Well, hello, hello, and welcome to the Whitespark Local Update with me, Claire Carlile. Et moi, Darren Shaw. Bonjour, Darren.
Bonjour. This is a podcast. It's a podcast that people come to, to hear the japes, but also really to get the local SEO news and items.
Can you please help our audience understand what the word japes means? You have jolly japes, bants, laughs, jokes, all good natured tomfoolery. Oh, wow. These are some really fantastic British terms.
Love it. Give us your good Canadian links. Okay, my first link for today, straight from Canada, is Rich Sanger on Search Engine Land has been very helpful for me.
As a Canadian, speaking of Canada, I don't have access to AskMaps, and it is killing me. I tried to get onto AskMaps via VPNs and proxies, and I cannot trigger this damn thing. So, fortunately, Rich Sanger has written an article, Google AskMaps is moving from listings to recommendations.
And so he kind of really explains how AskMaps is working based on their observations. They ran a whole bunch of queries and measured, it's just like, what's happening in this thing? So it just gives us a real breakdown of analysis of where's Google getting this data from. And it was wonderful for me to read because I need to understand how this thing works.
Basically, in the results, only about three to five businesses will be returned. And each business, it doesn't display your description. It just generates a summary of the business.
It generates it with AI. So this business is specialized in whatever based on their Google business profile details and their reviews. And it does not include the contact info, which is interesting, because as you get a list of, let's say, four businesses, you click on one, it might list the phone number, but it's not clickable.
So if you click it, it will take you to the Google business profile, showing us that the Google business profile is still the de facto place that Google is driving people to to understand your business, which, of course, makes sense. We see Google investing a lot of resources into continuing to build up that product. And here's a huge takeaway.
For the last, I don't know, 12 years, I have said, Google business profile description, it's not very important. Google doesn't use it in the local search algorithm. I'm out there on the social media, calling people out, like, optimize your description.
I'm like, sorry, no, you dummy doesn't actually impact rankings. Don't bother. I have changed my tune because of AskMaps.
And that is because it is definitely referencing your description when it generates that summary, when it decides which businesses to return in the AskMaps results. And so now your description is actually important. So I would suggest you start using that, those 750 characters wisely.
And finally, he provides a breakdown of, OK, well, how do you optimize for this thing? And so it's basically Google business profile stuff. Reviews are huge. So what people are saying about your reviews, website, and then your broader digital footprint out on the web.
And so I'm not going to spoil it. You're going to read the article. But these are the areas to focus on.
It's kind of stuff that we already know. But it really provides some context about the direction Google is going. I feel very confident that this is the thing.
This is how local search results will be generated. One more thing. Sorry.
One more thing is that the results get more and more refined. And so it's really interesting to see how detailed you are in your description. Means, just like in your prompt, like what you're asking for.
Because you might get, you might be like, plumbers, San Diego. No, what is no, no more plumbers, San Diego. You've already been flagged on your obsession with plumbers in San Diego.
What is it? Dentists, Miami. Some of my search, dentists, Miami. And then and Google, that's that's like a real base level query.
And ask maps is like, OK, here's some. But someone might say, I have a broken tooth and I mean, I'm looking for a dentist that is within 100 meters of me that specializes in broken tooth repair. So that's a much different prompt.
And so you're going to get totally different results because Google will look at the reviews and the description and be like, so if you put like, we are the broken tooth specialists of Miami in your description, I might actually help you return that. So it's like, like we've been saying, feed the bots every minutiae detail about your business in all the places that you can. And that'll help you get surface for these things.
OK. OK, all right. So you have no commentary.
What is your link? I've got a link, but I think you probably know more about it than I do, because I don't really know very much about local service ads apart from Google. They are very useful if you are operating in a niche that has them available. When I say useful, it might be the only way that you manage to get any visibility in the actual results, because Google obviously has these.
So I saw on LinkedIn a chap, Eric Levine, who I believe is a bit of a deal, a bit of a big deal. So restaurants and coffee and dessert now have local service ads. This is huge.
And Eric said, I haven't seen this in the wild. And I did a little search for coffee and dessert Miami, because obviously that is my... I don't believe anyone searches like that anymore. I reckon that the longer search query that you gave basically lives everywhere now.
I don't think... Do people really do plumbers Denver? I don't know. I think they do. You think they do? Well, of course, you should know because you've got the data, Darren.
So I believe you. All I know is like ads, Google wants your money. Yes, they do.
Ads are going to be everywhere. If you want to compete, you need to make sure that you have the ads. So look out for the horrible three pack of local service ads popping into your ice cream results if you are in Miami.
The plumbers of Denver and Miami already have them. Yeah, the plumbers and the dentists. It was dentists.
Yeah, that was my second example. Yeah. Okay.
All right. Cool. All right.
Well, that was a non-link. Thank you for listening to that nonsense from me. No, it's a real link, actually.
The fact that they're just going to put this stuff on every single category just because like, hey, we're making money on this thing. Let's make more money. That's the way Google seems to be operating.
