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The Whitespark Local Update is the go-to podcast for Local SEOs and Marketers who want to stay ahead of the curve in local search and the local visibility space.
Join industry experts Claire Carlile and Darren Shaw for a lively, insightful roundup of their carefully curated selection of top βmust-readβ and βmust-watchβ links, including news, trends, and can't-miss resources.
Claire Carlile (00:03.854)
Hello, anyway, before we start, this is Hello Troy, and this is the very lovely Elizabeth who is going to be my, my gut. She's my gust of honor. She's my gust of honor. So we are going to try and do a podcast, and we're trying to make it good and everything and
Elizabeth Rule (00:11.857)
Bye Troy.
Gust of honor.
Claire Carlile (00:23.586)
we're going to just do the linky linky format and that's it. So I'm going to be quiet for a second and then I'm to do the intro and then I'm going to introduce you and then we're going to have one of your linky linkies first. Okay. Ready, steady, go.
Claire Carlile (00:41.39)
on.
Claire Carlile (00:48.334)
Hello and welcome to the Whitespark local update with me Claire Carlyle and for the eagle-eyed amongst you who are watching this you will notice that this is not Darren this is a very special guest Elizabeth Ruhl who is here for one day only or who knows maybe for more days we'll find out. Hello Elizabeth thank you for being here. Hi hi hi can you...
Elizabeth Rule (01:14.043)
Hi Claire. I'm honored.
Claire Carlile (01:17.998)
we're so lucky to have you here. For anyone that doesn't know who you are and what you do, would you fill us in, please?
Elizabeth Rule (01:26.609)
Are there people out there that don't know who I am? No, I'm just kidding. It's most people. So yeah, I'm Elizabeth Ruhl. I'm a senior SEO strategist and account manager at Sterling Sky. And I'm also a platinum Google Business Profile product expert, along with you, Claire. And we help users on the Google Business Profile Community Forum troubleshoot and hopefully solve their Google Business Profile issues.
Claire Carlile (01:29.271)
I did.
Claire Carlile (01:56.216)
That's a very, very lovely roundup. Not singing your praises enough, but then it is yourself. So, yes, Elizabeth is here. Elizabeth does all the things with local SEO and with Google Business Profile, working at Sterling Sky, working with a range of clients. You're also a brilliant writer, a brilliant commentator. know a lot of, well, it's true. You know a lot of stuff about the things that are going on. So it is lovely to have you here as our guest.
Elizabeth Rule (02:02.702)
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rule (02:18.68)
wow.
Claire Carlile (02:26.42)
So both of us, think, have got some linky links from things we have seen in the last week or so. So I will ask you to kick off, please.
Elizabeth Rule (02:30.351)
Yes, yes.
Elizabeth Rule (02:38.107)
Happy to. There's so many linky links this week. It was hard to choose, honestly. I'm on LinkedIn a ton. I'm on Reddit a lot too recently. I've kind of abandoned X and some other social platforms. So all my links really come from those two places. And the first thing I want to talk about is something people have probably seen from Google itself, like the Google Search Console.
LinkedIn and probably Twitter account posted this as well as people have been seeing this update in their own Google Search Console accounts Yeah, a tool that we all love to use every day if you're in local SEO You're probably in here all the time and Google is actually putting in some work to update the tool with some in my opinion much-needed features Including the first article I'm going to start with it's I saw it on LinkedIn
And Google has added, finally, weekly and monthly views of the graph in Google Search Console. So if you're someone like me that goes into Search Console and gets maybe a little anxiety seeing all of the spikes that go up and down every day, maybe your business doesn't do lot of business on the weekends, so it looks like your traffic just tanks on the weekends and the chart's not that helpful.
and maybe you're like me too, and you use a Chrome extension to just get the most out of Google search console. Well, I was finally able to get rid of one of my many Chrome extensions because Google finally natively added the ability to add or to see the data in weekly and monthly views. So this is going to be great for all types of businesses that need to see their data in like different ways and see week over week, how they're doing.
month over month how you're doing and especially for seasonal businesses, I think this is going to be a really great way to now view the data from like a whole year's level rather than just seeing all of those spikes everywhere.
Claire Carlile (04:45.134)
I love that. Thank you. It's, it is nice to see and it's quite funny because my next link is actually Sue with her search console as well. I was going to call it Google Webmaster Tools then. To see that, you know, investment, things changing because we're all also waiting for some more data about...
