The Near Memo

Send us a textGoogle LSA expands to new categories & faces spam:  Google has added new, high value categories to their Local SErvice Ads program. They continue to target ever more service type businesses. While the pricing for this simpler product has gone up due to the added auction capabilities, in many markets it is still a good value. It is also important for service type businesses to watch for first mover opportunities in their local markets. With this link: Local Service Finder - Pro List businesses can assess which categories in which geographies have more opportunities. However in some urban, highly competitive markets like personal injury law & locksmiths, not only has pricing gone crazy, spam has as well. Google has added a new LSA spam review reporting form to cope with some of the fake review issues. ChatGPT making rapid and differentiating inroads into SAAS tools for Local:  The players in the local space have all become pretty similar to each other offering listings, review management, Google Posts with little to distinguish them. But with the advent of large language models in general and ChatGPT specifically, many have begun to offer unique tools on top of their core products that leverage the generative AI capabilities. The value of generative AI will first be realized in the SAAS world where the benefits can be easily added to existing products to increase business productivity. Hubspot’s ChatUX shows how this can be integrated into a CMS and Uberall shows how it can improve access to a company’s granular data like inventory. Why every company needs a “how we use AI” FAQ:  Wired recently published an article on how they will use generative AI tools vis a vis their written and visual content. They detail whether they will use AI to write or edit articles (they won’t), whether they will use it to generate ideas and headlines (they might) and whether they will use it to create story graphics (they won’t due to artists not receiving royalties).Jennifer Slegg on Twitter, using a  creative Google search, demonstrated just how many businesses are currently using generative AI and blindly copying and pasting it onto their websites. This raises the question of whether not just Wired but everyone that creates content - writers, SEO firms, SEMs and more - should consider both an internal code of ethics and a forward facing statement of those values.The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.near memo ep 104Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textBing isn’t a Google killer but it is important for a number of other reasons:  Bing’s inclusion of ChatGPT has positioned Microsoft to take over the search conversation even if it doesn’t unseat Google. Bing has done a thoughtful job of integrating chat into search but it remains awkwards and still lacks significant value to the search experience. This is particularly true with local searches. Yelps’ remote work report likely indicates declining Yelp market share:  Yelp used the relative increase of rural searches to indicate that users had moved to rural areas. These low volume searches showing an increase is better explained by Yelp’s declining market share in the urban centers.  How to deal with fake review attacks at Google:  Google recently announced that they would filter fewer Local guide reviews. This appears to have led to an increase in fake review attacks. We detail the many arcane steps to increase the likelihood of fake review attacks being taken down. The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.near memo ep 103Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textGoogle Business Profile services positively impact rank:In a recent test by Joy Hawkins at Sterlingsky demonstrated that having services identified for your profile influences rank. How does Google generate these categories? How does this fit into the long term trend of Google adding ever more granular detail for businesses?  Will custom services have an equal effect? Will this appear world wide? Businesses need to make sure that Google has applied the correct categories. Which geo title tags have the most impact on local search rank? A title tag needs to be as long as it needs to be but longer title tags don’t perform as well. Which location terms should you use? Near me in a title tag only drives a small increase in rankings.  The biggest driver (2.5x improvement) is the use of the city name in the title name.  Impact of Google easing review filter to placate Local Guides:Earlier this month, Google noted that there had been a lot of Local Guide complaints about review filtering, that Google had been removing too many Local Guide reviews and they were going to update the filter to let more reviews show and go back and release any that they erroneously filtered. Hypothetically doing this would decrease complaints in the GBP forums about missing reviews AND increase complaints about fake review attacks.  