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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 (00:00.168)
Bonjour and hello and welcome to the Whitespark local update with me Claire Carlile.
Darren (00:07.694)
Et moi, Darren Shaw.
Claire (00:11.426)
Hello Darren. Hello. that's good. And you?
Darren (00:12.418)
Bonjour! Comment Γ§a va?
Darren (00:17.162)
Γa va bien. Merci.
Claire (00:20.214)
So here are the links.
Darren (00:22.478)
Yes, yes. In English. We will deliver them in English since you've exhausted my French with that one interaction. Okay, I got a link. How about let's talk about Chris Long on the Nective blog. So Chris Long was at Go Fish Digital, or the Go Fish Digital? I don't know, but he was a superstar over there. And then he's like, I'm so cool, I'm going to start my own company. So he started his own company, Nective. And he...
posted just recently on his blog, plus he shared it on LinkedIn, which of course is where I saw it, that how to mine Google Search Console for conversation data with a fancy regex. And so I thought it was cool because I don't like AI visibility tracking tools. I think they are pure garbage. They just made up crap. Every time you run the query, you get different results. So like, how are you?
Claire (01:11.63)
A
Darren (01:18.03)
make any, how do you understand? So, oh, what do you want to understand? How are people getting to our site via prompts, AI prompts, that's in Gemini, GCPT, whatever. Well, Search Console is a cool place to mine that data because if you run a query, so show me all the queries that got people to my site that are longer than nine words, you're to get these long ass.
things that wouldn't have been put into a search bar that you know that they came from chat GPT or Gemini or AI mode because it's like a whole freaking thing. I actually found nine wasn't quite long enough because some of them look like they could have been search queries. So I went to 25 and yeah it's really interesting to see this and you can actually see what are people how are people finding your website through AI prompts. And so I did find it.
quite interesting and you get really long, long stuff. It's really cool too. It's like some of these prompts, like it says, please do not mention any quantity requirements or location details. Do not include any country details. Do not mention any brands. All this like do not, do not, do not stuff. You get the really long queries. And so it's very cool to see what kind of stuff people are typing into chats and then they end up on your website. So it's a cool way to track.
AI visibility and also very interesting to see what people are saying. And that's all I got to say about that.
Claire (02:46.018)
The thing is that won't be giving you queries from chat GBT because it is Google Search Console. So it will be giving you AI overview because obviously it's not going to have data from chat GBT. It's just going to have data from the Google infrastructure.
Darren (02:59.232)
Well, you might be right on that. Yeah. I that makes sense. Like, how would they get the chat GPT prompts? Yeah, I think you got to be right.
Claire (03:08.278)
Yeah, I think it's just AI overview because I don't think it's Gemini. But it's interesting anyway, just to see the length. mean, my search query length, even in Google, has changed exponentially. just like, tell me about a thing when I saw a thing and then there was a squirrel in a tree and then my friend said, what? It's like, the query is no more like Chinese takeaway near me. It's not that anymore, is it? It's a lot.
Darren (03:36.546)
Chinese takeaway near me because I saw a squirrel in a tree and then my friend said, hey, do want some Chinese? And then we went and got some Chinese.
Claire (03:43.214)
Yeah, that, exactly that. And it will be able to tell you because it's going to integrate with your workspace and your Google Photos and your whole of your infrastructure. anyway, I do note that one of your links, Darren, was one that I wanted to talk about. But fortunately, I've covered myself by having 64 links. least, at least. So my first one.
Darren (04:06.03)
Wow, were, yeah. So many things.
Claire (04:11.982)
is from Ben Fisher. It is on the Steady Demand website and it is have AI get prices, Google business profiles, AI talking to AI. it's very funny actually. So there is at the top of the page, Ben recorded or has a recording of a phone call between two AI agents. So one is Google calling a business on one of the have AI check prices quests.
So it's live in the US for certain service area things. And then it calls a business, but the business is also using an AI chatbot to answer the phone. So, hello, how are you? how are you? Are you busy on Friday night? no, I'm not. So now they're getting married. Based on that little thing, there's three points.
