How often do searchers rely on the Local Pack and Finder to answer their questions? LSA review hijacking abounds and why Google's review moderation is still failing.

Black Friday: Consumers Go Wild Fears about soft consumer spending on Black Friday proved unfounded. Driven by discounts, US shoppers opened their wallets and generated a record $9.8 billion

OpenAI: WTF Just Happened? No doubt many of you have followed the chaotic soap opera surrounding OpenAI's ouster of CEO Sam Altman and his reinstatement only days later. To recap,

Google Local Goes Vegetarian Google is now highlighting vegetarian dishes at restaurants that don't necessarily identify as vegan or vegetarian. Obviously Google is attempting to help non-meat eaters understand the

Awaiting the New Yahoo Search At the recent SMX Next event Senior VP and General Manager of Yahoo Search Brian Provost said that the site's new search experience will launch

Google to Personalize Rankings At the recent BrightonSEO conference in San Diego, Google spokesperson Danny Sullivan said there were major changes coming to search – beyond the volatility of the past

NYC Orthopedist fined $100k for fake reviews, "reputation management" company manipulates Google Product Experts to get reviews removed, solution for the SAB location bug at hand?

Can the 'AI Pin' Replace the iPhone? The short answer is "no." But Humane's new AI-powered wearable "pin" is an impressive hardware device that points to a next generation of

GPT vs. Search: Battle of UIs Google has been "the front door to the internet" since the early 2000s. But a decade from now, perhaps sooner, search (as we currently

Google Maps Updates - Bloat or Value? Last week Google announced several new features were now available in Google Maps including Immersive View, more EV charging station information, an updated

After nearly 3 years of uninterrupted output and 133 podcasts, Near Media will be taking a short hiatus through November 1. We'll resume publishing on November 3. Will Generative AI

Plug-ins and Personalized Search Before Apple bought Siri in 2010, its CEO Dag Kittlaus envisioned his digital assistant eliminating the need for a "middle man" (Google) by linking user requests

Local Falcon's New AI Recommendations Local rank tracker Local Falcon just rolled out a new AI-based feature, which CEO David Hunter believes is unique among Local SEO tools. The company

Agencies: ChatGPT Now #2 Most Used Tool There are multiple "state of digital agencies" survey reports (e.g., Vendasta, CallRail), including one we did but haven't published. The latest comes

Google Tried to 'Kneecap' Spotlight The Google antitrust trial started a month ago. And while the war in Israel has now "pushed it off the front page," plenty of news

Apple Users Prefer Google Maps 2:1 BrightLocal released its second "Local Business Discovery and Trust Report," polling 1,100 on a range of questions, including how many use social

Google's Call History has a checkered past including cancellation but its now back, The FTC claims that review platforms have perverse incentives to allow fake reviews, we agree and Apple Maps has updated their local Insights

MSFT: 'Google Blocked Bing' Earlier this week Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testifed at the Google antitrust trial. The irony of the companies' role reversal should be lost on no one.

Apple Search Redux Google's antitrust trial seemed to clearly establish that Apple isn't going to build its own search engine (and never took it seriously). But barely a week later,

Google's Listings Clean-up Over the past two years, suspensions have been a big percentage of GBP Forum requests, especially for service area businesses (SAB). Google required re-verification, including live video

Google @25: Iconoclast to Idolater Google began in 1998 as an idealistic company with huge ambition: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." It also

ChatGPT Finds Its Voice ChatGPT is now a true virtual assistant. It can understand images and speak to you using one of several very human sounding synthetic voices. The image

Ex-Googler: Clicks Affect Rankings Google has always maintained it doesn't use behavioral signals such as clicks or dwell time in search rankings. And it has called such claims "myths." But

Bard+ Arrives with Extensions After a couple of months with no updates, yesterday Google rolled out Bard Extensions (similar to ChatGPT plug-ins). Bard extensions were first announced at Google I/

Local SGE's Manic Episode   Last week SEO Andy Simpson discovered a Local SGE snapshot with two carousel results and a whole lot of thumbnails. The query was "new orleans personal

