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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 “must-read” and “must-watch” links, including news, trends, and can't-miss resources.
Darren Shaw (00:00.098)
Hola and welcome to another episode of the Whitespark Local Update with me Darren Shaw coming to you from Valencia, Spain.
Claire Carlile (00:09.238)
Quetel Darren and with me Claire Carlile coming to you live from a room where I always record. Hooray!
Darren Shaw (00:19.502)
Well, we're both in Europe, so that's exciting. I'm gonna do that very often.
Claire Carlile (00:23.406)
It is very exciting and thank you so much for travelling all the way and then jumping straight on for a recording of the podcast because that is a level of commitment that is to be applauded, I believe.
Darren Shaw (00:36.546)
grind. I basically slept for four hours and here I am.
Claire Carlile (00:42.478)
Here you are with the linky links.
Darren Shaw (00:45.016)
Let's talk about them. What do you got to share? I think you have some huge breaking news, don't you? Don't you? You got a big one. Let's hear it.
Claire Carlile (00:51.086)
Well, yeah, that was pretty interesting. So my first linky link is a piece from Glen Gabe over on his website. We will also link in the shoe notes in the show notes to Google's official announcement about Ask Matt.
Darren Shaw (01:10.636)
It's out, it's happening legit. It was like in testing for a long time, but now it's for real, right? That's what's going on here.
Claire Carlile (01:16.75)
for real if you are in somewhere that has got it for real. So just in the USA, I believe, and in India, I think. But basically, it's sort of like what we've been waiting for in many ways, which is just like, hey, can you make Google Maps even more useful? So the idea that it's Gemini and Google Maps have basically
got together, decided that they really like each other and then they live in the same app together. So Ask Maps is like having AI mode in Google Maps. You can have conversations with maps to plan trips, research local businesses and much more. So it's what we've been talking about probably for ages in this whole idea that, hello, it's agentic, you can ask questions, it will do things for you. So personally, I am excited.
about getting to use this. So let's have a think about what the implications are again for local businesses. So it's another interface, isn't it? It's another interface that we need to monitor. And the way that we monitor it is by probably going to the interface itself and making some searches in a conversational way to see how our brand shows up, if it does or if it doesn't. So we need to think about
Monitoring visibility, but not just visibility, we need to monitor sentiment via what we're seeing in our maps. And again, the same things as always, we need to ensure that our Google business profile is up to date and accurate, that our listings and our citations are up to date and accurate. So we need to think about this agentic part, which is if I'm saying, now book me the table for six people between six and eight.
not by the toilets and I want to have a view of the Eiffel Tower or whatever it is. It's exciting and I want to try it out.
Darren Shaw (03:19.086)
Pretty amazing. It's basically like AI mode in the Maps app. So you just press that button and then you ask your questions. I think your comment is really accurate. It's like go, if you are in the United States or anywhere, other country where they have this, go and ask it about your business. Ask it, what does it know about your business? I think that's really critical. And then if it's like, it doesn't know that you do this special thing, you'd be like, I gotta tell it and I'm gonna do it by putting that on my website.
Claire Carlile (03:25.614)
This is correct.
Darren Shaw (03:45.27)
Another thing I'm very interested in is how do the results vary? If I just go to ask maps in the maps app and I say Denver plumbers.
Claire Carlile (03:52.768)
your favourite search term ever.
Darren Shaw (03:55.182)
results look in the Ask Maps versus the actual results just in Maps. Very interesting. I would like to talk about Crystal. She is wonderful. Everyone loves Crystal. She wrote a great post for the UBER.blog where she works and it's called Google reviews for businesses. What the new guidelines mean for your local reputation. So.
Claire Carlile (04:02.83)
Mmm.
Darren Shaw (04:20.78)
Basically what has happened is everyone's freaking out because Google's got new guidelines and reviews are going missing and they seem to be tightening the review filter. So a lot of people are noticing that reviews are going missing. And so this is a great article where she explains a little bit about what's happening, what it means for your business and best practices for like how to deal with this. And so some of the main things that she suggests are, you know, how to avoid the
filters. One thing she talks about is responding to reviews and how that's important. need to respond carefully. There's actually a new thing I hadn't seen before. Review responses. This is in the guidelines. Review responses may now go through moderation before being published to ensure they comply with content policies. I bet you they were always doing that, but I never really was aware of it. But it's like,
If you're saying bad words in your review replies, you might get them filtered. So I didn't really know they were doing that, but of course it makes sense. And then she also has some great suggestions on how to report negative slash fake reviews, or just basically any reviews that violate the guidelines. So it's a good post to address a lot of people's concerns about what's happening with reviews being filtered these days.
