It’s no surprise that a business’s review score can affect its success. The most basic understanding is that high scores are good and low scores are bad. Many businesses focus on keeping their star ratings above a certain threshold, which on the surface sounds reasonable. However, blindly following star ratings without understanding why those scores […]
In May of last year, Google performed a stunning demo of their new Google Assistant feature, Google Duplex. Using an unparalleled level of human voice realism, Duplex was able to book a hair appointment on its user’s behalf live on stage. Since then, the world has been waiting for a chance to use this new […]
Maintaining optimal business listings on Google is an ongoing process. Data decays over time—that’s why it’s so important to keep an eye on your listings to make sure they don’t deteriorate. It’s also a sad fact that sometimes you need to watch out for spam and your competitors intentionally vandalizing your business. Competitors have been known […]
Businesses with distributed local footprints face a number of unusual challenges in digital, but few are as time-consuming as nested locations. Think about it: this is the only kind of setup where local businesses—such as jewelers, ATMs, and even coffee shops—either share their addresses or are located entirely inside of another business. It’s a unique […]
While most of us recovered from our holiday exertions as 2018 ticked over into 2019, others were hard at work at the coalface of local search. That includes our very own Eli Grant, who penned an excellent AdAge article exploring how retailers can beat Amazon and achieve transformational growth through the use of local data […]
In our recent post about the STORE18 conference, we referenced Google’s Eric Morris and his idea that “proximity is key to closing the customer”. Of course, if being physically close was all there was to it, a lot of agencies would be out of luck (and out of business!). Instead, “near me” searches are now, […]
It has been shown time and time again that responding to online reviews is a necessity for any business. In fact, modern consumers expect a review response within 24 hours, and brands who provide direct responses to reviews have better ratings. At this point, it’s clear that businesses in virtually every sector have to get […]
The winter months are the golden quarter for most businesses. But with your focus firmly on holiday sales and advertising, it’s easy to neglect your local listings—even though Google hasn’t stopped (or even slowed down!) its local search updates at this busy time of year. So don’t be too distracted as you put the finishing […]
Winter is the Golden Quarter for many businesses—especially those with local footprints. With the holiday season capable of making or breaking a business, it is vital to make sure your Local Presence Management (LPM) strategy is up to snuff for the last few months of 2018. Whether you’re in the middle of holiday planning or […]
The specifics of local search have changed mightily since we sat down to write last year’s LPM predictions. In November 2017, most marketers were taking a desktop-first approach and worrying about citations. They didn’t yet have a full sense of the importance of reviews—and they weren’t really paying much attention to voice search at all. […]