Amazon Search Upgrades Answer Google Amazon dominates product search. And Google has been battling back for several years with a range of strategies and tactics: more product results, visual search

US: Google 'Weaponized' Search Defaults The US v. Google has kicked off, with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) arguing Google used default search deals as an anti-competitive "weapon" against

'One and Done' Policy Will Be Global Google has rolled out a new policy and process for reinstatement of suspended listings in Europe. When a business is suspended for violating

Google's Day in Court There have been a dizzying array of antitrust claims against Google in Europe and the US. In the US, Google currently faces two active cases – one

Does Yahoo Directory 2.0 Make Sense? The venerable Yahoo Directory shut down, after nearly 20 years, in 2014. It was a victim of exploding online content and an ascendant

People Not Using ChatGPT to 'Search' When ChatGPT launched it was immediately seen as a "Google killer." However, that has not come to pass. In fact, ChatGPT's traffic, while substantial,

Google's 'Naïve' SEO Advice Google has long promoted the idea that you should create content for people (e.g., Helpful Content Update) and not for its algorithm. The company says

Deduping GBP Profiles: There's a Form for That! Google Maps' knowledge graph includes 200 million business listings and captures them from multiple trusted data suppliers and other sources. Inevitably, there

Europe's DSA Forcing Change Europe's Digital Services Act (DSA) passed in early 2022; now it's taking effect. A companion to the Digital Markets Act, the DSA is primarily directed toward

TikTok 'Search Ads Toggle' After months of testing with an expanding group of advertisers, TikTik has officially rolled out search ads, called "Search Ads Toggle." The "toggle" part refers to

European regulations are compelling Google to improve Google Business Profile support.

Has BingGPT Failed? When Microsoft announced integration of ChatGPT into Bing this February, the company proclaimed it was "reinventing search." The positive coverage and buzz was a PR coup; it

SGE While Browsing Earlier this week, Google announced a number of SGE upgrades, including a new feature called "SGE While Browsing." (Bing has something similar.) To access SGE While Browsing

GBP Support Using Gig Workers Google has long attempted to reduce or eliminate costs from Google Business Profile Support. We have written up Google's newest effort to try using gig

AI Summaries the Future of Reviews? E-commerce site Newegg introduced AI-generated review summaries (h/t SEL). And Amazon is doing something similar. Newegg is using ChatGPT to extract highlights from

Google's Antitrust Trial Set Earlier this week, a California judge denied Google's summary judgment motion in the $5 billion Chrome "incognito" browser tracking lawsuit. This doesn't mean Google will be

EU DSA to influence Maps moderation, Google LSAs add new categories, Google Maps listings hijacked again (and again).

ChatGPT Beats Google in Blind 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,

Finally, Links in Google SGE Perhaps the loudest criticism of Google SGE has been its failure to cite sources for content that appears in the "AI Snapshot." (Links exist for

GBP's New Policies & Guidelines Google sent out an email today announcing simplified policies and guidelines. Translated from Google speak: We are now actually telling you what the guidelines are. There

Meta's Image Makeover   Meta is back. Not long ago, the company was reeling from Apple's privacy changes, a bad bet on the metaverse, the rise of TikTok and constant, negative

Google Search Ads Up, Bing's Billion Chats Google and Microsoft announced quarterly earnings yesterday and both beat Wall Street expectations. With $74.6 billion in total revenue, Google stock rose,

Product Search Shifting Driven by Prime loyalty, Amazon has been the dominant product search site for most consumers, followed by Google. While that remains true, there's some interesting movement according

Can AI Save Siri?   According to a Bloomberg report, Apple has been working on its own generative AI to catch up ro everybody else. Known internally as "Ajax," the article

Apple Maps Momentum Last week we discussed the growth of Apple Maps and estimated its iPhone user market share at 37% (others have larger estimates). This week a number of

Fast, Cheap Content For months we've been debating the impact of generative AI on search. Some marketers argue AI will "revolutionize the SERPs." That's true – it's already in process on

Local: Bing in Fourth Place Monday we published a preliminary analysis of Apple Maps traffic vs. Google for local search/discovery. Mike's conclusion was that roughly 37% of iPhone owners

