Ep 39
The consolidation of internet, cable, voice, content, distribution, smart devices, advertising, and analytics exemplified by these large vertically-integrated ISPs—which represent approximately 98.8% of the mobile internet market—has increased the volume of information they are capable of collecting about consumers, improved their insight into consumers’ behaviors, and strengthened the persistence of identifiers capable of tracking users across platforms and assets.
Snap blamed Apple for their shorfall this quarter but the real question is whether that is reality or just part of the “privacy theater”?
In 2020, AirBnB cut $542 million of performance advertising spend and saw no measurable falloff in attributable sales. They continued this ad-slashing practice in 2021, with similarly eye-popping numbers. Could it be that all those ads did nothing?
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.
Near Memo Ep 38
The FTC sent out a letter to many of America’s largest businesses (Apple, Alphabet, Comcast, Yelp among others) detailing unlawful practices relating to the use of endorsements and testimonials. At first glance it might seem like these companies are doing something wrong, and possibly, some are. But for the most part the FTC, still smarting from their failure to extract fines in the Sunday Riley case, is making sure that they will in fact be able to extract fines if any of these companies violate the testimonial guidelines.
Several of us received a folksy looking toy catalog in the mail the other day. Upon closer inspection it was from Amazon. This heavily curated catalog was appealing to the eye but a surprise that it was so lightly branded. Catalogs are expensive to produce, print and mail but it also provides consumers with a handy guide to the best Christmas toys without having to navigate through Amazon’s search engine. Each page contained a QR code that took the buyer directly to the right page to buy just the right toy.
Google has long been refining the use of AI to pick which photos to show in search results. Now they are refining how photos can be used to actually search for things you are looking for. Claire Carlisle details her currently unpublished research on how Google Lens is leveraging local AND photo awareness to produce shopping results. This is likely a precursor to the full image + query searches that Google has announced to allow users to “point and ask” by sharing both a photo and a question to surface related results.
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.
Near Memo Ep 37
Squarespace’s “Everything to Sell Anything,” Google vs. Lowe, and Has the Local Pack Outlived Its Usefulness?
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.
Near Memo Ep 36
Google Lens was first introduced at Google I/O in 2017 and it has become a showcase for Google’s image recognition. Now when paired with MUM, Google’s new language processing, Lens is being enhanced with commerce capability to provide more than just a simple “this is that” answer to uploaded images. One more benchmark as search becomes ever more visual.
Yelp is making a strategic pivot from an ad seller to a SAAS company. This is a pivot that is critical for them but will they be trusted in a crowded SMB marketplace?
Consumers and the presse, while not wanting to give up the comforts offered by Amazon or Facebook, seem to be increasingly skeptical of new hardware from either firm.
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.
Near Memo Ep 35
wix claims to have 210 million users. Since there are only 125 million businesses worldwide and about 30 million in the US, this number is suspect. But when you explore their paying users and their $1.1 B income, it works out to the $175 per user per year. A very reasonable amount given their SMB focus and with lots of opportunities for upselling.
The recent past has been unkind to mall based department stores. Bloomies has moved to the street AND gone much smaller, higher tech and customer focused with a test store that heavily curates style trends and provides “stylists” that can actually help you find the right clothing. All in all an interesting retail experience and experiment.
What are the implications if something like this were to pass? It could be a cluster-f or it could actually provide user agency depending on how it's implemented. We don’t really need more “click seventeen times and still not be sure what you just agreed to websites”.*
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.
Near Memo Ep 34
With ever increasing ad costs SMBs need to understand customer acquisition costs and lifetime values whether you are a SAAS company or not. This survey of small e-commerce and small business firms shows they spent approximately $9K on average on marketing annually. Average CAC was just under $60.
Reviews can provide an independent look at management issues and consumer trends at large multi-location chains. This 'proof of concept' approach explores Walmart's inventory woes through the lens of local store reviews.
Twitter via their Professional Profiles is offering location based businesses a GMB like page. And it turns out, so is WhatsApp. WhatsApp is likely to add commerce and transactional capabilities and our read is that, particularly internationally, is likely to succeed. Twitter, with a long history of failed features beyond the basics, on the other hand is likely not to.
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.
Near Memo Ep 33
**32% of B2B buyers were willing to spend between $50,000 and up to $500,000 without actually talking to a salesperson. 35% of businesses prefer self service as opposed to talking to either a remote sales person or a field sales person.