Darren (04:58.974)
in love.
Claire (05:06.538)
that make me think, okay, well, these are three things that local businesses need to consider. Just think about it based on this. In the past, when we think about ranking and visibility, it is pretty much based on can Google read your website, see your website, do people link to you, da-da-da-da-da. For local businesses, obviously, there were other metrics that were coming in via Google Business Profile like how many driving directions, how many clicks will
But what about if we think about reachability becoming a ranking factor or playing into the algorithm there? Yes. So what happens when a business fails to answer the phone? Does it get dropped into a bucket, which is, we've called them five times, it's not been answered at all. So I don't want them to rank when people are actually using these functionality. Another thing is it's a way for Google to verify details in the Google business profile. There's two obvious things here. One is phone number.
So if the phone number doesn't get through to something or someone that answers the phone, then that's a problem. And the second thing is great way of like, is the, you know, when you pick up the phone, it hello squirrel near me, best ranking factor plumbers you've ever seen. You have to say, well, we love that one. Don't we? It's like tarot card readers. You can buy tie dye t-shirts. then another thing that
Darren (06:22.702)
You have to say that on the phone now.
Claire (06:34.178)
Ben brings up is being able to quote without customer details because so many service industries, part of their quoting workflow is like, tell me your inside leg measurement. When was the last time you did this? When is your car insurance due? So it's like forget all that because the AI didn't know the person. They knew sort of what service they were after and they knew their approximate location based on like postcode or something.
But if your entire process revolves around collecting data and using it, then it's not going to be for you. You're not going to be able to help the AI. I thought that was brilliant because being in the UK and never having experienced or heard of it, was just something that was a, Google might call your business, but to be able to actually hear the call was really interesting.
Darren (07:23.886)
I love that. And you know that whole thing about reachability being a ranking factor, 1000 % that's what they're doing in the local services ads. So responsiveness, answering the phone the quicker you answer it is a very critical factor in local services ads. So makes sense that they would be using something similar on the organic side as well. And so I think, yeah, having your pricing and making sure that your AI answer bot is fully trained on how to answer questions about pricing, very critical.
It's a whole new world. You gotta make sure your AI bot is very well trained. My next link is from Hiroko Imae. And so she publishes on LinkedIn quite a bit, like things that she noticed. And she noticed that Google has updated their policies around reviews. And so if you also maybe have noticed that lots of more people are complaining that they're missing reviews. They had reviews, reviews are going missing from their profile. Google is tweaking.
tweaking some knobs, making things better. And so she highlights a few changes to the guidelines saying a very specific thing. So things you've got to watch out for are review spikes. So this is a direct quote from the guidelines. Content exhibiting unusual volumes of patterns or patterns of review contributions that are indicative of efforts to manipulate a place's rating. that's like volumes, patterns. Like we recognize some stuff. So Google's algorithm is doing some of that.
Pressure is another thing. So when soliciting reviews, merchants should not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on premises. While on premises. Good to know, right? So Google is looking at that. They're looking at the location of the reviewer when that reviewer leaves a review. Nor should they request that specific content be included. That's in the guidelines now. So you should not request, hey, can you mention
Denver best plumbers when you leave a review. So that's interesting too that they've specifically said that in the guidelines. Incentives, of course, we always know that you can't offer incentives for reviews. And they do specifically mention gating. They say selectively soliciting positive reviews from customers. like, oh, you didn't have a good experience, we're going to ask you for a review. We'll only ask positive. So I think it was interesting to see that update. And it gives a little bit of insight into what Google is trying to do with reviews. And good job, Google, because.
Darren (09:49.058)
Your reviews are trash. Everyone is spamming fake reviews non-stop. thanks for trying to do something. Good luck with it. Thanks, Heroku.
Claire (09:56.974)
So my second linky link is guess who it is? It's Andy Crestadena. Andy, we love You know why? Because he's the best. So Andy has written a lot on personas and using AI to help you create personas. But this is apropos of the link we looked at last week.