Google SGE Usage Decline? When Google SGE launched I was super excited (as they say) because I believe that the SERP is broken. But now I mostly don't use it

Is Apple Maps Driving Traffic? In late 2021 it became obvious that Apple Maps had become a much more powerful discovery tool that could deliver traffic to businesses. The rollout

Cage Match: Twitter vs. Threads By now you've read about or signed up for Threads, Meta's Twitter clone. Threads officially launched yesterday in 100 countries, though not Europe. Within 24

GDPR Gets Some Teeth Meta (née Facebook) built its ad model on massive, largely surreptitious data collection, which fueled highly personalized ad targeting. That capability and model are now in

FTC's New Fake Reviews Rule The FTC has been refining its fake review policy, as part of its endorsement guidelines and forthcoming rules. The guidelines indicate what types of review

Perspectives on Google's Struggle Google has been battling the perception its SERP quality is in decline, filled with ads and "SEO chum." Google's Helpful Content Update, E-E-A-T standards and AI

GBP: 3 Videos Now in Default View We reported several weeks ago that Google was starting to display a single video on Google Business Profiles in mobile search results. In

Cost of Fake Reviews: $24B In its blog post announcing litigation against alleged review fraudster Ethan Hu, Google cited an FTC report stating consumers wasted "$125 on average each year

How Facebook F'd Up Waze Deal Roughly a decade has passed since Google bought Waze for more than $1 billion. Waze co-founder Noam Bardin tells the fascinating story of what

Teen TikTok Inspires 1-Star Barrage Marketing today can be a complex and volatile proposition for local business owners. A case-in-point involves a nail salon in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that is reportedly

Google AI Feature Dump Google this week released a barrage of AI-driven updates to Search, Shopping and Maps. The company started by reiterating all the things you can do with

Fake Review Summaries Amazon may be in denial about how counterfeiting and review fraud are long-term threats to its brand. According to a recent US-UK consumer survey, 84% of shoppers

Google Finally Focused on Fake LSA Reviews? Google has missed a huge opportunity with Local Service Ads (LSAs) to clean up both local listings and reviews. Within a vetted and

Study: Localized Stories Drive Links Most content marketers publish studies and data for the purpose of lead-generation, press coverage or both. Often they use PR pros to target publications with

Vision Pro 'Feels Like the Future' Whether or not Apple's Vision Pro actually sells next year or is succeeded by more affordable headsets, it appears Apple has indeed sown the

Starting today the Monday edition of the newsletter will be written by Mike Blumenthal and have a more tactical focus on GBP and local search. If you have any feedback,

No AI for 70% of Google Queries? Google's SGE has three or four modes: auto-generated AI Snapshots, "manual" AI (push to "Generate"), an AI "is not available for this search"

Social Beating SEO for B2B The top B2B marketing challenges, according to a new US-based survey (form) from WPromote and Ascend2, are: 1) improving CX, 2) proving digital marketing ROI,

SGE: The New Local Pack Google opened the gates to its AI Search Generative Experience (SGE). There's much to say and we'll provide more analysis soon. Here are some quick

Google Ads: AI Everywhere All at Once The subtext of Google I/O was about convincing investors the company wasn't going to be bested by AI competitors. Search-related announcements focused

Was Neeva Doomed from the Start? Neeva is shutting down its search engine. The news came out this weekend in an email and blog post from founders Sridhar Ramaswamy and

LocalGPT Is No Google Killer  Earlier this week I gained access to ChatGPT beta features web browsing and plug-ins. Plug-ins are like Chrome extensions and bring their full datasets (presumably)

Disappearing Local Pack Appearances of the Local Pack again seem to be in decline. We've written about this in the past but local SEOs continue to raise the issue. Joy

84% Wary of Amazon Reviews There's an unacknowledged trust crisis online and one manifestation is fake reviews. We've been tracking growing skepticism about reviews, which is reinforced in a recent

New Twitter CEO Is a 'WEF' Twitter's new CEO is Linda Yaccarino. Until this week, she was chair of global advertising at NBCU. She appears to be a highly regarded

