If you have ever been on the receiving end of one of Local Lighthouse robocalls claiming to be Google, you will be happy to know that Google has filed a lawsuit against the company for their business practices and particularly their marketing technique of referring to themselves as Google. Google posted about the problem on […]
Yelp Adds New Active Cleanup Alerts for Local Businesses in the News
If you happened to look at the Facebook page of River Bluff Dental – aka the dental office owned by Cecil the Lion’s killer – you would have spotted a ton of one star reviews that were not reviews for the business itself, but rather thousands of people expressing outrage about the dentist and his […]
Google No Longer Displaying 7-Packs for Local Results in Tablets
Last month, Google was still displaying the old local 7-pack to searchers who were searching from a tablet. But not any longer. Now doing a local search on a tablet device will trigger the same 3-pack that matches what we see in both mobile and desktop results. The 7-packs are no longer being shown at […]
Yahoo Places Obtrusive Ads in Middle of Local Knowledge Panels
When someone searches for your business on Yahoo, Yahoo serves up the standard local knowledge panel we are all familiar with. But they are also placing a pretty obtrusive ad right in the middle of the knowledge panel. Here is an example: You can see that Yahoo is running ad extensions in the ads to […]
Google My Business Changes to Two Photos in All Local Panels
If you have been frustrated by some of the unusual croppings of images being displayed in local business knowledge panels in Google, you will be happy to know that Google has made some changes to prevent this. Brian Barwig posted on Google+ earlier this week looking for solutions to problems with Google My Business images […]
Google Showing Organic Search Results Above Local 3-Pack
Google recently made a change to their search results where the local 3-pack results were now showing above all organic results, rather than showing the first organic result above the local pack like it did previously. But Google seems to have returned the organic result above the pack for some queries. Here is an example […]
Google Local Results Include Holiday Hours Alert
If you searched for a business on Labor Day, you may have noticed that Google has begun adding an alert to their local knowledge panel alerts under the “hours” listing for businesses. Google adds “Labour/Labor Day might affect these hours” to the local knowledge panel when people are searching for local businesses over a holiday […]
Google Testing New Expandable Local Knowledge Panel
Google is testing a local knowledge panel that starts collapsed and requires user interaction in order to expand it and see the additional details – details that are normally displayed by default. Here is an example for a search for “Internet Marketing Ninjas” with a collapsed knowledge panel. When expanded, it shows details like a […]
Organic Search Results No Longer Displayed Above Google Local Pack Results
Google seems to have made yet another change to how they present local search results with 3-pack results and it will hurt those who aren’t in the top 3. One of the saving graces for some businesses with the switch to the 3-pack is that if the business ranked #1 for the search query, they […]
Google My Business Asking Inactive Accounts to Verify Local GMB Information
There has been a lot of talk recently about what Google planned to do about dormant Google My Business listings that are showing up for local searches on Google. While it seemed Google was removing some, it turned out they were merely removing some listings that were compiled with third-party resources but were never claimed […]