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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.
[Darren Shaw]
Welcome to another episode of the Whitespark Local Update with me, Darren Shaw.
[Claire Carlile]
And with me, Claire Carlile.
[Darren Shaw]
And this is the podcast we'll tell you about what happened in local search in the past week. Lots of stuff happened. Wow, so many things.
Why don't you tell me about something that you noticed, Claire?
[Claire Carlile]
I would really, really like to do that. Thank you very much. I will give a shout out for, it's almost like our own bingo card of who am I going to talk about, but it's actually Near Media.
It's their newsletter. If you haven't signed up for it, you need to sign up for it. And they speak about a number of different things, but one of which is a little bit of coverage of the Google I.O., which we all look forward to and wonder what is going to happen. Brittany Muller did make me laugh on LinkedIn. She did a Google I.O. bingo card where she predicted what was going to be said. So you could have played along with that.
So that made me laugh. One of the things that was on there was including AI mode becoming the new SERP. So it was something that we were sort of thinking about and wondering, were they going to announce?
So they didn't announce that, but they did announce the intelligent search box. So Near Media talk a little bit about their interpretation of that. I love Near Media because obviously you've got the layers of experience, but also they put a local focus on everything.
So this is their coverage. They're talking about Liz Reid describing the change as the biggest upgrade to the search box for 25 years. So as you can imagine, it's sort of rather than saying AI mode is a new search, it's another tightening of the link between what we saw as old search and AI, basically.
And then she talked about information agents. And the bit that Near Media then go on to say is seeing it as the AI equivalent of Google Alerts with more capabilities. But also that's where the agentic piece will fit in, especially for local businesses.
I don't have an intelligent search box yet. Have you got one, Darren?
[Darren Shaw]
No, I think it's very few people have it. It's not even rolled out to a specific country yet. I think it's like 17 people have access to it that are like beta test.
Mike Blumenthal might get access. He always seems to get access to things early.
[Claire Carlile]
Yeah. And it says that Google will find pricing and availability information, including calling the business and then book or offer booking options. And the agentic capabilities will go live this summer, but only for paid Gemini users.
[Darren Shaw]
Interesting. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes perfect sense for their continued monetization of everything possible so that they can rake in billions of dollars per quarter in profit.
[Claire Carlile]
Yeah, why not?
[Darren Shaw]
I find the comparison to Google Alerts maybe not the best comparison because it's like Google Alerts is the most trash product that Google has ever released. You never get an alert. I got my brand in there.
It's like every three months we're like, someone mentioned Whitespark. And then I use this system called Alert Mouse that Ran Fishkin is co-founder of. And I get like 17 alerts per day.
I'm like, Google Alerts, you suck.
[Claire Carlile]
Yeah, but they used to be good. Used to be good.
[Darren Shaw]
It used to be fine, yeah. I don't know why it got such trash, but they just decided, we don't want to give you any alerts. This intelligent search box is a huge shakeup.
It'll be interesting to see how some of that same functionality comes into the Google Maps local side of things. So Ask Maps evolving to be more agentic as well, pretty soon. Humans aren't going to be checking out your website, your Google Business profile.
It'll be the agents. And so they always said, optimize for humans, not bots. But I think that might be shifting.
Anyways, I got a link. What is my link? I want to talk about something that was shared by Claudia Tomina related to intelligence.
So it's Claudia's take on what this thing that you just talked about, how that basically impacts local search. So she publishes this on her LinkedIn Pulse thing. And she talks, she kind of breaks down some of the interesting things you should know about this.
I think one of the big takeaways is that search for one. There is no set of results. Two different people running the exact same prompt are going to get wildly different results.
There is no more set of search results. And so that's what the future is. That's kind of highly personalized.
It merges explicit constraints like your diet preferences, family needs, with implicit content like your search history, your private ecosystem data, your Gmail, your Google Photos. It's going to pull all of that very personalized stuff. And so your results are extremely tailored to you.
It's like the end of a list, end of rankings, really. But she did point out a few problems in her post. She was like, sometimes the personalization gets it wrong.
Because, she gives an example, some hibachi restaurant was recommended based solely on old family photos from a trip that was years and years ago. So it's like, that was a long time ago. We don't care about hibachi anymore.
We haven't had hibachi in many, many years. We just went to a hibachi restaurant when we were at this place. And so now it's like, we know you love hibachi.
And we're like, no, we don't love hibachi. It was just a photo. Don't be so personalized.
She also quotes Garrett Sussman. And she says that the system frequently Fs up because it can't infer what's explicitly stated in the data. They also confirmed that Google intelligence is not good at distinguishing your preferences from the preferences of your family.