Where's 'Dogpile for AI'? Remember "metasearch" from the late '90s? Sites like Dogpile and Metacrawler displayed results for the same query from multiple search engines, typically side-by-side. The pitch to

Google's 'Snackable' Magi   Google's I/O developer conference starts Wednesday. It will be chock-a-block with AI-related announcements. Among them, it's anticipated that Google will reveal "Magi," its search-chat integration. According

Bing Beating Google Never mind the fact that Bing's revival is entirely based on third party technology, Microsoft is now out-innovating Google in search. And while Bing has less to

AI's Impact on Jobs A week ago Box CEO Drew Houston announced the company was laying off 500 employees as it frees up headcount for AI hires. This was the

Content Farms: The Next Generation NewsGuard, a site that rates the credibility of information websites, found a range of publications (49) in multiple languages producing content "entirely or mostly generated

Social Traffic Mislabeled "Direct" A new study by SparkToro concludes that a considerable percentage of website traffic coming from social media sites is often mischaracterized as "direct" in Google Analytics.

Search + AI Drive Google, MSFT Earnings Both Google and Microsoft reported positive earnings yesterday. Microsoft beat expectations with ~$53B, while Google posted $69.8B in total revenue. For Microsoft, overall

Amazon F(ai)ke Reviews One of the primary use cases for Amazon has been product reviews. This is well established by consumer surveys. And reviews are obviously a major

Peak SMB for GBP? Like other large tech companies publishing "economic impact" reports, Google's is mostly PR. Published annually since 2009, it argues the company's activity and services "helped provide

SanFranciscoGPT At Near Media, we don't equally agree on how disruptive AI will be to local search. I'm probably the most bullish of the three of us on GPT-style interfaces

'Panicked' Google Readies Magi By now you've read or read coverage of the NY Times article yesterday that says Google is "panicking" over AI and its potential impact on the

Google Throttling Local Packs? What's happening with the Local Pack? Last year, Moz and LocalSEOGuide noticed a drop Local Pack frequency, from 40% and 42% of SERPs to 24% and

Bargle Uses Yelp for Local Results Miriam Ellis at Moz compares local results from Google and Bard and finds Bard wanting. Beyond critiquing the quality of results, her article is

Google's Post-Cookie Manifesto Victor Wong is sincere when he says that Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative is trying to solve the cookie problem for publishers, consumers and advertisers. The founder of

Just Bargle It Google + Bard = Bargle. Google will be integrating Bard into the SERP. That's according to an interview of CEO Sundar Pichai in the WSJ, part of his media

Search Movement Afoot There's some evidence that Bing has grown usage modestly since the introduction of BingGPT. However its share vs. Google appears largely unchanged according to other data. I

Bard, Google Assistant to Merge Google's tentative rollout of Bard hurt the perception of Google's technology leadership. So CEO Sundar Pichai is now doing PR interviews. He spoke recently to

Google: 20% More Fake Reviews in 2022 Earlier this week we discussed how review attacks are becoming more creative. Jason Brown is documenting many of these cases, including how hotels

Fake Positive Review Attacks? Ever heard of a "5-star review attack"? A hostile party posts obviously fake 5-star reviews -- in order to make a business look bad? Seems counter-intuitive

Google 'Online Conversion Local Ads' Michel Van Luijtelaar of GMBapi.com brought our attention to what he/Google is calling "online-conversion Local Ads." These units can appear in a few

Local Ranking Factors 2023 Whitespark just published the 2023 version of the Local Search Ranking Factors study (LSRF). There's a lot there to digest. We'll discuss further in a separate

AI Everywhere All at Once   Microsoft is all-in on AI. Seemingly, it's everywhere, all at once. This week Adobe introduced Firefly, a set of generative AI tools for its creative

Whither the Local Pack? After the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) passed a year ago, we began to speculate about the impact it could have on Google local results. Among

TikTok Ban: What Happens Now? Roughly two years of negotiations between the US government and TikTok have come to an impasse. The US is (again) demanding divestiture but China is

