MIHMORANDUM

I had the pleasure of attending Google’s Get Oregon Business Online event last week here in Portland, part of their nationwide Get Your Business Online series. I hadn’t seen much coverage of any of these events in our little Local Search community — even from Mike Blumenthal (!) — so I thought I’d share some thoughts, as well as a small photo gallery.

Has Google’s Traditional April Fool’s Joke Come a Day Early? While messing around with Google Maps I happened to come across a pop-up linking to a little video explaining 8-bit Google Maps. I applaud Google for its creativity and light-hearted nature. But I can’t help but think of the (wo)man hours it must have taken to pull this off, and how those surely would have been better spent in the Places Help Forums, or on refinements to the clustering algorithm, where they would have a real-world, and not a fantasy-world, impact?

Many of you may have heard that Google is transitioning its Help Forums for Places to a new platform.  They have made the very strange decision to suppress–actually ELIMINATE–all previous posts that have accumulated over the years.  So much for “organizing all the world’s information?” Cynics may say that they’re attempting to cover tracks that [...]

Although my sparse posting schedule on here has unfortunately become the norm, the reason for the latest absence of posts has been that I’ve been putting together our Spring conference schedule for Local University with Mike Blumenthal, Ed Reese, and our other faculty.  I’m excited to announce that we’re now “open for business” with all [...]

Amazingly, it’s been nearly two and a half years since I first published my Local Search Ecosystem infographic back in October 2009. With the 2012 conference season kicking off in earnest with SearchFest on Friday and SMX West on Monday, I thought it was high time for an update. I’d like to think that the original graphic has stood the test of time pretty well…but there have definitely been some changes worth noting in the last 900 days or so.

Obviously, I’ve claimed my consulting business on most of the major search engines and data aggregators, and done my best to make sure that my NAP information (Name, Address, and Phone number, for those of you new to Local Search) is consistent everywhere. Sure there are a few minor variations of my official DBA (David Mihm Web Design / Local SEO) due to various aggregators’ limitations on length of business title.

But, I recently came across a crazy bug on my Google Place Page! I couldn’t believe it. My phone number had all of a sudden changed from 503-560-2755 to 971-400-6360. I had two questions–#1, of course, why had my phone number changed? #2–and more importantly–where did that number come from?

SEOs tend to work themselves into a frenzy over every minor news announcement that comes out of Mountain View–and one could probably say Local SEOs lie on the extreme end of the spectrum. In some respects, it’s understandable. Our space is constantly evolving, and to ignore these announcements can put us at a significant disadvantage relative to [...]

Back on Day Three — off to a bit of late start again :) Bo Fishback, Zaarly Zaarly is 10 months old, $1MM in seed funding, $14MM in Series A funding, and got Meg Whitman on the board.  They are doing peer-to-peer selling.  Say what you want, what you are willing to pay, and how [...]

And we’re off! Recap of Day 1 from BIA Kelsey’s Jed Williams Companies are partnering even with traditional enemies these days (ClearChannel and Cumulus, for example). Your biggest competitors are coming from markets you can’t even see right now. Being “average” at a bunch of different things means you are doomed to fail in today’s [...]

I’ll be blogging sessions on this thread throughout the next couple days. Looking forward to the conversations in the comments and/or on the ol’ Twitter.