Millions of fake Google Maps listings hurt real business and consumers
Google Maps carries approximately 11 million illegitimate local listings, with hundreds of thousands more getting created each month, the...
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“Popular dishes” have arrived in Google Maps listings
Google Maps has added a “popular dishes” section to eatery listings, giving prospective diners a faster way to check out a restaurant’s...
A year after GDPR, mobile notifications are up, location sharing is down
In the wake of GDPR and a constant drumbeat of largely negative privacy news in Europe and North America, consumers and marketers are...
Location intelligence companies react to new Android privacy controls
Privacy is the new black. At F8, Google I/O and, this week, Google Marketing Live, privacy has been front and center, with Facebook and...
The big picture from Google Marketing Live: With multi-channel campaigns, Google aims to own the fun
Google Ads SVP of Ads and Commerce Prabhakar Raghavan on stage at Google Marketing Live Tuesday. SAN FRANCISCO – A trend that has been...
As part of broader privacy push, Google gives users more control over location data
One of the major themes of Facebook’s F8 developer conference and this week’s Google I/O is privacy. Location is a sensitive and central...
EU consumer groups accuse Google of violating GDPR with location history
Location-tracking illustration from Norwegian consumer advocacy organization, Forbrukerrådet. Characterizing smartphone location...
How the hospitality industry should approach online reviews and citations
Potential customers can get almost everything they need to make a purchase decision from Google Maps, Google Reviews, Yelp and other...
Report: Arizona attorney general investigating Google location tracking
Roughly a month ago AP reported that Google continues to collect location data when ‘Location History’ is turned off. The company...
Google faces potential class action, FTC penalties for ‘surreptitious’ location tracking
A California resident named Napoleon Patacsil has filed a lawsuit against Google in federal court (Patacsil v. Google, Inc.) seeking...
AP: Google collects location data when ‘Location History’ is turned off
Yesterday, the AP reported that Google collects user location data regardless of user Location History settings: Google wants to know...
Do Google reviews impact local ranking?
We do not allow anonymous reviews today and we’ve removed legacy anonymous reviews. The reviews removed were old reviews from anonymous...
Google My Business Q&A: What you may be missing
local business or digital marketing agency managing local search strategies. Staying on top of all the updates needed to keep a Google My...
Yelp asks Europe to take new antitrust action against Google
According to the Financial Times (paywall), Yelp has formally complained to the European Commission (EC) that Google “abused its...
Look Ma, no keywords! Phrase-free AdWords campaigns are here
Google has confirmed that these campaigns are currently running for select advertisers only and promote verified business locations...
Hooray! Google My Business descriptions are back
Google My Business (GMB) recently brought back the business description field, which has caused those of us working in the local search...
Reports: Fake reviews are a growing problem on Amazon, Google
As reviews have grown in importance, so have efforts to game the system. The problem is growing on both Google Maps and Amazon, according...
Why we need to fight fake reviews
Last year, I wrote an article about eight different types of fake content and how the epidemic would hurt local search. It seems the...
6 smart e-commerce lessons to boost local business
E-commerce and local search might seem to be exclusive functions. Local search is typically associated with store locations and driving...
Google’s new #SmallThanks Hub automatically creates digital & printed marketing assets fo
In a move to help SMBs — as well as drive up its verified business listings — Google has launched #SmallThanks Hub, an online resource...
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