ChatGPT-4 Est Arrivé Yesterday OpenAI released ChatGPT-4, which represents a leap ahead compared to version 3.5. It's multimodal, meaning it can understand and produce images and video as well

GoWalla Take Two Local social networking (or social cityguide) app GoWalla is back. GoWalla was originally Foursquare's primary competitor. Both launched in 2009. Foursquare survives today, albeit in very different

MSFT: BingGPT Is Working It's been roughly a month since the introduction of BingGPT. And this week Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi announced that the search engine had reached 100 million daily

Her Is Here An Israeli start-up Chat.D-ID has combined ChatGPT with an AI avatar that you can actually talk to and who will talk back. Pictured below, it is

Ask Jeeves, Gist & Phind The "conversational search" model embodied by Ask Jeeves in its early days may represent the future of search/discovery. Rather than indexing documents, Ask Jeeves saw

How AI Changes Local Listings & Rep Management Every major listings and reputation management company is now adding or will add AI capabilities. At the risk of leaving someone out, SOCi,

BingGPT Not a 'Google Killer'   You've seen the conjecture that ChatGPT will render Google obsolete within two years. After finally gaining access and testing out BingGPT, I'm confident that prediction

ChatGPT: They Like Me! There's been an abundance of "insider" debate about ChatGPT. But what do consumers think? The first survey we've seen comes from Kevin Indig and Appinio (n=

Beyond Search Engines User behavior is changing. Here are three macro-trends: 1) AI-assisted discovery, 2) searching beyond search, 3) shifting social media engagement. As we all know, AI is potentially

Why Apple Holds Back in Search Most of the discussion this past week in search has again been about BingGPT, its alter-ego Syndey and how Microsoft is trying to minimize

Will GPT-Search Get Sued?   We've written before about the upcoming SCOTUS case Gonzalez v. Google. The central question is whether algorithmic recommendations are entitled to protection under Section 230 of

GPT: Shiny Object Syndrome Exactly one week ago was Google's Paris event, followed by a $100 billion investor sell-off. That was attributed to a factual error in Google's Bard demo.

Do Super Bowl Ads Matter? It was a great game, but what about the ads? This year they cost ~$7 million for 30 seconds. Do they deliver value? That's the

BingGPT: Will People Care? The BingGPT vs. Google Bard story is everywhere. I understand why; it's the first really exciting thing to happen in search for a long time and

Google Underwhelms in Paris Google is arguably the most powerful AI company in the world. However that wasn't really on display in today's "Live from Paris" event that was intended

Google Teases Bard This Wednesday in Paris, Google will preview its answer to ChatGPT (Bard) at an event entitled "Search, Maps and Beyond." In many ways this has been forced

AI-Generated (Fake) Reviews TripAdvisor's top-rated restaurant in Montreal doesn't actually exist. Its creation was a prank by a Canadian comedian to prove that review platforms don't effectively police their content.

Yahoo Ready to Climb 'Search Mountain' Yahoo really is going to reinvest in search. The company has been teasing this on Twitter over the past couple of weeks. In honor

Yandex & Google Ranking Factors Since Russian search engine Yandex's ranking algorithm was "leaked" or hacked last week, SEOs have been pouring over it for insights about Google's algorithm. Yandex's was

Subsidize Local Ads to Save News A new coalition of groups called Rebuild Local News has proposed a dramatic tax-based solution to the problem of collapsing local journalism, which is

DOJ: Break Up Google Ad Manager The US Justice Department (DOJ) has now filed two antitrust lawsuits against Google. The first, in 2020, covers search and paid search. That will

Google's AI Store Inventory Google recently announced several new AI-based tools for retailers. Some are focused on e-commerce, offering improved personalization and recommendations for retailer websites. More interesting for our

Will AI Deliver for SMBs? While there's been considerable discussion about how AI will revolutionize digital marketing for brands and agencies, I haven't seen much on how AI might be

AI Content: Proceed with Caution AI is the industry's shiny new object, which has undeniable momentum. Google's DeepMind appears poised to introduce a ChatGPT competitor. One of its differentiators will

