The Near Memo

Send us a text“Mike’s Excellent European Adventure” continues this week, so Nick Brackenbury, CEO of SaaS company NearSt joins Greg and David for a fast-moving conversation about his company’s growth curve alongside the explosion of “near me” searches and Google’s appetite for local inventory in search results since 2015.Nick takes listeners through how NearSt came to be, a major pivot in NearSt’s trajectory, its partnerships with Google and other major platforms, the current penetration of digital inventory solutions among brick-and-mortar stores, and the latest local commerce-related announcements from Google.Editor’s note: Unfortunately we weren’t able to mitigate the choppy quality of David’s recording in post-production of this episode. Apologies to listeners in advance.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 84Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textThis episode breaks from our typical Near Memo format in two big ways: 1) at 50 minutes, it’s roughly double the length of a typical episode, and 2) rather than a roundtable discussion, it’s a deep-dive interview with a single entrepreneur.Craig Mount, Co-Founder and CEO of peanut butter (and media) brand Nerdy Nuts takes us through the trajectory of his company – from starting up selling a handful of jars at a farmer’s market to doing $80,000 in ecommerce sales in just two minutes.Craig goes into great detail about key moments for his company, from a seminal conversation with a friend in PR about how to position his business, to the company’s first big break on Fox Business (and how they got it), to his wife’s intuition in the early days of Tiktok, and so much more.It’s a terrific story of contemporary entrepreneurship with a number of practical takeaways for marketers and entrepreneurs.Nerdy Nuts’ current tech stack:ShopifyKlaviyoCommunityTiktokInstagramThe 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 83Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textGoogle doubles down on SMB deception to achieve political goals - Google recently sent out an email to its massive base of business clients asking them to Tell us what policy issues matter to you and your business. It directed businesses to a survey which told the real story of Google’s intent: Tell us which policy issues that are important to us are you willing to shill for us? Google has stooped to new lows and that is hard as they have already moved pretty far down. iOS 16 elevates search but still fails at local and internet search - Apple has elevated a long hidden search feature to the main screen of their iPhone, making it more visible and likely more used by most users. While the feature offers good on device searching it is sorely lacking for internet, entity and local search. Apple plays the long game but we keeping asking, when will Apple search grow up? Is their financial relationship with Google holding them back?From Andi to Apple there are suddenly new options for searching the internet. Competition with Google has long been moribund but over the past few years we have seen numerous entrants beyond just DDG from Neeva to Ahrefs. Do any of these have a chance?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 82Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textOn October 16th, hearing aids for folks with low to moderate hearing loss will now be sold over the counter, no longer requiring testing, visits to the audiologists or a prescription. The influx of major brands like Apple, Bose and probably Amazon (hey Alexa, what did they say?) on the low end portend a major shift in how many of these devices are purchased. Local audiologists, many of whom run local businesses predicated on the high margin hardware & training model, will likely shutter their doors. Will privacy compromises become an issue with this burgeoning market?Local news journalism is disappearing with massive layoffs and cutbacks. Will automation and ai come to the rescue of local news? How pervasive will this be for a local news creation strategy? Is it just an excuse for the many PE owned news organizations to layoff staff? How will all of this interact with Google Human Content Update that prohibits ai generated news stories. Neighborhoods, Facebook’s clone of NextDoor, was recently nuked. Its origins as a clone of NextDoor as a minimum viable product might work sometimes but when you have the installed user base as large as Facebook’s a level of corporate support would have created a strong and successful product. This reflects an on-going pattern at Facebook of a failure to understand and leverage the local opportunity.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 81Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a text Google is testing a new label associated with content that is quick to read on both mobile and desktop. The label appears with either the text ‘Quick Read’ or ‘< 5 Min Read’, with several different combinations of each. Is this test, so close to the Helpful Content Update, a way to signal busy readers and garner their attention or is it a useful way to segment content so that searchers looking for in depth content can more easily find it?Why Google Posts are rejected - Another Google AI first fail - Google Business Profiles recently updated Posts guidelines to prohibit poor quality images and re-use of images. Simultaneously there has been a huge increase in the forums of reports of Posts being rejected, no reasons given. Turns out that there are three explanations for the many rejections; there is a new Posts image bug, some images are duplicates AND some images are deemed too “racy” by an AI system that seems more prudish than cautious. However in all of that businesses are left to fend for themselves when their posts are rejected. There is no indication of what caused the rejection and no path given for on. Once again a Google AI first solution seems to be shifting costs downstream and making for unhappy businesses. Nearby , Tiktok & Instagram need local seo now - Nearby, TikTok and Instagram have oodles of truly relevant local content and yet none of them has leveraged that valuable content into an SEO strategy that could attract new readers from Google local searches. 