Local Visibility System

The Last Local SEO Guy You'll Ever Need

Phil

Quick Thoughts on the Google+ Local Review Pop-up

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You may have noticed the annoying pop-up (or lightbox) that appears when you click on a business’s “reviews” link in the Google+ Local search results.

google+reviews--link

Andrew Shotland discovered this review pop-up two days ago.  How about taking a couple minutes to go read his two posts on it (if you haven’t already), and then loop back here.

Here are my initial thoughts on Google’s latest half-baked concoction:

It is going to evolve.  Fast.  Why?  Because Google is pushing people to write reviews, but it’s not getting people onto businesses’ Google+ Local pages.  There’s not even a link on the pop-up that you can click on to visit the Google page.  Businesses won’t use Google+ if their business pages are cloaked from potential customers, and customers won’t write reviews on Google+ unless and until the pop-up does a better job of enticing and inviting them to write a review (think Yelp).

There is no mention of Google+ – neither in the pop-up nor in the steps you’d follow to post a review from within the pop-up screen.  That fact alone is very weird, and suggests to me that all we’re seeing at this stage is a bare foundation that Google will build on.

Assuming the pop-up sticks around, Google will stuff it like a Thanksgiving turkey with knick-knacks meant to boost engagement with Google+ (“Follow” buttons, “+1” buttons, check-in invitations, etc.).

This is a slight bonus for business owners who have upgraded their Google+ Local listings to include all the social features, because the “Google+ page” link still takes searchers to the Google+ page, rather than to the pop-up.

Now is the time to get Google reviews from customers.  Last year wasn’t, because of the draconian review filters.  The review filters are still here, of course, but this year Google has made it clear that they really want more Plus reviews: First they relaxed the filter, then they put reviews front-and-center in the “new” Google Maps and in the local carousel, then they started showing the review stars again, and now they’ve introduced the pop-up.  Google is making it (relatively) easy for you and for your customers.

What are your thoughts on the pop-up?

How to Get Good Karma at LocalVisibilitySystem

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What other people share with me is the lifeblood of this blog/site, and of my business.

To whatever extent I’ve been able to help business owners and contribute to the local-search “community,” it’s been because of others’ questions, ideas, and suggestions.  They get me to think and to act.

Whether you’re new here, or you’ve read every post I’ve done, or you’ve been on my email list since 2009, or you’re a client, there are many ways to win brownie-points with me.

If you’re inclined to do any of the following, I’d be most appreciative:

  • Give me a fresh idea for a blog post.  (Though I’m already up to the ears in ideas!)
  • Tell me how to improve an evergreen post (like this or this).
  • Let me know how I can improve this site.  (I’m only looking for big-picture suggestions – not “I think your logo should have a telescope instead of a lighthouse.”)
  • Ask me to test-drive a local SEO tool you’ve made.
  • Leave insightful and relevant comments or questions on my posts.
  • Describe for me in-detail a local-SEO “win” or “fail” you experienced.
  • Show or tell me something I may not already know about reviews.
  • Tell me about citation sources that I don’t already have on my Definitive Citations List.  (Note: I’m not looking for city-specific business directories.)
  • Describe to me a service you think I should offer, and why I should offer it.
  • Tell a business-owner friend of yours about any posts or other resources of mine that might help him or her.

I’ll reciprocate.

State of the Most-Important Local Search Sites (Mid-2013)

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A lot has changed in the last few months in the world of local search.  All of it affects your efforts to get visible to local customers.

I’m not even talking about Google+ Local.  Like Oprah’s weight, Google is in a constant state of flux.  Phone support, the carousel, the return of review stars…it’s a roller coaster.

Rather, I’m talking about other sites and search engines.  They’ve been under the blade.  Some have emerged from the operating room with nice facelifts.  Others elicit a “Yeecch!”