So, for example, if your order history in your Gmail is always steak, steak, steak, because every week you got your order in steak for your husband, but you're a vegetarian, it'll be recommending you steak, right? Because it's picking up your DoorDash orders in your email. Anyways, so it's pretty interesting.
She also provides in this post, which I'm going to say is another reason to go read it, the most comprehensive list I have seen yet of the various data points that Ask Maps is pulling from. It's a really nice list. I'm not even going to spoil it for you.
Go and read her post.
[Claire Carlile]
Number two is a recording of Brad Weatherill, who did... I can't remember the name of the... AMPUP, I think it's called.
So it's a conference that GatherUp run. And they have a lot of their own internal speakers, but they also have a few external speakers. And so I just watched that this morning.
So it's the ROI of reputation connecting reviews to revenue rankings and retention. All the Rs. So Brad talks about...
Basically, he's talking about reviews. You guessed it from the title. Talking about two audiences for reviews.
So saying the audience of AI who decides whether you get found and the human who decides whether you get chosen. I don't see this as being massively different to where we are before, which was we optimized for search engines, which were the audience that decide how our content appeared and where it was going to appear. But obviously, it's a lot more intelligent in that way than it used to be.
So we are used to optimizing for two audiences, but one of those audiences has changed from just being indexed by the search engines and now being sort of understood more intelligently by Google's AI. Anyway, so he's talking about Google reviews. Just covers how important they are for E-A-T.
He talks about the more... We talk much more about Google's algorithm and recency and frequency and having that cadence. We've always known that the textual content of a review was important, but there just seems to be this, making sure that you keep getting the reviews.
And then he sort of runs through where Google is using that textual content of reviews to inform the SERP and the results that it gives. So he talks about reviews being used for AI descriptions and services in some categories. I couldn't replicate what he shows in this, but I also see reviews feeding into the know before you go section.
So that's another bit that sort of feeds into reviews. He's talking about ask maps being the Q&A replacement. And obviously a lot of that is populated by Google reviews.
And I'm sure that there are lots of other parts that will use that. And then blah, blah, blah, human audience. We still know that it's important.
People read reviews, people read your response to reviews. And, you know, I like Brad. I like the way that he speaks.
I like the way that he makes things very accessible. And I also really like the fact that he has had that insight into Google and been involved with the development of our favorite product. So I think that he is definitely worth listening to.
And that is worth a watch.
[Darren Shaw]
Certainly agree. He's a really sharp guy. I am always interested in the things he has to say because I almost always learn something.
He's a strategic thinker, that guy. I think one of the things about the reviews is I've been thinking more about owner responses. And typically I've been like, owner responses, yeah, you don't have to stuff keywords in there.
But now I'm like, maybe for the AIs. Maybe it's useful to get some stuff in there because the AIs, you know, they're dumb. They can't differentiate between a review and a review response.
So getting that content on the web, it's very helpful. Okay, moving on. I will stop telling you spam techniques.
My next post is from LinkedIn. Mohammed Hussain has posted a screenshot of photo view counts. What?
So in his NMX, in his GBP dashboard, he sees number of views on photos. He's from Pakistan. So they often test things in that region before they roll it out.
So ideally, this means we're going to start seeing this in the search results or in your dashboard. And so you could actually see which photos are getting the most views. And I guess then the takeaway would be, well, no one looks at that photo.
It's trash. Let's try to add more photos that people seem to like. That would be the only thing.
But it's also just really good data, especially from an agency perspective, where you could report back on like, yeah, wow, these photos we added to your profile are getting lots of views. People love them. So it's another reporting metric.
But I was sad when they took this away. And my dream, if Google dreams come true, my dream is that you will start giving us view count on posts. Sibu Play, Sibu Play, Google.
Posts give us view count. So hopefully this is a hint that they might start giving us that data.
[Claire Carlile]
That's for you, Lisa Lansman Post.
[Darren Shaw]
Yeah, Lisa, if you're listening, please poke the developers who work on that. Thanks.
[Claire Carlile]
I feel that that's one that will come back. It must be, because of the time and effort they're putting into promoting the use of Google Posts. It's like, just a metric that would just be a bit useful beyond if someone clicks on it and goes to your website because you've UTM tagged it, or you're using a call tracking, you know.
[Darren Shaw]
I know, give us some damn metrics.
[Claire Carlile]
We love them. Right, my third and final linky link is a piece from Women in Tech SEO, which is written by Ellen Sartin from ZipSprout. Do you know ZipSprout?
[Darren Shaw]
I sure do, yeah.
[Claire Carlile]
Yeah, so it's just like, I'd forgotten all the good stuff that they've done on writing on linky links back in the day. Yeah, and then it's like, wow, this is a good time for local businesses to revisit real life relationships. Now is a really good time to do your proper marketing.