Elizabeth Rule (04:55.18)
good.
Claire Carlile (05:07.55)
know, tell us more about AI overviews, tell us more about, you know, there's all of these different views and there's all of these different Gemini integrations and so we're also waiting for a little bit more data on those. So definitely, is what you've just said, is that rolled out to everybody now? Is that actually there? Okay, cool.
Elizabeth Rule (05:10.288)
Yes.
Elizabeth Rule (05:27.269)
Yes. Yeah, it's one of the few non-experiments that Google Search Console is doing, I think. I think it's out for everyone.
Claire Carlile (05:34.366)
Mm-hmm. Brilliant. So you should go and do that. So the one that I saw was the new AI powered configuration in Search Console. So just looking at the page here that we will link to.
Elizabeth Rule (05:44.582)
Yes.
Claire Carlile (05:51.82)
I like this as an easy way to apply the filters that you're looking for, which obviously you can do yourself if you sit there and you're like, okay, well, I want this three months and this three months and I only want to see these pages or this tranche of content. So the idea that you can say, you know, show me queries.
for pages that include the UTM tagging that has got my Google business profile and show me any words that are non-branded. So stuff that you would have to put together beforehand. What does it say? It metric selection, show me the average click-through rate and average position of my queries in Spain over the last 28 days. But whatever, the idea that you can play around with something. And then it's also, so as well as like,
Elizabeth Rule (06:26.991)
Yeah.
Claire Carlile (06:45.632)
showing you that data then supposedly it can help you analyze that data. let's just, let's supposedly, so yeah that's what we're, we're you know hopefully all learning is this idea that yeah so it says it can do all these things but obviously I need to to check it.
Elizabeth Rule (06:49.851)
supposedly.
Elizabeth Rule (07:01.819)
to try it. Yeah, it's not available for me. I was going to ask you if it's available for you because I, yep. Yeah. I saw Brody. Yeah. sorry. I saw, I saw Brody Clark in Australia has this feature. So it might be a test in just like Australia, maybe some other countries, but there was a user on the local search form that has this feature.
Claire Carlile (07:09.29)
No, I checked in all my accounts and I don't have that yet, so, that definitely looked-
It's alright, yeah.
Elizabeth Rule (07:31.865)
And they said that when they were analyzing and asking it to give data for specific filters and things, the data it was giving was actually not matching up with when they looked and did the filters themselves. So they were claiming the tool wasn't working great, like the AI was giving out incorrect information. So I'm very curious to know for myself if that's true, because I don't doubt it at all. I don't doubt that the tool is not great.
Claire Carlile (07:45.432)
Yeah, excellent.
Claire Carlile (07:57.656)
Okay. Yeah, there's a pattern here, isn't there? Anyway, but we'll get on to that. What is next for you?
Elizabeth Rule (08:03.441)
Thank you.
Elizabeth Rule (08:08.027)
Yeah. Well, I do have one more article on an experiment in local or in Search Console. I know we're talking a lot about Search Console, but this kind of goes to what you were saying earlier about needing more data in Search Console. This is kind of Google's first step into doing that. This is an article I on LinkedIn. Let's see who posted this. And it's talking about pulling in
data from a business's social channels. this is directly from Google Search Console, Search Central, LinkedIn. They're going to be pulling in data from a business's social profiles, including YouTube and I guess whatever would show up on Google search for search of the business. It's going to be in Search Console now. So it's not quite the info we want with AI overviews or whatever's showing up in AI mode.
Claire Carlile (08:51.658)
Mm-hmm. Mm.
Elizabeth Rule (09:02.021)
But it is a step in the direction of giving more visibility to a brand's like the width of the brand's full, like how they're showing on the search results. I need to say that better. We need to edit this part.
Claire Carlile (09:13.576)
Mm-hmm. We can do that again if you want to. I'm just saying, which link is that? Which link is that in the...
Elizabeth Rule (09:22.231)
It's the second link. So I had three Google Search Console links and then you said one, which is great. And then third was this, the social links, which I did.
Claire Carlile (09:30.423)
Yeah.
Claire Carlile (09:34.03)
Okay, we'll stop. We'll we'll all right, try can we start with this? We'll go for I'll say to Elizabeth, what's your next linky link and then you can start again. Yeah. Okay.
Elizabeth Rule (09:42.351)
Okay. Okay.