The Death of Recommendations? Most people aren't following the forthcoming SCOTUS case Gonzalez v. Google. Arguments will be heard in February. To recap the facts: US citizen Nohemi Gonzalez was

Apple Means Business Connect Don't call it "Apple My Business." Today the company announced Apple Business Connect (not Apple Maps Connect). Not unlike GBP, it's a tool that enables SMBs

Apple XR Headset the New Google Glass? Following CES, there are reports that Apple will announce its long-awaited mixed-reality headset at the WWDC conference this year. The company is reportedly

Search: AI-Results a Giant Snippet Neeva and You.com have started showing AI-generated results in their SERPs. This follows news that Microsoft is planning to add AI-chat to Bing to

Can Bing Beat Google with AI Chat? There's already been enormous coverage and speculation about the potential impact of AI chat on search and Google in particular. You may have

Our most popular articles and podcasts of 2022.

Musk Looking for Way Out To say that Elon Musk's short tenure as Twitter CEO has been disastrous is an understatement. We could recount the "parade of horribles" but you

Anti-Google Maps Coalition Amazon (AWS), Meta, Microsoft and TomTom have joined forces with The Linux Foundation to form the Overture Maps Foundation. The project is very similar in principle to

Local Guide Reviews Favored Sterling Sky recently published a case study examining the impact of different review features and characteristics on what we might call "review longevity" – how long a

ChatGPT: Google's 'Innovator's Dilemma' ChatGPT explainer videos are all over TikTok. And this morning, ChatGPT servers were crashing under the weight of all the curious lookie-loos. There are two main

AI Content Threat to Google Looking back, 2022 will be remembered as a breakthrough year for AI. Between AI-image generators such as DALL-E and Lensa and ChatGPT, marketers and the

Google 'Getting Worse' – Again Months ago a popular discussion topic was: Google ain't what it used to be. The Freakonomics radio show last week revisited the issue of search results

ChatGPT and Local Search Like a lot of people, I've been playing with OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot. It's "early days" and it makes plenty of mistakes, but the tool is still

Users Want Review Transparency The state of reviews is fraught. Reviews remain highly influential but consumers are more skeptical and generating fewer of them now. In addition, Google is using

Due to a technical issue, many subscribers did not receive our newsletter yesterday. Apologies if this is a duplicate in your inbox. Survey: 74% Buying Links A recent survey of

Cyber Weekend Boom Going into "cyber weekend" retail prognosticators were unsure whether consumers would open their wallets. But according to Adobe data, online sales were up between 2% and 3%

We will be taking the remainder of the week off for the US Thanksgiving holiday. Amid the problems and challenges we all face, there's still a lot to be grateful

Google 'Search On' Features Roll Out Google is now introducing the many visual search, shopping and Maps features announced in September at its Search On event. Among them are Google's

Holiday: Big Retailers Sweat, SMBs Cocky Holiday shopping this year is shaping up to be pretty unpredictable. Driven by early promotions, data show many consumers have already started, which could

Google's $392M Location Privacy Settlement Google has agreed to pay almost $400 million to settle a location-tracking lawsuit brought by 40 state attorneys general. Being called "the largest attorney general-led

Local Reviews Have Peaked This week I received a review-solicitation from Tripadvisor. It asked me to write reviews, not review a specific businesses. The headline was "one review does a

Local Packs: 36.2% of Queries Local Packs aren't exactly disappearing but they're not showing up as often either. A week ago a number of reports from Moz, Rank Ranger

AirBnB: Brand Not SEM 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

TikTok's SMB Opportunity TikTok is getting more local. Beyond isolated but dramatic SMB success stories (e.g., Nerdy Nuts) or experimental features (e.g., TikTok Nearby), I'm seeing more local

Rewind: A 'Backward' Search Engine Inspired by founder Dan Siroker's experiences with hearing loss, Rewind is a new Mac OS search engine that captures every piece of content on your

Twitter Purge Begins If you're still on Twitter, you probably fall into one of three camps: the boosters, the haters or those who want to wait and see. But "Chief