And so ZipSprout, I sort of see as like a dating website almost, isn't it? It's for like how you can connect with real communities and real people that want sponsorship of sorts. So instead of being, you know, this is for links, you know, yes, you might get some useful links that might drive relevant traffic, but it's like building those relationships, that real world relationship, so you can go on and you can find a community to sponsor and to enjoy all of the benefits that come from an authentic relationship that can come.
So anyway, this is a piece from Ellen, and it's talking about local sponsorships to strengthen trust, relevance, authority, local signals, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You should give it a read because I think it's been a while since we've looked at that. You know, you can be, you can just say, well, it's a tactical thing, but I think that it should be more of a foundational aspect of your marketing strategies to build these relationships that can benefit both parties.
[Darren Shaw]
I agree 100%. In the age of AI search, you've got to be out there in the community and Zipsprout is an amazing service to facilitate that. Oh, who's accepting sponsorships?
What are the events going on? Like getting involved in those. Those are the kind of signals that get picked up and that really differentiate you.
You know what that is? Brand building. That's what people need to start thinking about, right?
[Claire Carlile]
Proper marketing.
[Darren Shaw]
Yeah, Zipsprout. Zipsprout is going to see a renaissance and like there'll be a business boom in it. Zipsprout, thanks to AI search.
My third and final post is from the amazing Mike King. Mike King writes, so I don't know, you probably saw that Google released a guide on how to optimize for AI. You see this, it was all over the LinkedIn and everyone was, all the like, it's just SEO crowd have been like vindicated.
They're like, aha, Google told us it's just SEO. We don't have to do any of this stuff. Well, Mike King is one of the strongest voices for it's not just SEO, has some serious thoughts.
And I'll just say like, I don't know anybody who kind of explains it better than Mike. Mike King, he makes the best science-backed arguments that it's just SEO crowd than anyone else in the industry, in my opinion. He's really good at that.
And so, you know, he talks in the article, there's a direct quote, Google has a long, well-documented history of nudging the industry in directions that benefit Google first. Of course, if they're going to put something out, it's to their benefit. When they say something, everyone listens, right?
And so, you know, remember how they told us clicks don't matter for years and years and years, but then their own API leaks and their own DOJ trials showed us being like, no, well, maybe don't always listen to Google. But he also points out that Bing's content reads like the exact opposite of Google's. Bing's content is talking about all the stuff that Mike does in his agency for AI search optimization, which I think is very interesting.
I'm going to give you another direct quote from the post, which is what he says is some of the differentiating stuff, which I think is very interesting. The work of AI search adds information retrieval theory, vector distant measurement, RAG pipeline analysis, content engineering at the passage level, chunking, agent and protocol design, brand citation tracking across LLM platforms, and synthesis evaluation. He says there's overlap, but there's also this vast surface area that has never appeared in any SEO job description ever written, pretending that the skill set is exactly the same as how organizations underhire for the actual problem you're trying to solve.
So you're trying to solve for visibility in AI systems. If you ignore that list that I just gave you, you're not going to perform well, right? So I just think it's really interesting.
And I think he finally gave me, I have been very resistant to other acronyms. So acronyms like AEO, GEO. I'm like, I hate those acronyms.
It's just SEO. Call it search everywhere optimization. Call it AI SEO.
In my own practice, I call it AI local SEO, right? So I want to maintain that SEO. But damn, this argument is pretty good.
He says when AI search lands in an organization with a different name, it gets different expectations and a different budget. It gets cross-functional sponsorship. It gets executive attention.
It gets cross-discipline collaboration. SEOs have been requesting, since I started this industry two decades ago, AEO and GEO are not magical incantations, but the labels create the room SEO has not been able to create for itself. Because AEO, as we keep talking about, is so much bigger than just technical SEO on your website, content, and links.
It's brand. And so you need a much bigger budget to get that. And so when you actually give it a new name, then the executives who sign the checks are like, yeah, this is a new thing.
It's a big thing. It's going to cost us more. We understand that.
Here's your new budget. That's, damn it, a good argument for calling it something other than SEO. So anyways, my mind may have shifted on that.
Anyway, just read the post. It's so good. You got to read this one.
[Claire Carlile]
He has a great team there that produce some amazing content. And yeah, I love learning. I love learning from.
[Darren Shaw]
You do love learning.
[Claire Carlile]
All of those thoughts and those things.
[Darren Shaw]
And thank you for listening and watching our podcast for another week. Go leave us a comment on the YouTube and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify Podcasts. I think you can leave reviews there.
If you can, please do. And you know, if you're not subscribed, what are you doing with your life?
[Claire Carlile]
Come on, do it now.
[Darren Shaw]
Well, thanks everybody. See you next week.
[Claire Carlile]
Bye.