If any of the themes below pique your interest, we hope you’ll consider subscribing as an All-Access member.

Without further ado, here’s our take on the biggest themes of the past 11 months:

Google doubles-down on self-preferencing

Six multinational gatekeepers, including Google, were due to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act as of March 2024. The most relevant provision of this Act for local search marketers is article 6(5) prohibiting self-preferencing.

Google introduced a number of new user interface elements to the local SERP as part of its DMA compliance response, but in our analysis of over 700 European consumers’ search journeys for restaurants, hotels, and home services, these elements received fewer than 2% of all clicks.

Meanwhile, Google’s own Business Profiles continue to eat 50%-80% of all user engagements when users see them. (The lowest engagement we’ve seen occurred in the Hotels vertical, where barely 50% of users scrolled past the ads at the top of the SERP).

At the public compliance workshop hosted by the European Commission in March, Google jaw-droppingly attempted to argue that Google Business Profiles, featuring the company’s own business data and first-party reviews from Google users, which resolve to Google.com URLs, were somehow not subject to the DMA’s provision against self-preferencing.

A European Commission decision on Google’s compliance in Flights, Shopping, and Hotels is due in the first part of 2025.

Google continues to double- and triple-down on displaying more and more modules featuring first-party local, flight, hotel and shopping data. Aside from the financial risk of regulatory penalties in Europe, Google’s product decision to continue to bloat the SERP with these modules (AI-organized or not) is even more bizarre when you compare the cognitive load required for searchers to process them vs. SearchGPT’s minimalist responses.

High-profile hacks & fakes continue to plague Google Business Profiles

Despite Google’s assurances of addressing fraudulent activities, it remains alarmingly simple to alter a business’s phone number on its Google listing, posing significant risks to both businesses and consumers.

Despite being reported in March 2024, the “Map Pin Hack“—where malicious actors manipulate a business’s Google Maps pin to a different location, adversely affecting its visibility and customer directions—remains unresolved, with Google yet to implement a fix.

A meme originating in Tennessee has led to numerous schools worldwide being (humorously?) renamed “Hawk Tuah School” on Google Maps, highlighting ongoing vulnerabilities for massive business harm posed by Google’s “suggest an edit” feature.

While not a hack per se, Google has added unauthorized “Reserve with Google” booking buttons to healthcare providers’ Business Profiles, allowing third-party platforms to manage appointments without the providers’ consent, leading to patient confusion and scheduling issues.

Despite a high-profile lawsuit and subsequent $5 million consent decree against Seattle’s Allure Esthetic for falsifying online reviews and suppressing negative feedback, Google didn’t remove the fraudulent reviews from its platform, continuing to display 4.8 stars and over 900 reviews–not to mention a keyword-stuffed business name–even today.

Google’s decision to allow such rampant malicious activity on Business Profiles, especially while amplifying their visibility, fits FTC Chair Lina Khan’s characterization of a monopoly as “too big to care” to a T.

SearchGPT’s makes a genuinely impressive local search introduction

While I don’t expect SearchGPT to overtake Google anytime soon, it could make a meaningful dent in Google’s market share as soon as 2026. Here’s why:

Content Generation: SearchGPT excels at creating detailed content outlines from simple queries, outperforming many paid SEO tools specializing in this exact task.

Context Retention: It maintains context across multiple searches, enabling natural and refined interactions without the need to restate details.

User Interface: The platform offers concise and relevant local search results with a dramatically cleaner interface compared to Google’s module- and ad-heavy pages.

Personalization: SearchGPT leverages user history to personalize results, enhancing relevance (but posing challenges for tracking visibility and rankings).

Distribution via Chrome extension & Apple Search: Alongside the SearchGPT rollout, OpenAI has aggressively promoted its chrome extension which prompts users to replace their default search engine. While Apple’s Text-to-Siri interface is largely hidden from view in its current beta incarnation, it appears Text-to-Siri (backfilled by ChatGPT search results) could be a pixel-for-pixel replacement of Spotlight Search in the iPhone interface.

The post The biggest local search themes of 2024 appeared first on SEMpdx.

Attendees

As of 8:00 this morning, we’ve got 313 search marketers already registered to attend the conference.  We’ll probably be a little short of my goal of 400 attendees, but in its fifth year, it looks like this is going to be the biggest, baddest SearchFest yet.  You do not want to miss out on all of the networking possibilities with this crowd.

As usual, most of our attendees are from Oregon, but 12 other states and one country (Mexico) will be sending representatives.  I’m totally shocked that we don’t have anyone from Canada registered yet.  Well, except for Todd Friesen, but a) he’s speaking, and b) he’s lived in the Seattle area for so long that he’s barely Canadian anymore.