6% of iPhone users have opted into apple pay and use it regularly. And this compares to 5% in 2015. Apple’s digital wallet use grew only 20% growth over the past six years. And that is in a year when it should have grown significantly. Although that 6% of Apple users spent $90 billion.**
Facebook has partnered with Ray Ban to create an always on smart glass that can stream video to all of the major social networks. Is this foray into wearable technology just a Snap me too product or can it help the untrusted Facebook gain a foothold in this new hardware category?
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.
Near Memo Ep 32
- Rumors of Intuit buying MailChimp for $10 Billion validate SMB / Agency strategy
With an EBITDA of $300,000 million, MailChimp is apparently going to be sold for an eye popping $10 Billion. With a product forward approach they have built a great product for small business audiences and agencies. While it is a great compliment to Intuit’s other small business products, can Intuit leverage this successful brand or will they fail as they have in other acquisitions?
- Will 1-800-Contacts suing Warby Parker over trade name use in Adwords upend the rules?
1-800 Contacts takes a very aggressive stance claiming that Warby Parker Adwords ads infringed on its trademarks and deceived customers.They allege that Warby Parker bought advertisements tied to Google and other searches of the 1-800 Contacts brand, ads which route consumers to a page on Warby Parker's website that, according to the plaintiff, "mimics key elements of the 1-800 Contacts website."
Will the rules around advertising against a trade name change?
- PE firm Apollo Completes Yahoo Acquisition, will Yahoo succeed?
Among "internet insiders" and urban sophisticates, there's a tendency to dismiss Yahoo. However in many areas of the US, Yahoo's brand remains viable. One question: will Apollo invest in the company or just extract cash? The endgame is likely a return to the public markets. But that requires a growth story.
An unusually assertive Biden who noted that this 40-year “experiment” has failed. “Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism,” he proclaimed at the signing of the executive order. “It’s exploitation.” It remains to be seen if real changes will occur but this is the first time in recent memory that a President has made it clear that the whole of the executive branch is responsible for increasing competitiveness.
Craigslist has seen a decline of almost 50% over the past 3 years with much of that loss going to Facebook Marketplaces. Can Nextdoor take advantage of this?
NYC has recently passed a law requiring that businesses post notice of any biometric tracking taking place and prevent them from selling that data. Will this increased awareness of the increasing use of Facial recognition technology change consumer behaviors or will it require additional intervention to allow them to prevent this>
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.
EP 31 Near Memo
Walmart is doing something that would have been unthinkable in a pre-Amazon world: offering its delivery infrastructure to other retailers. Announced earlier this week, the last-mile delivery service is called GoLocal. It's being provided on a white-labeled basis to any retailer regardless of size.
The SMB social media disconnect: what SMBs THINK consumers want is not what they want
New data from Constant Contact suggests social is less efficient than SMBs think. The report says, "almost half of small businesses feel social media is the most effective channel for driving business results." Yet consumers are more likely to buy something after receiving an email or text from a business.
With recent roll out of Apple Map reviews, how should a business or agency be thinking about them?
Apple iPhones represent a well heeled clientele and send a lot of traffic to SMBS. Just how much of that represents users discovering your business is hard to determine but Apple is clearly committed to improving their discovery search and results. Reviews are part and parcel of that improvement and Apple Map reviews are one more place where users can learn more about your reputation.
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.
Near Memo Ep 30
Agency’s amended complaint details how the monopolist survived existential threats by illegally acquiring innovative competitors and burying successful app developers. But will the agency be able to 1)prove that Facebook is in fact a monopoly and 2) can they overcome the fact that the FTC previously approved the buyouts?
CallRail surveyed 600 US-based businesses across various industries and the news is good for agencies although tell a tale of marketing difficulties for SMBs with only 49% having a dedicated website
In this exclusive Near Media interview, Miriam Ellis details how the co-op model can help build sustainable restaurant delivery that's better for restaurants and local communities.
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.
Google, when testing new features in the chase to improve user’s experience, often pick large partners for the test period. Effectively they pick a “winner”, that, if the test succeeds, has an early mover advantage in local. often this is to the disadvantage of existing, smaller local players. That is what happened with delivery services being included in the Local Business Profile.
In their local newsletter local vet created a great piece of content and sympathy from vet owners. They told the story of how as Covid left many people working from home the rate of pet adoptions accelerated but the increase in pets led to a vet shortage and significant vet burnout.
The pressures to rak higher at Amazon has led merchants to follow up with customers directly with an offer to pay for a negative review take down. When that fails they move on to harassment.
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.
EP 28 Near Memo
Yelp, in a turnaround from a disastrous 2020, even managed to surpass 2019 number by about 15% by targeting enterprise customers and seeing more self-serve success and success outside of the restaurant vertical.