If you run a “local” business in the US, you’ll need to deal with all of the below sites – either because they’re popular sites in their own right, or because they can affect your Google rankings .  Here’s what you need to know about how they’ve changed recently:

 

 

Yes, it’s now called “Bing Places.”  The recent changes have mostly been cosmetic, although there have been a few small improvements.  The thing that jarred me recently was that Bing required a client of mine to phone-verify a listing on which we wanted to change the phone number.  I don’t recall ever having to do that before.  Bing seems to have new rules for when you can verify by postcard versus by phone.  (Update: Thanks to always-sharp Nyagoslav Zhekov for the Bing intel in his comment at the bottom of this post.)

 

 

Some months ago (I’m not sure exactly when), Yahoo spruced up its listing-manager area a little bit.  Aside from that, Yahoo still is its clunky old self – and probably clunkier than ever.  But you still need to wrangle with Yahoo, so you’re visible to that sliver of that population that prefers it.

 

 

Revamped and renamed in June.  ExpressUpdate now requires business owners to claim their listings by phone personally.  Let’s say you added your business to the site a year ago (or had someone else do it), claimed your listing, and have been happy ever since.  Now let’s say you need to update one bit of info on your listing.  Your old login won’t work.  You have to look up your listing, claim it by phone, and wait for ExpressUpdate to approve you and give you new login info.  Then you can make changes.

 

 

You can’t add a free listing to LocalEze, as of April.  If you want to add your listing for the first time, you need to pay $300/year, find a reseller who can sign you up for less, or wait until LocalEze gets fed your business info from other sites.  If you already have a listing on LocalEze and you need to fix some of the info, you can make one round of edits per year for free.

 

 

Still an obstacle course (as I wrote a year ago).  If you want to add your listing for the first time, you can either email the CitySearch folks at myaccount@citygridmedia.com, or you’ll have to wait until the site is fed your listing from ExpressUpdate.  Once your listing is added – or if it’s already on the site – you’ll need to claim it by phone at https://signup.citygrid.com/cyb/find_business.

You’ll want to keep in mind that CitySearch’s parent company recently laid off two-thirds of its staff, and that any step in the whole process I just described might be slow as a result.

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Honorable mention goes to Local.BOTW.org.  It’s not as important as the above sites, but it’s a good citation to have.  It’s no longer free.  (Maybe that will make it a really good citation to have, in the way David Mihm described 5 years ago.)

Instead of offering the free “JumpStart” listing, in June they started asking for a whole $1.99 per month, if you aren’t already listed on BOTW Local and want to add your listing.  Old listings have been grandfathered in.

Other important sites – Yelp, YP, SuperPages, etc. – are the same as they’ve always been.  No changes to report at the moment.

Anything you’d like to add about any of those sites?  Any questions?  Leave a comment.

10 Observations on Google’s Local Carousel

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It’s no secret that I don’t like Google’s “local carousel.”  It’s ugly, inconvenient, and counterintuitive.

Much ink has been spilled on the carousel. Many excellent points have been made.

We local-search geeks (not to mention business owners) have questions about the carousel: how will it evolve, to what extent will it roll out to the search results for all local businesses, and – above all – is there another shoe that has yet to fall.

While we’re all scratching our heads about those questions and many more, I’d like to make a few observations on the carousel.  (I don’t think anyone else has brought these up, but please let me know me if someone has.)

My thoughts (in no particular order):

1.  The carousel is not fully formed.  Google will iterate.  It already has: It’s replaced the “Zagat” ratings in the carousel and elsewhere with the review stars.  Also, the carousel seems to be a missed opportunity to push Google Plus on users (a la “new” Maps) – which is another reason I think Google will change the carousel around – so as to ram Plus down more users’ throats.

2.  All the search terms that trigger the carousel are for “fun” or non-essential businesses.  Carousels are fun (unless you puke afterwards).  Fitting, no?

3.  I’m guessing Google will never roll out the carousel more broadly, to search results beyond those for “fun” businesses.  Google is not simply showing results for businesses that people want to find very locally (e.g. restaurants).  If it did, we’d be seeing the carousel for “auto repair,” “gas station,” and other necessary-but-not-fun types of businesses.  No, Google will continue to show the carousel only for the “fun,” non-essential businesses. (If I’m wrong, I’ll eat my hat.)