Claire Carlile (09:47.512)
Fabulous! What is... What's your next Linky Link?
Elizabeth Rule (09:51.697)
My next Linky Link is actually about Google Search Console again. So we're not going to stop talking about Google Search Console until Google stops doing new features and new tools in it. This is also an experiment, like the AI tool we were just talking about. It's an experiment. This is also apparently an experiment, so you might not see it in your profiles. But I'm hoping it goes live, because this is a great new addition for Google to give more
transparency for how businesses show up on Google search. With this update, they're aiming to bring in data from a business's social media channels, including things like Facebook, YouTube. That's what's in the screenshot they sent on LinkedIn. There's a big showing their YouTube content, how it's performing on, I'm assuming, Google search. So this is a really great.
Claire Carlile (10:41.133)
Mm.
Elizabeth Rule (10:44.055)
update from Google, think, in terms of understanding how they view brands and how they view business presence on the search results page. Because it's not just your website. It's not just your Google business profile. It's so many other profiles on so many other different platforms. And it's really important that businesses have a space to see that. And I think Google is kind of dabbling with that with this update.
Claire Carlile (10:49.164)
Mm-hmm.
Claire Carlile (11:12.076)
Yeah, like 100 % is, if we look at like, the whole thing about, well, you know, it's not just your website, it's, you know, before we were so entrenched in like LLMs and AI, it was all about your entity, it's about, you know, being consistent across all the things that show up.
Elizabeth Rule (11:14.991)
Yeah.
Claire Carlile (11:35.058)
and then I guess this is another step towards that, isn't it? It's like, you know, your brand is very important. What happens on your social media is very important. It's like seeing it in a much more, holistic way. yeah, not many, so not many people are seeing that. shouldn't imagine. So look out for it. and go and have a look because if you are seeing it, we'd love to hear about it and know what it looks like and what data it gives.
Elizabeth Rule (11:39.256)
Exactly.
Elizabeth Rule (11:47.547)
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rule (11:58.097)
Absolutely would. Absolutely will.
Claire Carlile (12:03.198)
Okie dokie, let me tell you about...
Elizabeth Rule (12:10.251)
What link you link do you got, Claire?
Claire Carlile (12:10.286)
she thinks carefully. A linky linky for a LinkedIn. It's just a little thing that was picked up again. I'm sorry, is Brittany Muller again. But I really, don't be all right. look, you know, she's great. She's got some things to say. And this was really useful. And Darren and I last week, we're both talking about
Elizabeth Rule (12:22.555)
Don't be sorry.
Claire Carlile (12:37.64)
using Gemini, using LLMs and this whole thing. And you've just touched on it, which is, don't take everything at face value. You know, don't think that like, you don't need to check what is coming out. And I think the, one of the fascinating things that Brittany has been saying all along was just like, wow, I'm really surprised that LLMs were the thing that came out as the thing that everyone is talking about in terms of AI, because there are so many different
Elizabeth Rule (12:52.59)
yeah.
Claire Carlile (13:07.064)
types of AI that can do so many different things. And so I think it's really important. What she's saying in this post is, you know, go and read it basically, but what she's saying is don't start asking LLMs why they are doing something, you know, why did you say this or why did you do that? And think that you're getting some radical insights into how things are worked out. So she is saying in this,
Elizabeth Rule (13:09.894)
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rule (13:28.465)
you
Claire Carlile (13:36.686)
The model is just confidently hallucinating its own reasoning. You know, they are not decision trees. They are not SQL databases that you can query. Okay. They are not truth engines. They're just going to say stuff. They're just going to come up with some truth, but it's not the truth. So I thought that was interesting because so many people are saying things like, well, you know, I asked chat GPT why it only uses Yext.
for, or why it only uses Yelp, or it's just like... Honestly, yeah, yes you'll get a response, but it's not... it's not a tru- it's not THE truth.
Elizabeth Rule (14:10.235)
Yeah, there's no reasoning.
Elizabeth Rule (14:17.937)
It's nothing novel. It's nothing important.
Claire Carlile (14:21.166)
Well, it's probably very novel. It's probably a completely new truth that LLM has just invented. Anyway, I'm a fan woman of Britney, but I just think it is worth reading just to remind yourself how these models or how this model works. So yeah, have a read!
Elizabeth Rule (14:27.663)
A new truth, yeah.