Our research confirms that is the caseThe Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.near memo ep 102Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textMicrosoft’s transformation of Bing with AI & some smart moves:  There are now millions of people on the BingChat waitlist. And many have noted a positive reaction to the bot. But the compressed hype cycle around the release of ChatGPT and BingChat, a series of stories bemoaning the “nature” of the chatbot. Will users start shifting their searches to Bing? Has Microsoft pulled off the search coup of the decade? Walmart overcomes stigma of evil & appeals to upscale shoppers:  Walmart, under the direction of CEO Doug McMillon, has overcome a terrible reputation and built out effective online-offline commerce capabilities. Using groceries as their ‘hook” they are attracting more upscale customers with easy online ordering and curbside pickup. To further engage this long elusive audience, Walmart is not building out stores with a more Target (or as my sister say Targeé)  like feel.  100 Ecommerce execs are investing more in SEO & PPC:  With fear of recession, paid search increased 12% while influencer marketing and paid social were both down. SEO and PPC high ROI investments and demonstrate the importance of search when you need to acquire new customers and increase sales. The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.near memo ep 101Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textIn this extended episode we explore the role AI in general and ChatGPT is having on the work within digital agencies. What are the opportunities and challenges that agencies face when using it?Are either of you currently using ChatGPT or AI tools in your daily work? If so, what and for what purposes? How have ChatGPT and related tools changed your work? What is the biggest opportunity you see with tools like ChatGPT and the many others that are quickly emerging? Name some concrete use cases. Anything you’ve seen that’s really impressive/effective? What about general SEO and local SEO use cases? (if we haven’t gotten into that yet.) What are the most immediate applications? Slightly farther out, how do you think people will be using these tools? What “manual” or tedious tasks will AI replace? Other use cases? Do you think AI tools make smaller agencies more competitive with larger ones? How do you think AI changes the economics of SEO? How might clients (large and SMB) themselves use AI tools/content? Will AI tools make clients less reliant on agencies; will it lead to more in-housing? How should you talk to clients about AI/ChatGPT tools and their future role in marketing, content creation, etc.?  What concerns, if any, do you have about ChatGPT and related tools? Dependence on these tools? Quality? Factual errors or bias? We’re now seeing screenshots of Bing’s new AI-search integration, and this week Google will preview its own search-AI mashup (speculating). While we don’t know exactly how this will play out, how might a radically different search interface impact the future of SEO?  The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.near memo ep 100Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textChatGPT and similar generative AI tools can write very credible reviews, very quickly and easily. The number of fake reviews could possibly explode in numbers.While multi-location businesses care about reviews they don’t really put any energy into them. Is Google equally unconcerned about reviews?How will this impact the review ecosystem and how will Google respond?It can seem like Google controls the fate of small businesses with zero click search, erratic review policies and control of your business profile. Miriam Ellis points out at Moz that while Google’s behaviors create stress in the end almost all searchers in the local ecosystem end up on your turf. Whether that is a call, coming to your location or on your website the business controls the interaction. Google customer experience doesn’t require a latte with every haircut but it does require that your systems for client communications work and work reliably.AI and Automation is now officially a thing in SEO, and not just for writing:The amount of data SEO tools provide is overload and forces users to create custom workflows to make sense of it. Agencies and in-housers can gain a competitive advantage by building their own automation systems to ingest SEO data (rankings, GSC, etc.), analyze it at scale and turn it into actionable insights. The SEO of 2023 will arm themselves with these tools and systems to create better outcomes for themselves and their stakeholders.If you are going to crank out a lot of content via AI, the key is how you train the model, how you mix in data from other sources, how you edit it, plus how you structure it to make it seem like it's not written by AI. Hint, write for a 6th grade level.The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.near memo ep 99Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textMailchimp launched Campaign Manager, a way for marketers to plan, execute, and track their marketing campaigns across multiple channels—like email, text messaging, social media ads, and direct mail—and view how their campaign is performing in one calendar view. But Intuit’s ads are positioning this tool for the smaller business with one or two employees but in reality is for more sophisticated businesses with dedicated marketing staff. Growing visibility of copyright implications of generative AI precedes solutions:Generative AI is trained using other’s creations. This often leads to plagiarism and excessive image re-use. Current copyright law is not up to the snuff