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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 (00:00.066)
Welcome to the Whitespark Local Update with me Darren Shaw.
Claire Carlile (00:03.446)
And with me, Claire Carlile and guess what we're gonna do today?
Darren Shaw (00:07.63)
We're going to talk about clotted Tamina, I bet.
Claire Carlile (00:12.782)
did you get? Well, because of that, we're going to ask you to kick off then please Darren.
Darren Shaw (00:13.518)
Just know it.
Darren Shaw (00:19.788)
yeah. OK, sure. Well, the first link I have is from Steve Toth. And I don't know if he publishes these on the internet, but my link goes to my email because he has one of the greatest newsletters in the SEO space. If you are not subscribed, then you are missing out. is the Steve Toth's SEO notebook. He's got two of them. He's got the SEO notebook and now he's got the AI notebook. They are both fantastic. And Steve's always publishing very interesting things.
So this one is about content freshness. And so it's kind of a deep dive. He's basically pulled it out of this former SEO IRL speaker, that's his conference, JC Schwinard, sorry if I butchered that, JC, who reminded me about a patent. So there's a patent that breaks down the content freshness stuff. And what it really comes down to is that
It's not enough to change your title tag. It's not enough to even change a paragraph or two. There is a patent that Google has that really breaks down the step-by-step, like what's actually expected. And so this is what I'm just going to give it to you. And you should subscribe to this newsletter. But it's a title tag update. So if you're making a content freshness that is worthy of kind of refreshed and back into the search results, title tag.
New outbound links to credible sources is on the list of things you should do to be like, hey, Google, yeah, it's fresh. Expanded copy around those links. Updating anchor text of outbound links where relevant. And the recommended action, introduce at least one new topic or idea. So that's very interesting. Some kind of new concept into that page, that'll be enough for Google to be like, yep.
this has been properly refreshed and we will give it the refresh bonus of giving it another chance in the search results. thought that was very good and subscribe to his newsletter. Thanks a lot, Steve Toth.
Claire Carlile (02:28.776)
thing you think about is your audience. Why did you refresh it?
Darren Shaw (02:32.76)
don't just phone it in, like actually add some new value. Like a great example would be the what the local search ranking factors. That's kind of what Google is looking for, right? This thing is annually refreshed. Well, it used to be when David did it, but now it's like every two years. But this thing is refreshed and it's huge, right? So it does work to like bring back. That's what Google is looking for. Like, this has been majorly reworked.
Claire Carlile (02:56.748)
Yeah, for sure. If you have a guide, if there's like a feature change, it's like adding that and updating it. Thank you very, very, very, very much. Now, spoiler alert. You already said, it's Claudia. It's going to be called, it's always Claudia. I think this came about of a little chat that I was seeing somewhere about what do you make of it when you look at someone's business profile and a lot of their
Darren Shaw (03:08.878)
It's always cloudy. We're going to rename the.
Darren Shaw (03:13.897)
That's a great name. There we go.
Claire Carlile (03:27.572)
reviews are edited. What does that mean if you're looking and you see that? What does it mean? Does it mean that the business has been in and said, change that? Or are they doing something? I'm imagining that if you do see that, then it's like sometimes you can. People might rewrite a really bad review if you've managed to turn it around. Claudia was just flagging the fact that
Obviously Google Guides is gamified and Google wants people to contribute lots of content basically. She includes in this post a couple of screenshots from the Google Maps. I can't remember who the sender is, but if you're active on Google Guides, then they will remind you to add content to enrich your content. One of those things is...
Make your reviews longer. As business owners and people that are working with businesses that want to have richer reviews, that is something that we are often wanting as well. I just thought it was interesting because sometimes we don't piece together what's happening within Google Maps because we're so focused as business owners and working with Google Business Profile. It's like Google itself is encouraging people to go in and write longer reviews because
It's an engagement factor and also it just gives them more content to work with, I guess, when they are working out things about business.
Darren Shaw (05:02.056)
Yeah, my take on this is that Google is like, we need more info. Give us all the info. We want longer reviews and you don't have to write a new one. You can just edit your old one. And so this whole thing where they're pushing people to edit their old reviews is very interesting. And yeah, they just want the training data. They're like, yes, we are the most powerful company in the world and we will have all the data and crush chat GPT. So it feels like that's what
they're trying to do with this. And so it's just very interesting that they're pushing for edits. And it segues very nicely into my next topic, which is just an absolutely delightful read. Miriam Ellis, we are very lucky to have you writing for the blog. So if you're listening, we love you. Thank you very much for all of your great content. And this piece in particular, she's done this great thing where she read this book, Grand Forks, A History of American Dining and 128 Reviews.