4.  The photos (or tiny maps) are an absolute waste of space. Searchers would benefit much more from seeing the phone numbers, addresses, and URLs of the businesses up there.  The photos might be somewhat helpful if they consistently were of storefronts or Street View shots.  But that’s not the case.  They photos are either of food that looks like it’s sitting under a school cafeteria heat-lamp, or they’re of unintelligibly tiny squares of a zoomed-in map.  They do not help or inform the user.

5.  Doesn’t the carousel seem a lot like Google’s Hotpot flop?  Hotpot was also centered on reviews, and had the same side-to-side pane layout.  Now it’s worm food in the Google graveyard.  I hope that the carousel as a whole – or at least the current incarnation of it – will meet the same fate.

6.  It’s only a matter of time before Google carves out the left-most search result for AdWords.  Can you imagine the bidding war that would create between business owners?  It would be lucrative enough to make Mr. Wonderful drool:

7.  I’m guessing one main reason Google resumed showing the golden “review stars” was to take eyeball-share away from Yelp (and other IYPs).  What happens when you click on a carousel search result and then see a “branded” search for a business?  Right: Yelp’s search results are right near the top of the page.  If Google weren’t showing the golden review stars we all know and love, then Yelp would be the brightest peacock.

8.  The carousel is much taller than it needs to be.  There’s a lot of blackspace above and below the panes for each business.  I think that’s another attempt to squeeze Yelp.

9.  Businesses will probably never be able to control which images show up on their carousel panes.  If they did, there would be too many opportunities to upload eye-catching but irrelevant photos – not to mention photos that have the caption “I’m with stupid,” with little arrows pointing to the left and right.  Then Google would have to add a “report a problem” mechanism to the carousel, sort out problems, and generally deal with other dirty work that Mountain View typically avoids touching for as long as possible.

10.  Why doesn’t the carousel truly live up to its name and let the users scroll full-circle through the search results – in such a way that if they keep clicking on the right-hand arrow they eventually return to seeing the first batch of local search results?

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What are your observations on the carousel?

Yelp Business Categories List

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It’s not too hard to find categories on Yelp to list your business under.  But it’s much easier to miss some and lose out on easy visibility – both in and out of Yelp – simply because you didn’t find the best categories to describe your business.

Yes, it does take time to identify all the categories that might be relevant to your business.  There are 698 categories.  You can pick up to 3 for your listing.

Yelp doesn’t let you see all of them at a glance.  You have to pick a primary category (there are 22) and then a secondary one (of 498), and perhaps a tertiary one (of 178).

The categories are scattered all over the place, and there isn’t even a “search” function on the site.  You get sick of rifling around and having to assume that you’ve picked the most-relevant categories.

Yet, your categories are crucial to your Yelp rankings, . Yelp’s results also consistently rank well in Google for local search terms.

You must get your categories right.

I’ve put together a complete list of all the Yelp business categories.  Why?  So that you can see all of them at a glance (and how to navigate to them), and so you can search the list or edit/process it.  The list helps you make sure you’ve got the 3 best categories.

You can download it here:

Google Drive

Excel

PDF

Update, 5:54 pm, 7/19/13: Thanks to Luther Lowe, director of public policy at Yelp, who just sent me the the links to two category lists that are buried under the “Yelp for Developers” section:

The first is a long honkin’ page with all the categories you’ll find in my list.

The second is another long honkin’ page, but this one (meant for developers) tells you the categories available in each country Yelp serves.  You only need this if your business is located outside the US.

What should you do now?

Go to biz.yelp.com and log into your business listing.

Click on “Business Information” and then click to edit your “Basic Business Information.”

See which categories you’re listed under.  If you’ve got fewer than 3 or think you’re missing the best ones, search through my category list and see if you can find better categories.  Even if you’re confident you’ve already got the most-relevant categories, spend 5 minutes flipping through the list anyway, just to make sure.

In general, Yelp is a pain to deal with – especially when it comes to reviews.  But getting your categories right is an easy win.