Google Local Pack Decline There's evidence that Google is reducing the frequency of Local Packs. Barry Schwartz has compiled data from Moz, Rank Ranger and Semrush that show a decline

Study: Zero-Clicks Only 25% A much-cited, 2020 study from Rand Fishkin's SparkToro and SimilarWeb argued that 65% of searches on Google were "zero-click." In other words, two-thirds of queries didn't

More In-Store Shopping than Pre-COVID Despite hand-wringing over inflation, consumer spending has remained relatively strong. We'll have to see how that plays out during holiday shopping. But retailers are leaving

Google MAC Rollout Announced this year at Google I/O, My Ad Center (MAC) is starting to roll out. The new controls will give users the ability to influence ads

Meta Forced to Divest Giphy Facebook parent Meta said yesterday that it would sell Giphy. This is the first time Meta has been forced to divest a completed acquisition and

Fake Reviews: New Rules Coming The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been focusing more energy and resources on online review and endorsement fraud. Early this year the agency killed review

Google's New Ad-Favicons Google is seeking to boost brand visibility in mobile search ads. Provided marketers qualify, the business name and logo will be shown on the ad by default,

Meta Wants to Own the Next Platform Meta held its now annual VR event yesterday, featuring the announcement of a $1,500 Meta Quest Pro mixed-reality headset. It's reportedly a

AI Assistant Super App If the Twitter deal happens, Elon Musk suggested he wants to turn it into an "everything app" or "super app" à la WeChat. That's a bold

Google: Review Gating Verboten   Google recently updated its review content guidelines to clarify the following are disallowed: "Discouraging or prohibiting negative reviews, or selectively soliciting positive reviews from customers." This

Twitter Moderation Headache So Elon Musk is buying Twitter after all. One theory holds that Musk thought he would lose at trial. Assuming the deal actually happens, Musk will inherent

Gen Z: Google > TikTok Much in the same way that Google's fixation and fear of Facebook resulted in the ill-fated Google+, Google now seems to be similarly focused on TikTok

Have We Reached 'Peak Reviews'? Consumer reviews are a major local ranking factor, with intense industry focus on review management. At the same time we may have reached a turning

Google: 'Age of Visual Search' Is Here   Google just concluded its "Search On" event, showcasing search innovations. It was mostly a review or update of things previously presented at Google

Instacart Goes After Amazon As consumers returned to grocery stores and restaurants, delivery companies have scrambled for continued revenue growth. Instacart has very imaginatively sought to transform itself into an

Google Kills 'Consumer Surveys' Google is in cost-cutting mode. The company will stop making laptops and discontinued half its "Area 120" projects. And just yesterday it notified Google Consumer Surveys

Paid Search Doubles in Three Years   Almost since its inception, paid search marketing has been the leading category of digital advertising. It has maintained that position even as other formats

Where's the (Local) Innovation? A few years ago I wrote an article entitled "Why is there so little innovation in local?" It decried the lack of interesting new local consumer

Search: Apple and Andi This week Apple finally released iOS 16. Among other changes and upgrades, Apple put its search box on the iPhone's homescreen. Before Apple's June developer conference

Instacart's Platform Strategy Food Delivery services may be holding their own but they face intensifying pressures from investors, labor shortages, weakening consumer demand and regulatory scrutiny. Diversification and expansion are

Apple Ads Gain on 'Triopoly' The big Apple news this week surrounds its new devices. But an equally important story is Apple's ad business. Apple's opt-in ATT launched in Q1

Is a Yahoo Comeback Possible? This week Yahoo acquired a company called The Factual. It's essentially a news-ranking algorithm that rates the credibility of sources. In my brief experience with

We will not publish on Monday in honor of the US Labor Day holiday. We'll be back next Wednesday. Enjoy the weekend. Google 'Quick Read' Label – Why? Earlier this week

Kochava, Roomster Targeted by FTC   Reflecting a massive shift in attitudes toward data collection, Oracle was sued last week over its ID Graph with non-consensual profiles of "hundreds of millions

Google Takes Digital Ads 'Offline' Many years ago Google aspired to be a unified platform for all forms of advertising – digital and traditional, including radio and TV. To that end,

