Archive for the Google My Business Category

On June 9, 2020, one of my clients brought to my attention that Google began testing a new feature in the Local Pack. On June 10 I was able to briefly duplicate it as well. In some cases Google will display a message such as: #1 rated

Beginning April 23, 2020 and continuing into May, several businesses around the US have disappeared from local pack results. The good news is, in every case I have seen, things returned to normal after 3 – 5 days. This is totally unrelated to a separate May 5,

Google My Business has been working on solutions for business owners during the COVID-19 Pandemic. There are several new options in Google My Business, and some other functions are limited. Here are ways you can update your company’s Google My Business page to reflect your current status.

In a recent post on Google’s official blog, Senior Project Manager Kevin Reece explained how the tech giant evaluates user-generated content on its Maps platform. Mr. Reece also revealed how many submissions Google Maps deleted in 2019. According to Reece, users sent about 7 billion submissions to Google Maps

Google My Business has a neat feature called “insights”. Insights appears to show business owners at-a-glance their Google My Business listing’s performance. Unfortunately, the “Insights” feature doesn’t provide much insight. In fact, it is inaccurate and misleading. Number of calls is misreported. Pretty much everything in insights

From around November 4 – November 11, 2019, there were a ton of changes to the local 3 pack. As soon as the changes began, one of my clients asked me what was going on. Rumors circulated and some people asked: Was this an algorithm change? What

If you’ve ever flagged a fake or spammy Google My Business listing in Google Maps you’ve likely received one of two possible responses: Published: Your edit to Business Name…, or Thanks for editing Business Name… If you’ve received the latter it generally means the edit is either

When sharing a Business’s URL from Google Maps, reportivng Spam to Google, when linking to your Google My Business page from your website, or when asking clients for reviews you need the URL to a Google Maps listing. How To Properly Get a Business’s Google Maps URL

Once a Google My Business page has been suspended, it is no longer able to display in the local pack in Google’s local search results or in Google Maps until it has been reinstated. I have recently helped several businesses get their Google My Business pages reinstated.

Fake reviews raise serious legal issues. They might be false, deceptive, malicious or fabricated. Many are even laudatory. Some businesses even go so far as to pay other people or businesses to write five-star reviews that are posted on their customers’ websites. Fake Five-Star Reviews: If a

The Holy Grail of advertising for law firms used to be the back of the phone book. It was the coveted spot, and only one firm could make in for that phone book in that calling area. All others had to scramble for the inside of the

Google has recently been suspending Google My Business pages belonging to personal injury lawyers. The new, aggressive suspensions began in 2019. Here’s why, and what to do about it. How we got here: I work with several personal injury law firms and it is no secret that

Google My Business recently rolled out a new feature recently which allows GMB pages to get a simple to use URL such as g.page/businessname. This custom URL is called a “short name”. Here’s how to get it. To get your custom URL (short name), follow these steps:

I work with several law firms and one of the questions that always comes up is what street address to use for a law firm with a suite number in the street address. I personally use the # and it appears to be the best way. Here’s

If you’ve followed this blog for some time you may know that I used to host a Google My Business support forum online and have seen thousands of issues with Google My Business (GMB). If you’re reading this, you probably know that GMB problems are very frustrating.

Starting in October 2018, Google My Business got hit hard with spam in the personal injury attorney niche. I was made aware of this by one of the law firms that I work with. After they told me they had spam in the local pack, I began

Recently a client came to me with a site ranking poorly in Google’s search results after some quality algorithm updates. Within a minute of looking the site over the problem was clear: they had thin content. In this case, the website consisted of some pages about the

If you weren’t aware, The Law Office of Aaron M. Schlossberg Esq. P.L.L.C. is being bashed online right now. Allegedly, Aaron Schlossberg was recorded by someone after going on a rant about speaking Spanish in a Manhattan restaurant. PIX11 News called it a “racist tirade”. The viral

Business owners can now add a “women-led” attribute to their business in Google My Business. Google announced this new feature on International Women’s Day. This is what a business listing looks like with the new Women-led icon: How to get the “women-led” icon To add this feature