About Near Media
We're an applied market research firm helping multi-location marketing and vertical agency executives maximize their SEO & paid search investments.
Software vendors are unreliable advisors.
Content fora are low-quality and primarily geared at SMBs.
SEO is an afterthought for most traditional agencies.
Even premier SEO agencies serving typical large brands treat Local as an afterthought.
Through our unique combination of
+ proprietary consumer research
+ competitive localized SERP analysis
+ step-by-step performance improvement roadmaps
we are the go-to strategic and tactical advisor for multi-location brands who seek to maximize their investments in paid, organic, and local search.
Want to learn more about our capabilities?
Get in touch to see if we're a good fit for what you're looking for.
Contact UsThe Near Media Team
Greg Sterling
Greg Sterling is one of the leading authorities on local digital marketing, location intelligence and the SMB market. He's been engaged in online strategy, research, content development and event programming since 1998. He most recently was the VP of Market Insights for Uberall and a former contributing editor for Search Engine Land, where he wrote for 14 years.
Sterling has spoken extensively at industry events over the past 20 years. He founded The Place Conference, on location intelligence, in 2013. He also wrote the first analyst report on local search and its potentially disruptive impact on traditional media such as yellow pages in 2003. (Believe it or not, at the time, the outcome wasn't a foregone conclusion.)
Before Uberall, Sterling was VP of Strategy for the Local Search Association. Prior to LSA, Sterling was an analyst, editor, producer and author at Opus Research, The Kelsey Group, Allbusiness.com and TechTV.
Sterling is also, thankfully, a former attorney.
Mike Blumenthal
Mike has been involved with offering web services since 1995. Prior to specializing in web design and search consulting in 2001, Mike was a principal in a family owned & operated retail business for over 30 years. That business was very successful until it wasn't and was crushed by the new reality of retail.
Like all small business owners attempting to market to a fragmented clientele, he was continually frustrated by the barriers & costs imposed by the advertising options available. Shortly after Google Maps was released in 2004 he threw out his 9 Yellow Page books and started focusing on Local Search.
Mike helped co-found LocalU in 2009 (acquired by SterlingSky in 2019) and co-founded GatherUp.com in 2012 (acquired by ByTraject in 2019). During the week, you can find him at LocalU.org where he does a weekly podcast, on his blog, Understanding Google Maps and Local Search, where he writes about local search and its impact on the business community
Read Mike's articles for Near Media here.
David Mihm
David has spent his career helping location-oriented companies make the most of their digital presence.
Over the course of the 2010s, his teams built software products to optimize what are now Google Business Profiles and other directory listings, first as the co-founder and CEO of GetListed.org, then at Moz, and finally as VP at ThriveHive. David was also a co-founder of Local University, and the creator of the original Local Search Ranking Factors survey from 2008-2016, before handing it off to Darren Shaw.
David started his career in the mid-2000s as a consultant and is now back to that mode of work, teaming up with Mike Blumenthal and Greg Sterling at Near Media to help multi-location brands and vertical agencies understand how their customers interact with Google search results, and advising them on how to adjust their search strategy accordingly.
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