Darren (10:05.699)
B
Claire (10:24.18)
or the links I looked at where I said, you know, if you haven't done the foundational stuff first, can we, can we not worry about cosine similarity? So I thought it would be a good one to look at this because if you haven't got that fundamental knowledge of your customers, you know, who they, who they might be, what they're looking for, what their emotional triggers are, what problems they're looking all the blah, blah, blah, blah. Then this is a really nice process as always, Andy.
is really good at laying it all out. This is exactly how to do it. The point is, this is a synthetic persona. At this point, we're not taking in any qualitative or quantitative data about our actual market conversations that we might have had, that we might have with people a little bit further down the line. Follow what Andy suggests. I love building stuff.
following and these like recipes and stuff. So he gives a lot of ways that you can use this. One of the ones that he says is using them to audit your website pages for gaps. if you've like preloaded this synthetic persona and you're like, okay, here's the webpage. Is this doing everything you need it to do? Is it addressing all the buyer's objections? Is it pressing or is it triggering all the emotional responses that you want in here?
What are the decision criteria and are we talking about them on the page? And it's going to highlight what's missing. So I love that, but like any of this stuff, it's like a key objection is it's an AI persona. This is not a real person, but we know that now. It's a bit like saying, I went to chat GPT and asked how Google business profile makes its decisions based on, it's just giving you the information that you think you want. You have to fact check everything.
And it is the same with your synthetic AI. So rather than saying, this is no good, it's like, well, have you done the work to actually do one based on a thousand qualitative interviews with your potential customers? No. So why don't you do this as a good first step? as always, thank you, Andy, you are amazing. And this is the type of content that a small business can, if you've got the time, you could definitely sit down and do this.
Darren (12:43.422)
I'm going to try this. It sounds very interesting. want to create like five personas. We got Karen. We got Bob, who's into working out and energy drinks. And got Diane, who is the local librarian. And then I want the AI to generate pictures of all these people. And then I want it to make a video of them reviewing my website. That sounds fun.
Claire (13:13.742)
because they're all looking for local SEO software. Bob and Karen can't get enough of that local SEO sass, can they?
Darren (13:21.998)
really curious what Jimbro Bob has to say about our products and services at Weisberg. All right, cool. I got another link somewhere in here. You're going to be really surprised who this next one is from. You may have heard of her before. Claudia Tamina? you heard of her? Claudia is very interesting. She writes a lot in the local search space. And so if you haven't heard of her, then I guess you haven't really listened to our podcast.
Claire (13:39.438)
No! Who's that?
Darren (13:49.856)
But she writes a great article called Stop Chasing the Local 3-Pack, Start Building an Entity to the Ranks Beyond It. And so she highlights a growing concern in the world of local search. And that is that the local pack ain't what it used to be. It is being kind of displaced by a number of factors, one of them being local services ads.
pushing out the other ads. It's just like, before you get to the local pack, you've to look at about 17 ads. And then there's the local pack. So that is having a huge impact. The other thing is AI overviews and those kinds of things and AI results, so AI local packs. And so she's saying that it's time to start thinking about building an entity. And by that, I think she means building a brand.
And I've been thinking about this quite a bit myself because I'm thinking about the future of our services and our software at White Spark. How do we help clients in the future? And so if we are only focused on optimizing their Google business profile and optimizing their website, which will still 1,000 % be critical in the future of AI-driven results, but if you only do that, you are missing some levers.
Like there's more you have to do. if Google is looking at things and saying, well, OK, great, you've got a Google Business profile, you've got a website. Does anybody in the world care? And in the past, I would say that's link building. I'd be like, OK, yeah, now you've got to do link building. You've got to kind of build a presence on the internet. Now I think that that has expanded to more concept of brand building. And so what do we do for our clients in that space? How do we provide that service? I've got a list.
I think there are things that we have to do to diversify, and that is offering ad management. I think we're going to have to do it. You've got manage local service ads. Google Business Profile troubleshooting, suspension support. think building up skills in that area and being able to help people with that is really critical. We have the wonderful Claire Carlisle at White's Bar to help our clients with that. I think it's important to get into short form video.