Claire Carlile (05:39.768)
Very good. Yes, the missing review. Thank you, Crystal. So my next linky link I actually found in the Women in Tech SEO newsletter. Sign up for it if you have not already. I liked it. was it is Why Trip Advisor Still Matters for Local SEO in 2026. And it is by, sorry if I say your surname incorrectly, Laura.
I mean, it didn't, it's not like, my gosh, goodness gracious me. My mind is blown, but it's really great. TripAdvisor, okay, you do, don't just think, it's all done, that's fine. She runs through, you know, keeping things up to date, making sure it's not a one and done, you know, because I think with TripAdvisor, a lot of organizations, all they do is reply to reviews. If they do that, that's all they do.
TripAdvisor is an important citation. is an important site, especially in certain countries and for people of a certain demographic. It probably is still a place where people go in, make searches and also make choices. So I think that Laura has got some really top tips about things to make sure that you do regularly and frequently, including checking for duplicate listings. That's another thing that comes up quite a lot is, you know,
somehow you've got three trip advice profiles for the same attraction, then you need to go ahead and you need to sort that out. So have a look at that and thank you for writing that.
Darren Shaw (07:19.776)
It's kind of like your Bing listing, right? People made their Bing listing.
Claire Carlile (07:22.712)
bringing Bing back big time.
Darren Shaw (07:24.524)
You know, I think it only applies if you're in hospitality or tourism. I don't believe it really covers any other categories. But if you're in those categories, then absolutely is a critical citation. The next article I want to talk about is from Claudia told me who else Claudia.
Claire Carlile (07:34.316)
Yes, yes.
Claire Carlile (07:45.358)
you
Darren Shaw (07:47.406)
Claudia's article is also about reviews and she publishes this on LinkedIn pulse. That's some crazy SEO hack these days. If you publish on LinkedIn pulse, you're guaranteed to write number one, heard. Her article is Star Rating for Humans, AI Reads the Text. And so the whole article is about just how important the review content is. And...
you know, makes it reminded me of near media, because near media has a bunch of research that shows that people don't really read the reviews. They just, they just make their assessments really quickly based off of, well, this guy has got a 4.8 and 7,000 reviews. So obviously they're the best sold. It's like they, they, nobody's got time. They don't want to look around, but you know who has got all the time in the world, it's AIs. And they're going to use that to analyze and understand your business. And so she talks about semantic interpretation.
and how the robots are mining your review text for just understanding your business. So like a review that just says great service. That's, like a throwaway review. has no value in terms of understanding your business. And so she talks about the new AI summaries. There's actually two different summaries. There's like the general summary that we've had for a very long time that Google would summarize your business, but they're also now rolling out.
review summaries and a know before you go summary. So these are AI generated based on like what Google knows about your business. And so a lot of that's coming from the reviews. And so the real takeaway is make sure that you are when you ask for reviews, encourage the reviewers to talk a little bit more like, yeah, hey, it would be great if you left us read if you mentioned, you know, the service and, and what you had done and how it all went and what you thought of us and, you know, the more words the better.
If you just ask for that, you will get better reviews and then those can actually help you with AI. Just to talk about something I wasn't thinking of either, which was owner responses being factored in to kind of what the AIs know about your business. And it's like, you know, we always talked about owner responses not being important for local search rankings. And the local search ranking factors is like owner responses, whatever. You're not doing it for rankings. You're doing it because you want to
Darren Shaw (10:04.878)
present well to other prospects that are looking at your business. But now in an AI search world, what you actually say in your own responses may be kind of important. Just don't go stupid with it.
Claire Carlile (10:15.382)
This sort of makes me think about how as SEOs and marketers for ages, we've been saying, okay, well, who am I writing it for? Well, we were writing things and we were doing things for the search engines, for the Google. We were also writing and doing things for our potential customers. So it shouldn't blow our minds that much that also there is now something else that
consumes our content and sentiment in a slightly different way, but it's just as important. you know, rather than focusing on, know, well, what you say doesn't affect ranking. don't care. just like what I'm saying is like, it affects the people and the bots and the understanding of my entity and my entity in general. So I don't know what I'm saying apart from very good. Well done, everyone. Super duper.
Darren Shaw (11:13.066)
super duper
Claire Carlile (11:14.19)
I'm holding up a book now for our listeners!
Darren Shaw (11:21.006)
haven't seen one of those in ages.