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 80 v2Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a text Shopify Cretes an Influencer Marketplace -  Of all of the networks that have attempted to create a way for businesses to easily connect with influencers to help market their products, Shopify’s newest effort, Collabs, seems like the most logical fit and the easiest to useGoogle’s Human Content Update; Why now?  Google’s language in announcing the Human Content Update, that is rolling out this week and next, largely reflected the language that the marketplace has been using to laud Tik-Tok and to criticize Google’s search efforts. We look at a number of questions surrounding this rollout and what it says about Google’s needs and their practices. Google’s AI First Approach is wrong - The recent case highlighted by the NY Times of a parent who sent photos of his child to their nurse being investigated by police AND having their lifelong Google accounts canceled point out the many problems of an AI first approach to societal issues. We see similar issues happening every day in the GBP forums around images, reviews and suspensions. We discuss ways that Google might be able to achieve scaled moderation AND live up to their obligations to society. 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 80Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textYelp has recently publicized their newest revenue stream; selling merchant data to marketers. It seems sleazy and is likely just a money grab by YelpDay in and day out, small businesses are flocking into the Google Business Profile forum to complain about their legit reviews being nuked by Google’s effort to limit review spam. Tik-Tok is still not being heavily used by brands. Brands can create their own content or team up with Tik-tok creators, for which Tik-tok has created a marketplace. In travel, restaurants and beauty site visitors are using Tik-Tok for discovery. Many small businesses have done well there but brands have an opportunity to leverage this audience which is shunning search. 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 78Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textAfter dozens of failed messaging starts, Google has been on a campaign to get Apple to integrate with their telco favored RCS messaging service. It's not clear why Apple would want to do that and the campaign by Google is almost laughable.Local growth highlighted in Axiosacquisition by Cox for $585 million. With the ascendance of Google and Facebook advertising, local newspapers have been on the ropes. Cox, originally a newspaper company, exited that world for digital properties and broadband services. It appears that they are making a jump back in with the Axios acquisition. Axios Local, highlighted in the press release for the acquisition, currently operates in 24 cities and plans to expand its coverage to 30 U.S. cities by the end of 2022. Eventually, it hopes to be in hundreds of cities. It will be interesting to watch if a nationally run local news organization can find a successful monetization strategy. B2B targeting has always been complicated and expensive or both. Facebook's newly updated offering seems to resolve both of these issues. Their focused entrance into the space could provide some price competition for LinkedIn and put pressure on other players in the marketThe 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 77Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a textSegment 1: Shopify’s investment in Klaviyo improves Shopify’s enterprise cred & may signal acquisitionIn a move to protect and enhance their core product with enterprise, Shopify’s strategic investment in Klaviyo indicates a Segment 2: The golden era of hyper detailed location data intelligence is coming to an endThe marketplace for highly granular location data, fed by smartphones, cars and cell companies, is coming under scrutiny by both Congress and regulators. Despite the value to society that this data might have, its abuse and invasive practices seems to have finally led to some constraints and oversight. If we are lucky, we may be given the ability to opt into surveillance instead of just having to accept it. Segment 3: At Covid start  E-commerce was eating retail, turns out it is retailIn early Covid, pundits talk up the idea that e-commerce had leaped 5 years ahead in its “battle” with retail only to talk up the idea that in store shopping has returned and the e-commerce lost all that it gained. But a closer examination of the data shows that e-commerce did make and sustains real growth but that retail has returned stronger as well. The problem seems to be with comparison between the two. In the end, e-commerce is not really a separate segment from retail but one in the same. Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a text Instagram evolves (?) to target Gen Z but leaves others behind Instagram and Facebook are attempting to cater to the consumption patterns of Gen Z but in doing so are alienating their traditional users. Might these apps be better served by bifurcating their products and developing more focused apps. Google prevents reviews on listings that offer reproductive servicesGoogle has stopped allowing reviews on Planned Parenthood as well as a limited number of businesses offering abortion & reproductive services. While the Planned Parenthood stoppage was probably a manual action, shutting of every business in the categories noted appears to be algorithmically implemented. Why? Google Commerce SERP TrendsFour major trends in commerce serps on the desktop: increasingly  visual, there are a greater variety of serp features to cope with ambiguity, there an increasing number of Local Packs and Ads dominate the space. Local Packs show for 77% of Google commerce query SERP results.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 75Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/