Elizabeth Rule (14:34.865)
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rule (14:43.481)
I think that's so important. We need to keep hammering it in that these AI tools are stupid. They're great to help with your work, maybe make work a little easier, help solve problems if you're running into issues. it's not like they're not going to be your next star employee. They're not able to make decisions or have good reasoning behind things.
Garbage in, garbage out. And sometimes, good stuff in, garbage out. It's really not a recipe for success trying to use that in any way like that.
Claire Carlile (15:14.39)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm. Mm. Mm.
It's just, it's not finished, is it? We really need to work on our processes here. Okay. What do you have for us, Elizabeth?
Elizabeth Rule (15:25.743)
No. No.
Elizabeth Rule (15:31.233)
Well, I do have another great linky link here from another amazing product expert, Claudia Tomina. she's exactly as you should. She's coming out with some amazing insights into changes with Google Business Profile. I think she has some sort of like six cents where she can see things.
Claire Carlile (15:41.646)
Claudia! Such a stranger to this podcast. We talk about her every week.
Elizabeth Rule (15:58.565)
that are happening on Google Business Profile before the rest of us. And she's able to surmise them in these really great LinkedIn articles she's been posting, and they're obviously on our website too. But this one in particular hit home for me because, like you, Claire, I'm sure you've seen a ton of review, GBP review-related issues on the GBP community forum. People are losing reviews left and right. People are getting
fake reviews posted in mass and then getting extorted for money by people on WhatsApp. People are dealing with review bombs where people are negatively reviewing their business in mass. And some people are even getting hit with these review blocks or review restrictions where Google stops users from being able to post reviews for your business, which
If you're in like a competitive space or especially in the restaurant space, which is what Claudia works in and is talking about here in this article a bit, it can be devastating to go any length of time without being able to get reviews, especially when your competitors are continuing to get reviews. So these review blocks are coming in more frequently from what we can tell with Google, but we also may not be able to tell because previous to this, Google never told anyone.
when they had a review block. Like even just a year ago, you would get a review block and the only way you would know is because your profile stopped getting new reviews. And you're left wondering why you never got an email about it. There's no alert notification. And if you had the know all, you could go to the community forum or contact Google and ask and they would be like, yeah, you have a review block. Now Google is I guess a little better and they're sending
businesses that are hit with this review block in email notification telling them about this, which is good. They send an option for appeal as well. But from the article, Claudia says that appeal does nothing. And the only thing you can do is wait the 30 days for the restriction to be lifted, which is another update from Google. Because in the past, I've seen businesses with review blocks for months to up to a year. And there is no reasoning for Google if it was ever going to get removed.
Claire Carlile (17:58.126)
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth Rule (18:18.523)
So it's definitely a step in the right direction in that regard, but it seems to be happening more frequently. And what Claudia notes in this article is why it could be happening to businesses and what you need to look out for to ensure this doesn't happen to you.
Claire Carlile (18:34.606)
Is there something that shows in the Google business profile for that business with the review block? there something that appears on there?
Elizabeth Rule (18:46.361)
Yeah, there's supposed to be a tag. think Google calls it like a user transparency tag or something. And it shows this business has been suspected of like fake review activity or something. I can't remember what the exact messaging is. There is a screenshot out there of what it looks like, but, and it's supposed to show users that like this business has been, they're looking into like possible fake reviews on the profile.
I don't know in the dashboard if they show something, but I actually haven't seen one of these for any of my clients or in the wild myself. But the email itself, Claudia has a screenshot and it shows, yeah, and it shows like you give the option to, oh, and she does have a screenshot of what it shows on the dashboard. So there's a little message that says posting reviews has turned off for this place. So there's a lot more messaging out there, luckily, compared to the past where.
Claire Carlile (19:26.166)
Yeah, we'll have a look.
Claire Carlile (19:39.042)
Whoa, okay. Yeah.
Elizabeth Rule (19:44.517)
There was zero messaging.
Claire Carlile (19:46.614)
I love, I, you know, we can only hope that there will continue to be more messaging and that the messaging will be consistent, like not just for some profiles and not for others, but you know, we live in hope and that's, it's, it's nice. And, and
Elizabeth Rule (19:59.269)
We can hope. That's all we can do.