**Bredin surveyed over 800 SMBs on how they learn about product and services for their businesses,The biggest takeaway: Roles one would expect to be common – such as a head of sales, marketing or HR – are not that prevalent; and those SMBs that do fill these positions fill them later in their development than one might expect.
AI writing tools mean that the marginal cost of a blog post is nosediving from multiple skilled person-hours to minutes spent in a freemium SaaS product. Any company with a modest budget and a functioning internet connection will be able to pump out truly mind-numbing volumes of content.**
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.
Near Memo Ep 27
Due largely to ad price increases, Facebook’s profits soared as the economy picked up. But wait, Mark Zuckerberg notes that in 5 years they will be known as the metaverse company rather than a social network.
Apple, slowly, very slowly, is attempting to build out their own SMB database to improve their Map experience.
Consumers say that they trust Facebook and Google less but their actions indicate otherwise. And nowhere are we seeing companies making privacy choices as clear and as easy as they need to be.
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.
Near Memo Ep 26
Google makes reviewing easy by adding attributes to restaurant reviews, Fake reviews are costly to SMBS but Google seems incapable of squashing them, Square’s new bank is a threat to traditional SMB banking relationships
Google makes reviewing easy by adding attributes to restaurant reviews.
Google, unlike Yelp, is making reviewing easier and quicker for users by adding quick standardized choices to restaurant reviews. Google, already having rolled out similar review attributes in the service industries, says additional industries and categories to come soon.
Fake reviews are costly to SMBS but Google seems incapable of fixing it.
In the world of B2B sales, a great deal of money changes hands and the role of reputation is critical. All too often businesses rely on Google’s review summary to spend thousands of dollars. In this case the results were disastrous and it makes it clear that Google has not really worked hard enough in this area
Square’s new bank is a threat to traditional SMB banking relationships.
Square, being at the center of many off-line businesses POS, is now providing checking, savings and loans. Many of the services are free. The tight relationship that SMBs have with Square and SMBs dislike of banks creates an huge opportunity for Square to disrupt traditional banking.
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.
NearMemo 25
An unusually assertive Biden who noted that this 40-year “experiment” has failed. “Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism,” he proclaimed at the signing of the executive order. “It’s exploitation.” It remains to be seen if real changes will occur but this is the first time in recent memory that a President has made it clear that the whole of the executive branch is responsible for increasing competitiveness.
Craigslist has seen a decline of almost 50% over the past 3 years with much of that loss going to Facebook Marketplaces. Can Nextdoor take advantage of this?
NYC has recently passed a law requiring that businesses post notice of any biometric tracking taking place and prevent them from selling that data. Will this increased awareness of the increasing use of Facial recognition technology change consumer behaviors or will it require additional intervention to allow them to prevent this.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.
The NearMemo Ep 24
Given the powerful standing of the leading apps, it is unlikely that, even if the app stores are more regulated, whether there will be a more competitive environment. And any anti-trust efforts focusing on competitive harms will go up against 40 years of jurisprudence that has only looked at consumer harms.
The Google updates favors better content for Local too! Sterling Sky did an interesting case study in the legal space of a client that seems to have dramatically benefited from the recent algo updates. Why? Because they had spent time pruning bad content and improving the good.
Yext Search Data Hub provides interesting GMB Insights Data across 600,000 listings
Yext has created a visual interface to 3 years of GMB Insights data that can be searched by country or vertical. With this tool you can track our nascent recovery via the recent rise in driving direction as well as see which industries are still getting more website visits or phone calls.
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.
Ep 23 Near Memo
Facebook’s new Bulletin product integrates tightly into Facebook groups, their newsfeed and comments. It is well a designed and a thoughtful newsletter implementation that could bring significant social benefits to newsletter publishers and new advertisers and news content to Facebook.
From Localogy: “Shopify is planning to roll out an ad product called Shopify Audiences. The program will evidently position the company’s sizable corpus of shopping data to better inform and target advertisers’ campaigns on Facebook and Google.”
In June, the Supreme court defined terms in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. As a result, they vacated a previous 9th Court Decision allowing scraping of publicly available information. This gives Microsoft‘s LinkedIn another chance to stop HiQ’s scraping of the public data on their site. A possible outcome? Upending of the whole of the Martech world.
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.
Near Memo Ep 22
**Why has Google, so shortly after announcing FLoC, already pulling back?Google’s delay of FLoC is signaling both the confusion and fear in the market and lack of acceptance amongst the leading platforms.
The successes of DuckDuckGo as the Avis of search engines indicates the customer demand for privacy
DuckDuckGo has become the number two mobile search engine in the world and is increasingly profitable. This is no small feat given the competition, what is going on?