in terms of defining when this is fair use and when it is copyright violation. The suits have started and it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will punt on this or create clarity. Google’s GBP forums provide insights into bugs, practices and policy:The Google Business Profile forum is where folks end up that Google has decided are too expensive to provide support to. Analyzing this data provides insights into bugs, Google’s AI false positives and problems caused by Google’s actions. It is also clear in this data that Google has managed to externalize costs of their “release early” philosophy on the small businesses they claim to serve. The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.near memo ep 98Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a text Failings in Apple Business Connect Agency Model:While the Apple Business Connect Dashboard is well designed and the new API is significant, the product really fails smaller businesses that want their smaller agency to manage their listing for them. As the system is designed, a small business has to get an Apple ID, verify their own listing and then share the admin privileges with their small agency. Too many steps and too much work for most small businesses to engage with. Big agencies define local as a fad in CallRail survey:In a Callrail survey of 600 agency employees that work for larger agencies respondents thought that metaverse marketing and voice search are better long term investments while localization and AI were fads. Hello? SEO’s don’t get respect: SEO’s highlighted their greatest difficulties, In a recent Aira & Women in Tech SEO  survey of smaller agencies and freelancers,  were "getting my recommendations implemented" (33%) and  "showing the value of my work" (23%). They also noted a lack of resources, technical debt and lack of bbuy in as reasons for not accomplishing their goals. The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.near memo ep 97Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textWhy the new Apple Business Connect is so important: Apple Business Connect is both a small business interface AND an API. The small business interface is very elegant and supports very hi res imagery as well as a Post-like product called Showcases. The bigger news is probably the roll-out of the API. This is the first time Apple has allowed third parties to directly interact with Maps. When you realize that Business Connect is positioned as a way to integrate your business Place Card with a whole suite of Apple products including iMessage, Apple Pay, Siri and more you have to wonder what role this will play in Apple’s coming augmented reality play. The value of stack ranking as a way to prune employees:The tech industry over-hired during the demand created by Covid. With a recession on the horizon and growth constrained, many tech companies including Google are looking to become more efficient and are using stack ranking as a way to identify low performing employees. Will this lead to an exodus of good employees or to a loss of morale?AI’s rapid advancements and easy implementation will impact everything from audio chat bots to Excel:Vall-e translates text to speech based on a person’s actual voice. The quality of AI voice generation based has implications across a range of applications from chat bots to deceptive scams.  The Neeva search engine shows the way how it will be integrated into search. The growing productization points to the integration of these new capabilities as a feature in a range of software features. Whether this commodifies AI or leaves it in the hands of a few dominant players remains to be seen.The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.near memo ep 96Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textWashington AG sues plastic surgeon for review fraud:Allure, a chain of Seattle based plastic surgery centers, has been sued under the federal Consumer Review Fairness Act, HIPPA and state law for significant fraudulent activities in the review space. Requiring NDAs prohibiting negative reviews, bribes to take reviews down, photoshopped before and after consumer images and stealing consumer rebates, this practitioner apparently never got the memo. Penalties in the millions of dollars were discussed. Does it portend a jump in review fraud enforcement or just the once every couple of years enforcement chest thumping?  Shopify targets enterprise retail with modern, composable stack for enterprise:Shopify is making a strong show to improve their stock price entering the new year. The most recent Commerce Components is targeted at making integration of the Shopfiy checkout with  enterprise backend software. This seems like a smart strategy to help Shopify move into the enterprise space. Bing to integrate ChatGpt & what that means:ChatGPT has been discussed in great detail over the past few weeks. With the announcement of Bing’s intention to integrate ChatGPT with their search engine and Google moving full speed ahead on a competitor, it seems that the chat model will make its way into search. What are the implications for the business model of search engines? What are the implications for searchers?The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.near memo ep 95Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/