Darren (16:05.656)
Helping your clients script things, plan things, make short form videos, do it as quickly and easily as possible. Like lots of businesses have staff that like Gen Z staff that are doing this stuff anyways. And so just trying to tap into that and actually producing content for social, social media management, building a presence on the social profiles is very important. Reddit monitoring and engagement. So people are talking about plumbing services like.
jumping in there and building a profile. It's kind of like social media management, building a little profile on Reddit and then responding to questions that people might have in your local community. I think that's an area to look into. Diversifying reviews beyond Google, participating in other forums related to your industry, writing for industry publications if you can. Like this is a hard work. It's like, how do you set yourself apart from the competition? So SEOs have to help our clients with stuff.
citation work, so thinking more about LLM citations beyond business directories, finding out what sites are being cited by the LLMs and making sure your clients have presence in there, press releases, local community engagement. So we're just really thinking about expanding beyond the website and Google Business Profile into brand building. So anyways, we're working on that, trying to build that at White Spark. And Claudia's piece really addresses that and talks about how it's
We gotta do this.
Claire (17:29.858)
I think one day we should write either a special poem for Claudia or a song. Yeah. And I would like to present that.
Darren (17:34.839)
A haiku.
Darren (17:39.822)
Next episode for sure. We're gonna talk about her again next time.
Claire (17:44.718)
Of course we will. So Ben is actually has another guest appearance now in a linky I know a double and then you know we're going to have to do a tally. I think this this could be one of Ben's first. And they can win something.
Darren (17:54.038)
A double benefit
Darren (18:01.132)
Definitely keep it up.
Darren (18:08.931)
episode. Whoever had the most mentions wins a prize. love this idea.
Claire (18:13.646)
This is a good one. So Sterling Sky is actually their podcast. but it's on YouTube and other places. It lives in a secret folder. And it is a whopping two hours long, I believe. So I haven't really, I haven't, I'm going to have it on in the background. It's too much, but it's not too much because obviously everything needs to be listened to in double time. But between the two of them, they have got such
Darren (18:22.68)
That was curious.
Claire (18:44.166)
an enormous amount of knowledge about Google business profile violations that Google actually punishes. there are a million and one ruley rules, but it's a bit like when you say, you're not allowed to do that. Well, you might not really be allowed to do it, but nothing's ever going to happen to you. So definitely give this one. is something that you have to listen to carefully. I haven't finished pulling out all of the gems, but if you are interested in these types of things like
I need to know more about what is actually going to be punished by Google, then go and listen to it because you probably won't find that level, that depth of information anywhere else.
Darren (19:25.352)
Those two diamonds know exactly what is up with what Google actually punishes. And I think it's really critical. I'm curious to hear what they say about keywords in the business name. It's pretty rare to see Google punish that one. And so what I would do, what I will do, because I'm curious now, is I'm to copy the transcript from YouTube, throw it into Gemini, and say, tell me what are the things Google actually punishes and what are the things that Google doesn't punish and provide them in a table
for me and then I will have my answers.
Claire (19:57.452)
You should use Notebook for that.
Darren (19:59.426)
Yeah, notebook LL. I never used that. I don't know how to use that. I never play.
Claire (20:02.314)
It's the same. You just chuck your URL in or your copy in and it is, in my experience, is much better way of processing that information for quicker learning and to take bits out.
Darren (20:13.774)
I'll check it out. Yeah. All right. I think we did it. We did a whole podcast. talked about six links. Again, episode 21 in the books. And so thank you to everyone for listening and watching on the YouTube. And we appreciate any reviews you could leave of our podcast. That helps us reach more people, which is what we want to do. We want to teach everybody about what's happening in local search. So please leave us a review.
Claire (20:39.438)
We want them. Yeah. On Apple especially.
Darren (20:42.382)
on Apple especially. Yeah. Well, and we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. may not be next week. We'll see. I might be out of town on our recording day, but you might see us next week. We don't know. You'll never know.