Author: andrewsho

Hey readers, Local SEO Guide is looking for help in the Bay Area from someone who has experience in “big SEO data” analysis – don’t be intimidated – we’re talking about taking data from various tools and interpreting it into actionable recommendations. You must be located in the Bay Area. We will not relocate you for this position. This is a long-term assignment and could lead to full-time employment, if we’re mutually interested. Perfect for an independent consultant looking to pick up…

NEW YORK — Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced that 19 companies had agreed to cease their practice of writing fake online reviews for businesses and to pay more than $350,000 in penalties. “Operation Clean Turf,” a year-long undercover investigation into the reputation management industry, the manipulation of consumer-review websites, and the practice of astroturfing, found that companies had flooded the Internet with fake consumer reviews on websites such as Yelp, Google Local, and CitySearch.  This operation also uncovered…

UPDATE: Some of my better-read compatriots have pointed me towards Greg Sterling’s article from April about how Google is using the layout below to appease anti-competition complaints in Europe.  So take my theories below as pure entertainment, as it should be. Nick Rink of Smart Local , a UK Local SEO firm, posted a screenshot of this new Google Local SERP this morning on Google+:   I can’t find another example of this, or a full SERP screenshot, but I…

Google Webmaster Tools just launched the Manual SPAM Action Viewer which alerts webmasters to manual SPAM issues with their sites.  Like a good SEO consultant, I quickly ran through all of my clients and here are the various messages I encountered – ok, perhaps it’s not so “ultimate” – disavow me if you want: Pure SPAM – Partial Match Pages on this site appear to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking, scraping content from other websites,…

In my SEL post 7 Things I Have Figured Out About The New Google Maps, I mentioned that businesses might want to try using ALL CAPS in their business name on their Google Places + Local (whateva) profile as I had noticed EXTREME PIZZA rocking the all-caps in the map result I was studying: A commenter then added: We quickly updated the post to warn readers that all caps in a business name might not be a good idea.  In…

David Mihm has published 2013’s Local Search Ranking Factors Survey over at Moz. As is tradition, I will summarize it here and encourage you to head over to David’s post to soak in the data: “By and large, the primary factors seem to have stayed largely the same for the past couple of years: Proper category associations A physical address in the city being searched Consistent, high-quality citations from sources that are: Authoritative Trustworthy Industry-relevant Your NAP information featured clearly…

Based on the comments I am seeing on yesterday’s post, it appears that the new Google+ Local Reviews Pop-Up has gone global. Since it seems like this is a real thing and not a test, I started looking at it a bit more to figure out the implications. One question that popped up: @localseoguide What do you think this means for the value of Google+ Local pages that aren’t receiving heavy reviews??? — Jason A. Keeler (@jkeys1313) July 31, 2013…

Not sure if I am seeing a test or if this is rolling out everywhere but now when I click on the “[#] Google reviews” link for a business from the SERPs, I am seeing a lightbox type of pop up display instead of being sent to the Google Plus Page for the business. Check it out: Here’s the URL that shows the pop-up. Some initial observations: The default view is a list of the 10 most recent reviews with…

Hint: Not this one…ripped off from Tumblr. I asked a bunch of Local Search geeks which company will Apple Maps buy next?.

Yext has just released the latest Yext Quarterly, a report on Social & Local search trends produced by Greg Sterling and yours truly.  From Yext CEO, Howard Lerman’s intro: “If you had asked me five years ago how maps and local search would evolve, I would have said that the most important entity is the places. Specifically, the data about what businesses there are, and where those businesses are located. But I was wrong. It turns out that when it…