Claire Carlile (20:02.066)
all we can do we can just do a little little dance and hope for the best. My final thing and again I will promise not to mention Claudia Tamina at all next week and if this podcast hasn't taught you anything or it will be make sure you follow Claudia Tamina on LinkedIn because she sees the things she sees the things and she shares them. She
Elizabeth Rule (20:21.231)
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rule (20:24.539)
She has her eyes on Google at all times.
Claire Carlile (20:28.118)
She really does. so this final one again, LinkedIn, Claudia, have a little look at this. Google just revamped the verification issues options inside GBP support forms. something that comes up, yeah, something that comes up again and again, not necessarily in the community itself, but by people that are navigating the workflows to try and get help is...
Elizabeth Rule (20:43.323)
Finally.
Claire Carlile (20:55.09)
sometimes there aren't enough options or there might be issues that happen over and over again in the Google business profile community, especially with verification and with issues with businesses, you know, jumping through those verification hoops. so this one is a change. have you read this Elizabeth? Is it the one that says I'm experiencing a technical issue, which is the new bit?
Elizabeth Rule (21:23.484)
Elizabeth Rule (21:26.959)
I'm being asked to verify it.
Claire Carlile (21:30.344)
we'll leave this bit out. Let's leave that. I'll just... okay. Okay. Yeah. So, no, don't worry about it.
Elizabeth Rule (21:32.283)
Yeah, we'll have to leave this to that. don't know what's new Claire. It seems the same to me because I haven't received my verification pin. guess that could be email or phone. Yeah, these all seem the same. it's been seven. Okay, that's what's new. It's been more than seven days and my profile still hasn't is it says you're being verified, which is neither what it says. It says like pending.
Claire Carlile (21:42.634)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Claire Carlile (21:56.852)
okay. Alright, I'll just, I won't talk about it. Troy, we'll backtrack, we'll leave that bit out. I'll just keep, I'll just say that it's...
Elizabeth Rule (22:02.861)
We could talk about it because it's been more than seven days. And the wording on all of them is a little different. But I actually don't think this is like that big a deal, now that I'm looking at it.
Claire Carlile (22:11.278)
Okay, all right. Okay. All right. It's too, it's too late anyway. It's my thing. Okay, we're gonna backtrack. I'll talk. I can't remember where I got to. said, Claudia. We're gonna have three seconds of silence and then I'm just gonna and then we've done our three links, haven't we? Both of us and then you're gonna mention something. Okay, right. Three seconds. Right. We'll have our quiet time. One, two, three.
Elizabeth Rule (22:24.56)
least
Elizabeth Rule (22:31.333)
Yeah, and then we could do survival. Yeah.
Elizabeth Rule (22:42.349)
Are you got any more linky links cleared?
Claire Carlile (22:43.854)
Hang on a minute. Okay. So definitely keep an eye on the Claudia things and it is really nice when there are changes to these workflows that better reflect the problems that people are having. So take a look and see what is new there. So that is pretty much it. Now you have got a bonus.
Elizabeth Rule (23:04.774)
Yeah.
Claire Carlile (23:12.61)
thing to talk about because you're gonna tell us about something that's coming up. Tell us Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Rule (23:14.513)
Bonus. Absolutely. This is a major bonus thing for this webinar here. So if you guys love listening to Darren, if you guys also love anything local SEO and you're looking to learn more about what you need to be doing in 2026 to make sure that your business is prepared for whatever Google throws at it. Cause you know, 2026 is going to be.
crazy with changes from Google. Like we can only imagine what's going to happen. But on December 17th, so White Sparks owned Darren Shaw is going to be on the Local You podcast with Joy Hawkins, as well as Luke Durand from Ranking Academy. And they're going to be talking about the three major threats you need to be prepared for in 2026 when it comes to local SEO. So I don't know how they got it down to three major threats.
because I think 10 off the top of my head, but they're gonna get you ready for whatever Google will throw at us in 2026.
Claire Carlile (24:20.302)
Fabulous, fabulous. So make sure you sign up for that. We will pop the link in there and it all that remains is for me to say a big, big thank you to our special guest, Elizabeth Ruhl.
Elizabeth Rule (24:30.993)
Thank you Claire for having me anytime. Darren's not available, you let me know.
Claire Carlile (24:35.438)
Aww. Aww. Always a pleasure. And thank you to our listeners and our watchers and we will see you again soon. Goodbye.
Elizabeth Rule (24:44.783)
Bye!
Yeah
Claire Carlile (24:48.694)
Right, I'm gonna put stop recording.