Nextdoor Needs to Become More 'Useful' This past week Nextdoor announced the outcome of its 2022 "Neighborhood Favorites" contest. The winners, who receive badges on their profiles and $500 in

TikTok Testing 'Nearby' Feed TikTok confirmed it's testing a new "Nearby" feed (in Asia), intended to showcase locally relevant content to users. Another feature reportedly being tested would allow content

Google's HCU to Make Landfall   Last week Google announced it would be rolling out a Panda-like algorithm update rewarding "content made by, and for, people." It's designed to respond to

Google to Punish 'SEO-first' Content Most B2B content today is for lead-gen purposes or designed to rank. So many B2B SERPs are a wasteland of thin content, pitches and listicles

Product Inventory = Local Visibility At one time, there were multiple startups chasing real-time product inventory. The methodologies were varied but almost all of them are now gone, just as Google

Ads Coming to Apple Maps More ads are coming to your iPhone. That's according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Apple's ad revenue is nearly $4 billion today and the company wants

TikTok, BlenderBot and Search TikTok isn't going to replace Google. But among Gen Z users, it does appear to be gaining traction as a search alternative in selected categories (restaurants,

Nextdoor: Daily Users ~19 Million Nextdoor posted Q2 revenue yesterday of $55M, representing 19% year-over-year revenue growth. This was generally considered a slight miss. The company also lowered its full-year

Cox Buys Axios for Local News Axios, the digital news site delivering journalism via bulleted lists has sold itself to Cox Enterprises for $525 million. Axios' 2022 revenues are projected

Twitter 'Location Spotlight' Rolls Out Last April Twitter launched what amounts to a GMB/GBP profile on its platform for selected businesses with physical locations. Called "Location Spotlight," it's now

Brand Beats Performance Marketing Whether or not we're in a recession, many marketers are acting like it. Tech companies are laying people off and marketing budgets are tightening. However, a

The End of 'Location Intelligence'?   The era of precise mobile-location data, which spawned numerous "location intelligence" vendors (e.g., Foursquare) may be coming to a close. For the past decade

Apple and Amazon Defy Gravity After two quarters of negative growth the US may be in a recession, although that's disputed. Whether or not it's technically so, tech companies are

Earnings: Digital vs. E-Commerce Snap, Twitter, Microsoft and Google revenues have all disappointed Wall Street recently. (Meta reports today, Apple tomorrow.) Yesterday, Google missed on both the top and bottom

LSAs, 'Verified Reviews' and Liability A week ago Robin Dirksen discovered that Google was testing a "not verified" label for local reviews (see below). I assumed it was a "CYA"

Facebook Splits the Baby Facebook has broken its Feed in two. There will now be Home and Feeds tabs in the app. Feeds will feature "recent posts from your friends,

Some Action on Fake Reviews Facebook groups are among the major sources of fake reviews across the internet. However, the company has shown little interest in shutting down the fraud

'TikTok Is My Search Engine' Last week's story about 40% of younger users abandoning Google Maps/Local for social media (triggered by a TechCrunch report) continues to intrigue, with Insider

Amazon: Prime Day 'Biggest Ever' In the weeks before Prime Day there was speculation that this year's event would disappoint. Amazon has now put out a press release saying instead

Google: 40% of Zoomers Shun Search, Maps Speaking at a recent conference, Google SVP Prabhakar Raghavan made a casual remark. "In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people,

What Will Happen to Twitter Now? Back in April, a lifetime ago, Elon Musk made his shock $44 billion offer for Twitter. He filed it formally on April 13. In

Review Extortion, Libel & Liability Review fraud is illegal and it's flourishing. Despite rising awareness of fake reviews, usage is up. An undisputed ranking signal, reviews are also a top conversion

Google to Auto-Delete Location We keep writing about privacy because it's an issue that isn't going away and only becoming more important in the wake of the disastrous SCOTUS Dobbs

In observance of the US July 4th holiday we will not publish on Monday. We'll be back next Wednesday. Apple's Local Car Play Apple will soon enable users to buy