Google Places Search to IYPs – What is the Message? Go Microformats, Young Man!
There has been a lot of discussion* (David Mihm, Greg Sterling, Chris Silver Smith, Andrew Shotland) in the local search community about the meaning and impact of the new Places Search organo-local...
View ArticleGoogle Places: Testimonials as Reviews Now Viewed As Spam?
In early October, 2010, shortly after Google announced support for Rich Snippets in Local, Google Rich Snippet FAQ noted the following: How will Google treat businesses posting testimonials with review...
View ArticleGoogle’s Rich Snippets For Local FAQ Update
Google at some point over the past four months has changed the Rich Snippets for Local FAQ. These changes to their Help Files are not transparent in the least (boo to Google!). Google provides no RSS...
View ArticleCarter Maslan Responds To Rich Snippet FAQ Language Change
I sent the following email to Carter Maslan, Product Management Director, Local Search at Google for clarification: You have been quoted as saying at Kelsey: “Merchants should be publishing their own...
View ArticleTestimonials as Reviews – A View from the Field
Last week after publication of the new Google Rich Snippets for Local FAQ and follow up comments by Carter Maslan, there was a great deal of discussion about what was best practice vis a vis...
View ArticleGoogle Places is Adding Upcoming Events To Venues via Rich Snippets
Reader Matt Feldman of Yelo.us has pointed out a new feature in Places where Google is now integrating venue events into their Places Pages. It allows an individual to add the event data to their...
View ArticlehReview Testimonials from SMB Sites Starting to Show in Places
Since last October when Google noted in their FAQ that Rich Snippet testimonials might flow into a Place Page, many webmasters took the time to mark up their client’s sites in hReview. As Andrew...
View ArticleGoogle+ Promotes Publisher Tag for Local Listings
Mia Culpa: Due to carelessness and haste I originally published this article indicating that Google was promoting authorship.. My thanks to A. J. Kohn for highlighting my error. With the developing...
View ArticleVideo Snippets Vs. Author Images – Which Have Higher Click Through Rates?
Matt reached out to me last week with interesting data on the relative value of video snippets vs author photos in search results. This work compliments the research done on lawyer author photos and...
View ArticleA Plug-in for Adding Google Reviews to Your WordPress Blog
Update: I just heard from David Deering about the plug-in’s use of Schema. Firstly the schema is not done correctly. More importantly however (which I suspected but didn’t investigate as I thought the...
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