MIHMORANDUM

A quick note, readers, that I’ll be heading to BIA/Kelsey Group’s Interactive Local Media conference next week in San Francisco.  You may remember from previous years, this has been one of my absolute favorite events to attend–much different from a typical SEO show, action-packed (and often contentious) presentations, and extremely stimulating networking.  If you’re in [...]

Hey everyone, I know I’ve been incredibly lax in posting recently.  October was a very busy month.  Including the last week of September and the first week of November, I was busy putting on four Local University events with Mike Blumenthal, Mary Bowling, Matt McGee, Aaron Weiche (PS–Minnesotans looking for a web gig, Aaron is hiring), [...]

Normally I don’t like to call out companies for spamming (I am happy to leave that to Professor Maps), but when it’s – this egregious – on this scale – hurting REAL Local SMB’s instead of one big corporation vs. another I feel compelled. It is about as blatant as business title spam gets.  See [...]

Most of you have probably heard that Google will go before the Senate Antitrust Committee in a couple hours.  One of the star “prosecution” witnesses is Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman. Regular readers know that in general, I’d like to see more oversight of Google’s activities by somebody & I’m hoping that these proceedings lead to exactly [...]

I came across a very pleasant surprise on NYTimes.com last night: this article on the ease of crowdsourcing business closures within Google Places.   “The Oracle of Olean,” Mike Blumenthal, features prominently in the second half of the article, as the Times found his experiment on closing Google’s Mountain View location particularly illustrative and amusing. [...]

I’m amazed at the number of mainstream publications, including TechCrunch, who have misinterpreted the latest interface change at Google. Google Places has not stopped “stealing reviews,” if that’s even what you could say they were doing in the first place. They’ve just stopped displaying them, and stopped displaying citations.

Hey everyone, I’m currently presenting at Expon Brasil & haven’t had a great chance to keep up with all the coverage.  Wanted to include some quick thoughts while I have internet access.  I’ll follow-up with a full post later today or tomorrow. 1) If you didn’t see this coming, you haven’t been paying attention. 2) [...]

Awhile back, I passed along the news that Google was spot-checking business owner information telephonically. As I said at the time, I love the fact that Google is trying to improve the quality of business data, but over the phone remains a bad mechanism for accomplishing this goal, in my opinion. Why?  It’s becoming impossible [...]

Hat tip to Linda Buquet of Catalyst Local Marketing for being the first to spot the Austin and Portland versions below, and thus the first to publicize the overall concept. Google has just released city-specific business directories that are clearly going to compete with Yelp, Citysearch, and all the other IYPs in terms of highlighting [...]

Well, it’s hard to believe this is already the fourth time I’ve had the privilege to compile the opinions of the world’s top experts in Local Search Marketing. My initial comments about the results of the 2011 Local Search Ranking Factors survey follow below.