On the 2nd of April 2019 Google+ was officially switched off and anyone clicking on your websites G+ social Icon is greeted with a “Google+ is no longer available” message.     What to Do With Your G+ Icon You have two choices now: Have your developers remove from website Link the G+ icon to […]

Google My Business just rolled out a tool to check the status of your verification.     Use the tool to see if your business is verified To use the tool you will need to sign in with your google account – dont have one or unsure, then see checking manually below.   Go to […]

Fake Reviews have plagued Google My Business for the past 10yrs and with the increasing amount of fake review networks being created (to sell fake reviews to businesses) the problem seems to be out of control. Google My Business tackles these both manually and algorithmically, but as any regular reader knows, I typically call out […]

Vulnerable addicts are being left at the mercy of increased Rehab Spam in the UK. This rehab spam comes in the form of lead gen rehab listings where the rehabilitation centre displayed is not an actual treatment centre, rather a referrer to a rehab clinic which may or may not be registered with the Care […]

For whatever reasons there has been an uptick in users asking, “Will it affect my rankings if I change my Google My Business page to a SAB (service area business) listing?”. My answer (under certain circumstances) is no, your rankings should not be affected and to show this I switched my local business page to […]

Yesterday (6th August 2019) some hotel categories available in Google My Business were removed. They had been restricting newly verified listings the ability to add old categories for the past month, yesterday they removed them all for currently verified listings. Google did say that removed categories would be replaced with new similar categories, however this […]

There are a few basic local SEO steps that businesses can take to improving their overall online visibility. These two local SEO steps involve: Google My Business – for local search and maps Optimise your Website – Optimising your website for organic search results   Google My Business – Local SEO Steps If your business […]

Between Google trying to become the new home page and stiff competition in search results, you want to make sure that your local business stands out from the crowd when you land on Page 1. I talked about these structured data opportunities in my recent #Optimisey talk (video below) and how local businesses can take […]

On the 30th May something changed in Google that has stripped all local businesses from organic search results for the term – “Airport Transfers” (there may be other queries out there!)     This is before the announced June core algo update.   Local Intent Removed from Search Results As Stephen Davies mentioned in a […]