I am so surprised there are no Canadians registered that I will promise an SEMpdx door prize to the first Canadian to sign up this week.

Also, more attendees are coming all the way across the country from Newark (3) than are coming up the coast from Los Angeles (1).  Come on, SoCal…really?  Are you that scared of a little drizzle?  Or is it the shame of being here on Wednesday night when the Blazers mop the floor with the Lakers at the Rose Garden?  We promise great weather (see below) AND to leave you alone after the game!

Speakers

Todd Mintz has been running an incredible series of interviews with all of our speakers, the most recent one with Define Media Group’s Marshall Simmonds this morning. I definitely encourage you to check out the full roster of who will be presenting this year.  As a one-day event, SearchFest doesn’t have the scope of SES or SMX, but the quality of presentations is going to be amazing.

And, based on attendee feedback from the last couple of years, we’ve created an entire track specifically for Advanced content, and color-coded the other two tracks for the level of presentation.  So whether you’re a relative newbie or grizzled veteran of search marketing, you can schedule your ‘itinerary’ to match your experience level.  And if you’re a complete newbie, you can get up to speed at our pre-SearchFest event, Local University at a super-discount as a SearchFest attendee.

Weather

According to friend-of-SEMpdx Bruce Sussman from KOIN Local 6, Portland is in for its usual misty winter drizzle for the next eight days.  But fate is smiling on SEMpdx, and the forecast looks fantastic for Wednesday the 23rd.  It’s tough to beat our city on a clear winter day.

Some Un-Fuzzy Math

If you haven’t bought your ticket yet, you can attend SearchFest AND join SEMpdx for all of 2011 for the equivalent of $25.

Here’s the math: current ticket pricing is only $249 for SEMpdx members and $349 for non-members.  An SEMpdx membership is $125 a year and gets you into a free monthly event of your choice.

So if you’re not a member yet, now is the time to become one for 2011.

Was I Able to Convince You?

With only one week left to get a regularly-priced ticket…well, what are you waiting for? Register here.

And if you ARE registered, what sessions are you most looking forward to attending?  Let us know in the comments!

–David Mihm
2011 SearchFest Director

The post SearchFest Is Coming in 9 Days! Have You Registered? appeared first on SEMpdx.

For a little background on the PortlandOnline.com Refresh contest, see the City’s “official” request here, and some notable responses.

The consensus was that the City doesn’t really understand the potential of what a good website can do, both in terms of branding the city and even in terms of its functionality. There has been next-to-no communication with the organized creative community to date about the manner of the “RFP” (there may be some bylaws the City is trying to avoid by not calling it such) and this has created a lot of frustration, especially among the more design-y groups.

The City’s only evident goal seems to be “community buy-in” and “community engagement” and this may be one of the reasons they cannot solicit a formal RFP. But they also seem to be under the impression that designs from community members can easily be shoe-horned onto their existing infrastructure without any real thought to site architecture, usability, searchability, or anything beyond a basic idea of what a website can look like. In this sense, they are basically asking for “a piece of artwork” rather than a functional model for a website. There essentially is no project brief that any of the groups can even lend their assistance with.

There’s also the conceptual idea that by soliciting spec work for FREE that the City is explicitly saying that good design is not worth being compensated for. Apparently they have a development budget for loads of in-house staff but no one is quite sure just how much; one figure is as high as $10MM. It was generally agreed to talk about the financial concept/budget for “design” and creative work AFTER hearing what the goals were.

But one of the attendees made a great point…even the cost of converting all of the old pages into the new design at a ridiculously small estimate of $1/page would mean a cost of $114,000…

Mayor Adams has seemed to be committed to showcasing Portland as a tech-savvy, design-savvy, creative, open-source community in the past but the city is about to have a “brand fail” if the contest goes through in its current form. None of us can afford that in this economy.

Personally I agreed with most of what was said, although I think perhaps some of the branding and advertising guys were a little too concerned about the brand side rather than the functionality side–but everyone was in favor of sitting down with the City to get a sense of their goals and then help them figure out how to best accomplish them.

The post Portland Creative Community Meets to Discuss PortlandOnline.com Refresh appeared first on SEMpdx.

“Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but usually early adopters tend to exert greater and greater influence on the network over time. Which means it’s like a little social pyramid scheme: if you’re late, you’re screwed.”

Largely without knowing it, David Brooks, my second-favorite columnist behind Thomas Friedman, authored an incredibly insightful corollary to Mashable’s theory, encouraging me to put together a hodgepodge of thoughts I’ve meant to get down in writing for some time now.

