Google

As Promised, Google Unmerged and Re-Merged My Wife’s Google Places Listing

Filed in Google, Local Search by Matt McGee on January 30, 2012 10 Comments
As Promised, Google Unmerged and Re-Merged My Wife’s Google Places Listing

The fun continues with my wife’s business listing in Google Places! As expected, Google has unmerged her listing with the Windermere Real Estate office in Richland. But it’s since re-merged the listing and created an even bigger mess. Ready to follow along? Google emailed to let me know the merged-with-Richland issue was being fixed. Sure […]

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Google Emails To Let Me Know My Wife’s Merged Listing Will Be Merged Again

Filed in Google, Local Search by Matt McGee on January 16, 2012 14 Comments
Google Emails To Let Me Know My Wife’s Merged Listing Will Be Merged Again

I think it’s great that Google is trying to improve customer service. In trying to fix my wife’s current merged listing cluster****, they’ve sent me more emails than I could’ve ever imagined. Yay Google! Except the last email they sent wasn’t so good. Yesterday, Google emailed me to let me know that they’re going to […]

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Google’s [Not Provided]: Assessing 2.5 Months of Analytics Damage

Filed in Google, MY BEST POSTS, SEO by Matt McGee on January 9, 2012 25 Comments
Google’s [Not Provided]: Assessing 2.5 Months of Analytics Damage

The dust has settled a bit on Google’s decision to stop passing keyword referral data from searchers that are logged in to their Google accounts and using encrypted search by default. That began in mid-October and then ramped up a couple weeks later. At first, [not provided] represented a small percentage of overall traffic to […]

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Which is More: Claimed Google Place Pages or Businesses with Facebook Pages?

Filed in Google, Local Search, Social Media by Matt McGee on December 27, 2011 7 Comments
Which is More: Claimed Google Place Pages or Businesses with Facebook Pages?

This is one of the long-running questions in my local search peer network, and perhaps one of the more important questions going forward when it comes to small businesses and online marketing. The general consensus is that there are more small businesses with Facebook Pages than with claimed Google Place Pages. That comes from anecdotal […]

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Adding a New Site to Google’s Rel=Author Markup? Faster Than Expected

Filed in Google by Matt McGee on December 15, 2011 6 Comments
Adding a New Site to Google’s Rel=Author Markup? Faster Than Expected

Google’s rel=author markup feature has been frustrating and mysterious this year, to say the least. So it was quite a surprise this week to get a new site added to my profile and have the author avatar showing up for it in less than 24 hours. I implemented rel=author this summer as Google described and […]

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It Should Be Harder To Rank In Google’s Universal Results Than This

Filed in Google, SEO by Matt McGee on December 14, 2011 4 Comments
It Should Be Harder To Rank In Google’s Universal Results Than This

It’s no secret that well-optimized videos can be a great way to increase visibility, especially in Google’s universal/blended results. Forrester Research did a well-known blog post a couple years ago, which estimated that videos are 50 times more likely to rank on page one in Google than regular, text-based content. The article was called “The […]

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