Claire Carlile (11:22.85)
Let me tell you what this is. This is an orange book, rectangular. It's got many pages in it. One of the important parts about the book that I'm going to tell you about is it has a little sticker on the front and it says updated and expanded. This is a way to know that this book, holding it up once again, it has been updated. And that's the reason that I'm bringing it up as my linky link because I think it is an absolutely key text.
Anyone that has a business, works in a business, sells a business, IDX products or services for a business should read. The book is obviously awesome by April Dunford. How to Nail Product Positioning. Customers get it, buy it, love it. I can't basically, what can I say apart from please go and read it because I feel every time we record a podcast, they say the same thing and probably everyone hates me, which is just like,
why are we worrying about the AI ting and all of the query fan out and all the chunkerama when we still haven't done positioning for our service? So please, please buy the book and read the book and I won't say any more about it apart from the fact that I am reading it right now and doing the things, doing the things in it.
And it is making me learn the things and everyone should do it and then they should send us a message and tell us what they learned. And then we'll basically, I don't know, make it into a song, maybe a film, a feature length film.
Darren Shaw (13:05.422)
everyone definitely loves you. Nobody hates you. You are you are well loved.
Claire Carlile (13:11.118)
that's very kind. I'll just take it. Thank you. Thank you. Good. Have you got another Linky link?
Darren Shaw (13:19.33)
I got one more from our very good friend, Miriam Ellis. Miriam Ellis, the most prolific writer in local search of all time, has written again. She has written a new post on the Search Engine Land blog. How AI is imp... Sorry, now we're back to AI. How AI is impacting local search and what tools to use to get ahead. All right, this is what people need to know. what is, what's happening? Whoa, AI is...
impacting local search. she has a level-headed approach and she says, well, actually it's, you know, only 20%. There's a stat on camera where she got it. 20 % of Americans use AI tools more than 10 times per month. That means 80 % of Americans don't use it more than 10 times per month. Google is still king. And Sparctora research has proven this as well, that everyone's going to Google. And in fact, GIGBT queries have increased query volume on Google.
a lot of people do the research on CHPT or whatever LLM they use. And then they go on Google brands on Google. So Google is actually still king and still growing. But AI is being injected into the local business discovery experience in many ways. Claire, already talked about the new Ask Maps stuff that's coming out in Google Maps. So it triggered a few ideas from when I read this post. For the longest time,
It's like you got to rank in the three pack or you do not exist. You know, it's like if you don't, if you're a local business and you want, you want to drive business from search, rank in the local pack, rank at least in the top 10, you know, if you beyond that, it's like, forget it. where, that's where they hide the dead bodies. And so now with AI search, it's kind of like the great equalizer for all local businesses. It's like the results are quite randomized and the results are quite personalized. And so it does give more businesses more chances to rank.
rather than the rich rankers just keep ranking because they keep getting all the business and then they get all the reviews. It's kind of like the rich get richer, the ranked get more ranked. But this, think, is interesting to think about how it levels the playing field from AI, like the new AI stuff. And she also talks about tracking. How do you track your AI visibility? And she says that local rank tracking is still very important and valuable, which
Darren Shaw (15:40.91)
course, I agree with wholeheartedly. I meant that she gives some tips for strategies for improving visibility. Things you should do. I'm not gonna spoil it. Go read her article. It's really good. We hear so much too. She just can do it all. She just knows everything. She's been studying it for two decades. And so she's just an amazing writer and a wonderful person to work with. We're very lucky.
Claire Carlile (15:50.207)
Miriam so much.
Claire Carlile (16:03.982)
Thank you, Miriam. I'm going to go and read this one. That's it. We're done.
Darren Shaw (16:08.29)
did a whole episode. Now I'm going to go and look at some fires. That's my
Claire Carlile (16:13.55)
plan. Tell us what that means. Tell us tell us what you're doing.
Darren Shaw (16:17.438)
So I'm in Spain, I'm in Valencia for the Las Fallas festival. And so all around the city, they have these huge sculptures, wooden sculptures, very elaborately sculpted and decorated and painted. And they're usually making some kind of political commentary. And then there's, don't fully know the tradition yet. There's a whole bunch of tradition. I need to do a little bit of reading before I go out.
So there's fireworks. I can hear fireworks going off right now. Lots of firecrackers. So it's just a big exciting time to be in Valentia.
Claire Carlile (16:51.855)
Thank you for joining us for the Linky Links.
Darren Shaw (16:55.404)
Hey, well, thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Claire Carlile (16:59.022)
Yeah, next time. See you again soon!
Darren Shaw (17:02.67)
See you again next week. Bye, everybody.
Claire Carlile (17:05.308)
Bye!