The Cachet of Being an Early Discarder

I’ll try to sum up Brooks’ terrific piece in just a few lines:

“In the first place, …aximum status goes to the Gladwellian heroes who occupy the convergence points of the Internet infosystem — Web sites like Pitchfork for music, Gizmodo for gadgets, Bookforum for ideas, etc. “

“Second, in order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.”

If you know Brooks, you’ll know his style is often outrageously tongue-in-cheek, as above. But frequently, the reason his tongue there in the first place is to feel around the oversized grain of truth embedded in his cheek.

Even Google Isn’t Above the Brooks Corollary

Pure online companies seem to me to be qualitatively different from offline companies that dominated the 20^th century. Companies like GE, GM, and P&G spent billions on advertising to establish themselves as trusted brands over the last hundred years. Their revenues were, and still are, largely based on recurring purchases from customers who visit the store and continued to spend money on their products because they were familiar with them.

By comparison, in the 21^st Century, Big G has simply built the best mousetrap. Google, like the other successful offline companies, has spent pennies on branding compared to successful offline companies. And its revenues aren’t based on a consumer “product;” rather, on its ever-increasing share of searches.

Then there’s the social aspect of Google. Remember when Google first came out, back in the late 1990’s? I was a freshman in college, still using a conglomeration of AltaVista, Yahoo, and HotBot to do my searching. All of a sudden I heard about this new site called Google from one of my friends. I felt like a loser for never having heard of it, and my buddy Daniel got a little high from enlightening a rube like myself on the wonders of that fantastically plain search interface. Brooks is spot-on with thesis #1 about the status bump of knowing about something cool that your peers don’t.

In the 21^st century, all that branding and familiarity just aren’t that important. In fact, it’s more than a little thrilling to try out a brand new website or a brand new service that our web-savvy peers are talking about.

So what’s the difference between the offline business model and the online business model? Online revenue models are predominantly based on either subscriptions or advertising—neither of which requires any substantial investment from consumers. Apart from e-commerce, the largest consumer “spending” in most web financial models isn’t money—it’s time.

The userbase is of critical importance—the more people invest into a particular app or a particular network, the less likely they are to leave. Google clearly recognizes this; it’s why they have their hands in so many unprofitable, user-oriented cookie jars (Calendar, Gmail, Reader, etc.)—bundling services like these keeps users addicted to their search service as their default homepage.

Frankly, Google still owns the rights to the best mousetrap. But that doesn’t stop people from trying out new services; look no further than the hype around Cuil just in the last month. Now of course Cuil is in some ways a terrible example because it was such a phenomenal let-down. But imagine if it HAD been able to return decent results? Even with ALL of my commitment to Google products (all three of the above, and many, many more), I’d have switched in a heartbeat, for my search needs at least, to stay ahead of the “cool” curve.

In summary, it was far more costly for traditional offline companies to establish themselves as a trusted brand in the 20^th century, but they stood far less risk of being discarded for an unknown upstart.

A Cautionary Tale for Mark Zuckerberg, Biz Stone and Others

I’ve had several discussions with friends about why Mark Zuckerberg refused to sell Facebook, even at a gaudy billion-dollar valuation. My friends’ arguments usually run along the lines of the following: Mark feels he has created the next Google, with an idea that only comes around once in a lifetime (and that may very well be the case).

My “advice” to Zuckerberg has always been to take the money and run.

Why? In our increasingly ADD world, the marketers and the folks who are so critical to the growth in popularity of a particular website are often the first to leave it. As Brooks would say, not only is there incredible cachet for the web’s elite to dismiss Facebook as “SOOOO 2007” but as Mashable would say, there is the importance of being at the rise of the next wave, rather than at its crest. Even social networking zealots only have so much time to devote to one particular interest, or at most a handful of platforms.

One thing hasn’t changed since the original dot-com bubble burst in 2000. It’s hard to grow, and even maintain, a userbase once you’ve reached a certain level. The web is a graveyard of ill-fated plays in a high-stakes, web 2.0 game of Scrabble. “Akimbo.” “Kiko.” “Friendster.” Heck, even Scrabulous lost a huge chunk of its user base after being acquired by a more corporate entity!

I have a lot of friends on Facebook, so I still use it occasionally. But if even 15 or 20% of them all of a sudden find some new hot service, as with Google, I’ll switch in a snap. I said earlier that time investment in a particular platform is critical. In comparison to the commitment to something like a Gmail address or a Google Calendar, the commitment to a Facebook profile is minuscule—what does it take to setup, maybe 45 minutes?

I want to get on that next wave, not ride the existing one. I barely made it onto the crest of the Twitter wave, and I won’t make that mistake again when “the next big one” comes along.