As economy opens up, businesses need clearly communicated vaccination policy to not lose customers
With states starting to open up, how do businesses navigate the new masked, not masked reality vis a vis their employees and customers without losing customers?**
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.
Near Memo Ep 21
The local arc from inventory to ordering to monopoly and consolidation
**Google makes it easier to upload products & services and give Pointy away for free...Google Local announced this week the ability of merchants to more easily add products, services and appointments to the Local graph. As part of this effort, they are giving away Pointy, POS hardware that automatically creates on-line inventory. It’s part of Google’s ever increasingly more granule knowledge graph
Google Local Food Order is so easy it's magical & shows exactly where Google & Local search is going.....Google’s web based restaurant order entry system knows so much about you, your location, credit card details, the restaurants nearby and exactly what their menu items are, that they can create an incredibly fluid ordering experience. They so while avoiding the need for an app, for an explicit delivery company relationship or a payment processor making the whole process totally painless.
Anti-trust and local consolidation.....We explore the rapidly changing world that Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple will be confronting and how some of the laws proposed just don’t make sense. Which takes us to the consolidation that is occurring the the local marketing stack where integrations and buyouts that got Google et. al in trouble are the order of the day**
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.
Near Memo Ep 20
Whenever Apple announces a new consumer focused privacy update, the pundits become Chicken Little. E-mail has long provided the best ROI of any marketing channel and while metrics might be harder to garner, that won’t stop a great email from succeeding.
Google seems to have stopped enforcing naming abuse by businesses in Google Maps. And they have now increased the field length to 300 characters. What happens when greedy businesses meet an obtuse Google? Mayhem.
People seemed genuinely glad to be there and see one another. The content seemed entirely secondary to the networking and social events, which people enjoyed with gusto. Masks were mostly worninside but not at all outside and not at the social events -- where people were close talking, fueled by abundant wine. It all felt disorienting and normal at the same time.
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.
NearMemo #19
**The Washington Post details the travails of a couple seeking treatment and the problems that befell them after they picked a provider based on what turned out to be fake reviews. The article looks at the lack of incentives to do reviews right and the lack of disincentives to not cheat. The article discussed how Section 230 creates an environment where review companies can “look the other way”.
Google’s recent announcements about advanced in AI, for understanding the written word, creating new original text and their increasing ability to understand the content of images puts line under their recent paper Rethinking Search: Making Experts out of Dilettantes where Google details new architectures to over come the limits of index driven search and the inability of the Knowledge Graph to do no more than extract small snippets. Essentially they are proposing a new model based system that could write the equivalent of a Wikipedia article in response to a query.
Guest author Miriam Ellis details how one business person running a bookshop in Lawrence KS to not only survive but thrive in light of the Amazon onslaught. Lot of practical tips on the steps he took as well as his the epiphany of the damage that Amazon was doing to the rest of the community
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.
Near Memo #18**
Mike discusses his journey down the gamified rabbithole of the wildly successful Google Local Guides program, how the program promotes quantity over quality and why every business needs to not let their brand be controlled by the likes of the Local Guides.
SMBS have traditionally relied on best of breed SAAS point solutions to solve their pre-sale, in house and post-sale needs. Now the major SMB platforms are now converging on high quality capabilities across all three areas PLUS integrating with the likes of Google. This allows the SMB to use one piece of software and achieve the gains of automation across the whole of their search, operations and customer experience needs.
Google held its annual Google Marketing Live event this week. There were many ads related announcements involving automation, simplification and reach. Google's "open" commerce strategy is aimed squarely at Amazon, utilizing Google's various properties for product visibility. Throughout Google was constantly (and perhaps hypocritically) beating on the privacy drum.
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.
Hospitality Case Study of Reviews: What Happened to Yelp?
Looking at 20 years of reviews for a popular Santa Fe resort, we examine how Yelp faired against the likes of TripAdvisor, Facebook, Google and OpenTable. The analysis shows, that at least in this segment, Yelp’s problems were largely self-inflicted not caused by a Google abuse of their monopoly.
Google I/O: they flex their AI muscles and move further into local products with the Shopping Graph
Google used I/O to position themselves as the AI powerhouse, using AI for everything from engaging in human like conversations to identifying the specific model of sneaker in your photo of the band on stage. Once they have identified the sneaker, they will parse it via their newly anointed Shopping Graph and not only offer to let you buy them but tell you where they are locally available for curbside pickup. They have found their play against Amazon and its impressive.
Google to try out retail at their NYC HQ. Can they succeed IRL? Can they actually provide support?