All right. I think this is the second week in a row I get to feature the wonderful Amy Jarenka. So she wrote an article that really resonated with me.
Schema markup for internal knowledge graphs to support topic entity strategy in AI search. Very good title, because it actually explains exactly what's going on here. So I've been a naysayer about the value of schema in the past, and I continue to somewhat be like, schema is only valuable for the SERP features that it generates.
So like we used to use schema to get the FAQ results, used to use schema to get stars in the results. Google's kind of taken all those things away from us. And so the value of schema, like just putting your contact info on the page, like in a local business schema, for me, I've always been like, that's a waste of time.
You know, it's not going to do much for you. Amy talks about a very different use case for schema. And we're talking about topical authority and topical site structure.
So if you do a really good job of your site structure, then everything is siloed into like, let's say you were a plumber in Denver, and your website had all these different services coming off of it. So then you want to put all the content related to hot water tank repair and hot water tanks under the hot water tank, like silo, content silo. So what she talks about is your topical structure.
And so you're going to do that through your interlinking, your navigation. You're going to build a good siloed structure. That's important.
And then she says you reinforce that with the schema. And that's actually totally solid, because you're building an internal knowledge graph to support your topical entity strategy. So your schema should create the knowledge graph of your own website.
This, for me, feels like a very smart strategy. You're just giving the bots an assist. You're like saying, listen, I know you could try and probably figure out by how I've linked these pages, but let me just lay it on a silver platter for you with my schema.
I'm going to explain to you exactly how my topic entity should be mapped across this whole website. That's a really good use case for schema. And she describes how to do it in this article.
So it's on LinkedIn. Amy Jerenka, link in the show notes. Amy, Amy, thank you for that.
I have got a piece by our very good friend, Barry Schwartz. On Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable. Google Maps blocked 292 million reviews and removed 13 million fake profiles.
So Barry does the link to a piece on the Google blog, which is their, I don't know, whatever, the keyword it's called, talking about new ways that they're protecting businesses on maps. And then they give some stats, which Barry is quoting in that. So we, you know, obviously are talking about reviews quite a lot.
We have, you've been speaking, obviously, may I say the name Claudia? You mentioned Claudia, yeah, all right. A stranger, a stranger to this podcast. And other people talking about like missing reviews, where have my reviews gone, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So one of the things is, you know, this is the reason that we have missing reviews is we have the churn of people that have left those reviews. So this is all supposed to be very exciting for us to know that Google is doing this lovely thing, keeping us safe, using AI to make sure that there are none of those naughty, naughty reviews. So you read this and then you scroll down in the comments.
And one of my favorite is, I don't believe this is the flex they think it is. Out of the 292 million reviews removed, probably 100 million of them were legit reviews from small businesses with 100 legit reviewers or fewer who worked hard to earn them. And then Google removed them and called it advanced reasoning capabilities.
That's an interesting take. My take is the opposite, actually. I'd be like, oh, Google removed 292 million fake reviews.
That's a drop in the bucket. They need to remove 292 billion fake reviews if they really want to solve this problem, because it is insane. So there's going to be some collateral damage that real reviews might get removed.
But I mean, we got to take it. Like the fake review problem is out of control. It is such a lever that is driving people's rankings.
And businesses are like, Google doesn't seem to care. So let's just do it. So fake reviews is just an absolute nightmare.
And I think for any, you know, especially small businesses that will be like, oh, it hurts, it hurts. I've lost two or three reviews. I think you just need to accept the fact that, hey, come on.
You know, we know QR codes, asking for people at location, asking in the wrong way, there's going to be issues. But it's just like, if you just stay being a really, really good product or service and make sure that you make it obvious how people leave reviews, just crack on with that. And don't cry over the lost reviews, honestly.
Take your medicine. It is worth it in the long run, because all those competitors, all those competitors that are spamming, that benefits you. If Google will actually do something and remove those, that's going to benefit you a lot more than the perceived loss of a few reviews.
Yeah. That's it. That's it.
All right. I hope Google does more. Take them all down.
All those fake reviews. All of the reviews. My next link is from Kevin Indig.
Oh, Kevin. Yeah. He's published The Ghost Citation Problem.
And so, citation in this context is referring to large language models. And a citation is when, like a ghost citation, is when the large language model returns your content as the source with a link, but doesn't mention your brand name. It's like, they've cited my content by linking to it.
Like you can see that little, tiny little link in the results. But they didn't mention my brand name. I wish they had mentioned my brand name.
Because nobody clicks those links, right? So that's the idea. He talks about, so he does an analysis and understands how this is working. And it's quite fascinating that Gemini and ChatGPT are very opposite in the way that they operate.
In Gemini, 83% of the results will mention the brand name, but only 21% of them will link. And ChatGPT flips that. Only 20% of them will mention the brand name.