Speaking of Twitter, it remains to be seen whether that platform will be able to keep pace with competitors and quasi-competitors like Plurk, Pownce, and Friendfeed, among others. Perhaps it will innovate beyond its current utility. Even though it pales in comparison to Facebook’s multi-billion-dollar payoff, $100 million is an awful lot of money. Especially when your service hasn’t been a model of reliability to-date and you haven’t made a nickel in profits yet.

Zuckerberg, Stone, all of these high-level web entrepreneurs are brilliant. I have no doubt they could come up with even more amazing ideas in the next few years. And frankly, serial entrepreneurship matches the serial mindset of the web generation far better than the big brand mentality of previous generations.

So Mark, Biz, know that I’m rooting for both of your platforms. I think they’re incredibly rich and fun to use today. But don’t complain when my friends and I find something else to gush over in 2009.

David Mihm runs a one-man firm focusing on web design in Portland, OR and is a noted authority on Local SEO. He writes frequently about Local SEO topics at his blog, Mihmorandum.

The post The Brooks Corollary of Social Networking Theory appeared first on SEMpdx.

Well, now it’s been a few weeks, and I am anything but giving up on Twitter.

The fact is, I’m finding Twitter to be an infinitely more useful Social Networking tool than MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, or even Sphinn (sorry, Danny). Believe me, no one is more surprised than yours truly.

I attended a session at last year’s PubCon with Natasha Robinson and smirked at Laura Fitton‘s presentation, which for me boiled down to “Look how great I am, I have 1000 followers and just picked up 20 more since I started talking” ( she’s now up to an impressive 3900). That presentation more or less confirmed my prejudice as to the essence of Twitter: a megaphone that enables narcissists to reach lemmings. That’s hyperbole—of course, I don’t really think Laura is a narcissist; she just struck me as mildly arrogant. Nonetheless, her discourse probably delayed my adoption of the service by at least three months.

At the time, as a non-Twit, it was difficult for me to comment publicly on Laura’s synopsis of Twitter because I simply didn’t know enough about the service to have an informed response, and I’m not one to criticize people based purely on personality. After +/- 40 days using Twitter, though, I think I can reasonably voice my opinion.

I definitely see the value of those 1000 / 3900 followers. For large businesses, powerbloggers, or social media gurus who submit content to Digg, Reddit, etc., there’s incredible value in having a large base of fans who you can instantly exhort to vote for or read your content. Twitter becomes Digg’s “Shout” feature, super-sized. Even for small businesses, there’s plenty of value in publicizing open houses, timely sales, and other brick-and-mortar events via the “push” side of Twitter.

But my impression of Laura’s presentation drastically undersold the “pull” side of Twitter: the people you FOLLOW are just as important as the people who follow you. You’re missing out if you’re not a good listener.

–Connect with folks who share your interests and/or your geography. Danny Sullivan recently posted a great piece on SEL about Summize, a Twitter search engine. Follow those people and develop a real relationship rather than just tweeting PR. The ratio of Tweeple who also have a blog has to be nearly 1:1. This can be an amazing source of highly relevant links for blog posts or other content you create. Side note: where did I hear about Summize? From @chiropractic , where else? On Twitter!

– Learn what people in your industry or in your geographic area find interesting and compelling. Write blog content that addresses those topics, develop a dialogue with them. Twitter conversations are chock-full of link bait ideas that aren’t sensationalistic or off-brand.

–Deepen your Twitter relationships so that when you network at conferences you’ll know more about the folks you want to meet. Pay attention to what makes them tick. Note happy, funny, embarrassing, or tragic events they’ve tweeted about. Your Twitter conversation stream becomes an instant credibility builder when you meet them in person.

–Ask questions! You can get some terrific responses for just about anything from where to look for mod_rewrite syntax to the best happy hour in your town.

–Particularly for bigger companies: respond to what might otherwise turn into customer service nightmares and/or reputation management problems. @comcastcares is a great example of using Twitter for exceptional customer service and reputation management.

Bottom line: after my 40 days on Twitter, I feel more connected to the rest of the SEO industry than I ever have before, from conversations with tiny paeans like @willcritchlow (just kidding, Will!) all the way up to giants like @oilman. Twitter keeps my finger on the pulse of current topics and the latest strategies.

I’m so glad that Todd stayed on my case and got me to join Twitter last month. It’s one example where it actually does pay to give in to peer pressure. You’re next, Kelley! J

David Mihm is a Portland, OR web designer and SEMpdx member. You can connect with him on Twitter @davidmihm.

The post 40 Days, 40 Nights, and 140 Characters Later (David Mihm’s Thoughts after a Month+ on Twitter) appeared first on SEMpdx.