After many false starts Google is finally opening a retail presence in New York at their headquarters in Chelsea. They will be selling and supporting their growing range of Google hardware from phones to the Nest. Their choice of NYC home as a site gives them an easy out if they are unable to provide real support to real customers in real life. We are skeptical they will be able succeed at scaling the project.
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.
NM#16
Part 1 Shopify makes the case for local ecommerce
A report with a soup-to-nuts discussion of shopping and commerce trends, including online vs. offline, social commerce, retail experiences, payments and banking services. One interesting finding: retailers with local pickup/delivery options saw 13% - 19% higher online conversions. Apparently the Japanese are the least likely to support shopping locally
Why do consumers desire to buy local but still buy at Amazon?
Most consumers say and often feel that they want to support local businesses. Yet their actions often belie that feeling as many continue, whether due to convenience or inertia, continue to spend with national chains and e-commerce
How did Google win the review wars vs Yelp?
Rand Fishkin notes that he things it is due to Google's abuse of their monopoly status. We argue that it is much more complicated than that with various market forces, consumer desires and legal standards playing a roll in addition to whatever Google might have done.
Episode 15
With David Mihm, Greg Sterling & Mike Blumenthal
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.
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 moeration
As 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 game
Unlike 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 14
With David Mihm, Greg Sterling & Mike Blumenthal
Is Apple being paternalistic or ethical in not allowing advertisiers to provide incentives for Apple users to opt into advertising tracking? Should privacy be commoditized?
Can Yelp make their way back by moving to transactional approach to local? After alienating most SMBS in the country and seeing ever increasing declines in readership David doesn't think that Yelp moving to a transactional model will save them.
Amazaon, amazing profits, amazing (& ruthless) efficienies. In Amazon's efficiencies and ruthlessness we see all of the contradictions of American commerce. Includes a cartoon that sums it all up.
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.
NM#13
Episode 12:
Zagat reviews, but shorter and graphic appealing, rise from the Google ashes; The FTC ability to levy fines as a deterrent is knee capped by SCOTUS; Apple privacy changes AND review capability coming this week.
Zagat, bought by Google in 2011 for their 30 point system, then discarded by Google is re-entering the food reviews market with more image heavy, briefer review and a 10 pt scale. Can they succeed again?
The FTC, after looking like they were going to get tough on fake reviews, has had their main enforcement hammer, $ fines, taken away by the Supreme Court in a 9 - 0 decision. They are already before congress requesting reinstatement of the ability to fine offenders.
Will Apple's reviews have a market impact? Will their preference for curation allow them to keep their reviews trustworthy? Will Google EVER get their local review moderation act together?
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.
FB SMB Survey showed 22% of SMBS adopted e-commerce over the past year, women led businesses were more agile in the adoption of digital technology, but impact of the pandemic hurt minority and women the most.
Near Media survey detailed the list of activities that American's had planned once they felt safe & economy opened. The top two (by a large margin) were travel and eating out.
SubStack offers a competitive award to incent creators of local news. Applications will be vetted by a panel, winners will get cash & access to mentors, design and health insurance. Will it work?
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.
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.
With Swyft providing last mile same day delivery will we see small businesses being able to offer their Prime like subscriptions? - David
The new FTC rule-making changes are signaling that the FTC will use their authority to deter and punish for fake reviews and testimonials. - Mike
Why did Yahoo Answers fail and what will it take to have a great answer system? Do Google's Local Guides show a path? - Greg
Website Builder SquareSpace acquires restaurant backend system Tock; will other website builders need to acquire more backend functionality? Will Web 3.0 be about business services? - Mike blumenthal
Google My Business, historically tone deaf when it comes to small business, shoots themselves in the Messaging foot by showing competitors when a consumer attempts to message a specific business. Will small business adopt this critical messaging product if it highlights their competitors? - David Mihm
GroundTruth is betting heavily on the SMB market. Yesterday it announced the acquisition of Addy, which simplifies display advertising across media channels. But is it too complicated for the SMB? - Greg Sterling
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.
Episode 8: Google fights with Rand Fishkin over “zero-click” searches. Can a rating only review ever be defamatory? Will Yahoo’s brand rise from the ashes as a Verizon subscription service?
Written by Near Media
Filed under Conversations
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Discussed this week:
-Google’s integration of Business profile messaging into the Google My Business for the desktop and the implications for SMBs and enterprise brands
-Google’s test for displaying local e-commerce sites and what it says about Google’s ambitions in their competition with Amazon
-Apple’s privacy initiative, how it will affectect consumer behaviors and how consumers often say they want privacy but have done to little to gain it.
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.