And 87% of them link. So ChatGPT is likely to do the ghost citation thing, where they just pull in your content, they don't mention where it came from, and they just put that little link there. So one of the takeaways from this piece is that there's no single AI visibility metric.
Basically, this analysis was done on Gemini, ChatGPT, AI mode, and AI overviews. And the discovery here is that they all behave absolutely differently. They are so varied in the way that they return responses that you can't say, my AI visibility is this because AI visibility on which platform? It's like your Google rankings versus your Bing rankings, right? Very different.
One of the things that he shares, and I had access to this insight because I'm a paid subscriber to his newsletter. It is very good, and I'm going to share this tip in exchange for plugging his paid subscription because I think that people should subscribe to his newsletter. And here's one of the reasons why.
So in this thing, he explains one of the insights that they extracted from this research, which was, if you want to get named, then you should focus on creating content that answers short conversational queries. Long queries, so if the query is long and people talk about it all day, they almost never mention the brands. But if it's a short conversational query, please recommend blah, you often get your brands mentioned.
So that's an insight that is only available to his paid subscribers, which I have just given you. And I think you should go and check out this post, which is available on Growth Memo, his sub stack. And then he'll encourage you to sign up for his paid thing.
I don't know how much it is, but worth it. My linky link is Mr. Mark Williams Cook on the linky din. So Mark has, for very, very many years, I think, added these unsolicited SEO tips in is linky din.
And it makes me so happy. I think like, Like, you know, if you wrote all of these tips down in a book, that would be your training manual for your... Oh my God, for real. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. So I really like this one where he is just talking about content and he is flagging the difference between content, which he uses two terms. And so this must have been somewhere that Danny Sullivan was speaking.
So he gave some examples. So commodity content and non-commodity content. So this is interesting in terms of a point of difference in different types of content that people and Google are likely to find more useful, more unique.
And whether that response is giving more visibility to that content or more people taking action on that content, you need to go for the non-commodity content in many cases. So talking about commodity content, which is just like when you go, oh, best running shoes for trail running in the UK or whatever. So anyone writes it, standard surface level information.
You look at who's ranking for it and you just go, oh yeah, that's good. I'll take that bit, that bit, that bit, and then I'll, or whatever. There's my piece on trail running shoes for the UK.
And then Mark is talking about leaning into the E-E-E-E-E-E-E-AT, the expertise, authority and trust of the idea of like being a named person that has, you know, we've been talking about this also for ages, which is like your experience and your unique insight and maybe your access to unique data or unique storytelling using that data is the non-commodity content. So it's specific original content rooted in personal experience, professional expertise and real world application. Now that's not supposed to sound scary because let's just focus on Denver plumbers, for example, your absolute favorite niche.
If you're, if wherever you are, if that's what you do, you're the one with that deep expertise and leaning into that, being a named person, making your content a bit better than other people by, by sort of leaning into that knowledge and that experience. So it's saying to win in modern SEO, whatever that might be, you must move away from simply answering the query and move towards adding unique value to the conversation. We said this for ages.
I just liked the way that it was summed up in that commodity content, non-commodity content. And I also think about this in my own work. Like I think about the concept of original thought.
So I'm often saying something that I heard from someone else and I'll, I learned this cool thing from Amy Toman or Carlyle showed me this cool thing and I'll, I'll, I'll cite people. Right. But I'm always like, if that's all I ever do, then I'm not contributing back.
And so I'm like, what is, what do I think? What does Darren Shaw think? And I'm like trying to create original thought in my own content. And I feel like we have to try and teach our, teach the business owners of the world that you, you have a voice, you have your own opinions. You got to get that on the webpage.
You got to get it into your Google business profile description. Now, you got to optimize your Google business profile description with your original thoughts. So the world is changing.
It's not, it's the same as it was before. Well, you know, it's, you're right. It is the same as it was before.
If you were doing this five years ago. Doing it good, doing it properly. But now, now we realize, oh, I should have been doing this a long time ago.
Oh, am I allowed an extra link quickly? Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay.
All right. I'm going to just pop this in. Ross Simmons, who I love, I have mentioned before.
So Ross Simmons did a really good interview with Mike King. And it just made me think of that again. It's on YouTube.
Really good. You know, if you're not going to go and read the like AI guide on iPoorank's website, just go and watch this for an hour. It's really, really good.
And I love what, what that made me think about then is that whole, it's just SEO. It's just SEO. It might just be SEO if you were doing proper marketing SEO.
Right. But if you were still talking about, oh, this is our 301 redirects and this, and just being like typically, technically SEO, then no, it's not just SEO. Anyway, it was a really good conversation.
I obviously really rate both of those people in terms of the insight that they have. And I think anyone can benefit for just listening to that for an hour and having a cup of tea. Great example of two people that are pumping out original thought.
A non-commodity. And that is the end of our linky links. Thank you again for being here, for turning up, for listening and just for being awesome and for writing comments on YouTube and reviews on Spotify.
Thank you. Yep. Thanks a lot.
Okay, bye everybody. Bye.
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