So Marilyn Haggerty is a classic newspaper restaurant reviewer. And so she's written this book, and Miriam read the whole book, loved it, and then pulled out all of her interesting insights from the book, talking about what makes a good user experience and how does that get reflected in the reviews.
Really cool. And one of the things that she talked about, which is related to what you were just talking about with how Google is encouraging people to edit reviews, is how Google's system kind of sucks for this. Because you can have a restaurant that's open for 10 years, and you have those repeat customers. They come back multiple times. They do their anniversary at the restaurant. They come there for Valentine's Day. They celebrate their
kids graduating from college, like you know, you have these lifetime customers and those could be reflected in reviews. Google doesn't have a mechanism to like add another review, but they do have the edit review and that's a very interesting takeaway from this post where she talks about how like Google could be doing a better job of encouraging people to add. Update, you know, update, July 2026, we returned to the restaurant and we noticed that they had renovated the bathroom and now it is beautiful.
Darren Shaw (07:21.974)
In my last review, I said it was a little gross, but now it's awesome. Like anything that you can do with these reviews. the idea that a review, and this even goes back to my first link, which is content freshness. This idea of refreshing content in Google's reviews is very interesting. anyways, Miriam's post is one of my favorites. I think you should read it. She talks about three key learnings that you can take with you. Online fame is not a substitute for offline trust.
So building this offline trust is very critical. Google can improve its review offering by taking brand longevity into account. That's what I just talked about. And reviews really reflect the real experience when they are not fake reviews, which is another problem Google has. But anyways, make sure you read the latest post on the White Whitespark blog from Miriam because it's great.
Claire Carlile (08:11.928)
Thank you, Miriam. We will dive back into LinkedIn. Something that you might have noticed if you are active in the Google Business Profile, like the Help Community, is that a little bit of a change in terms of just reminding people not to share things that really shouldn't be shared online.
like details, know, personal details within those posts. So Vinay just did a little screenshot of something that he was saying and you you can see if you go to the community. So do not share any private or confidential personal or business related information in the public forum. And then after seeing that I noticed that actually in the community,
there is actually a post from one of the community managers who gives a very clear announcement about, know, we want to safeguard your data, do not share this personally identifiable information. So it's a helpful post and it is a thing to remember. If you are going to the Google Business Profile community for help, I do notice that a lot of people are using
some sort of template sometimes. I don't know where they source them from. Maybe there's some sort of Help Row community somewhere where they're copying and pasting in. But a lot of people will paste a Google Drive that could be all sorts of information in there. yeah, refresh your thinking in terms of what you post and where. So it's a sort of timely reminder really of anyone that's looking for help is you don't need to be sharing those types of details in the community.
Darren Shaw (10:03.886)
It makes sense. I think that was part of your process too, helping before. And that's where these templates come from, because it's a shift in like, wait a minute. That's not a good idea. My next link is from Dan Petrovich on the Claudia and Dan show. Dan, the reason why Dan keeps getting mentioned on this podcast, because I love him very much.
Claire Carlile (10:27.286)
It's cause you love it.
Darren Shaw (10:31.694)
It's because I can't believe what he does. So anyways, this article, he's just constantly pumping all this stuff. He has been researching Google's grounding principles, grounding snippets. So this is thing, so what happens when you run a query? You might have heard this before. It turns into a query fan out with these other sub-queries. Then it searches Google, then it pulls back the snippets. So he's done a whole analysis of how that whole process works. And that's what this article,
talks about. This becomes very valuable because when you understand how Google does it, you can reformat your content to optimize for that process. And so it's interesting because it doesn't read your whole page. it creates these subqueries and then it grabs the page, it'll grab the top five to 10 pages, just randomly picks five to 10 that seemed like it's the best match. That's probably where some title tag optimization comes in. Then it highlights the snippets from the content.
that seems most related to your topic, then it will stitch those sentences together to create what's called a grounding snippet. And the grounding snippet is almost like this skeleton of what the response is gonna be. And then it uses AI to sort of build it out and refill the gaps. So it's so interesting how the system works. And Dan very well describes it, but Dan is like a...
PhD computing scientist or something because the way he writes is very technical and it's hard to get through it. So I asked Gemini to help me. Help me understand. I'm a very stupid person. Please help me understand. So yeah, so I think it's useful to take this post, ask AI to explain it to you like you're in grade five. And that's what I did. And so basically, what are the takeaways? You should put your important information at the top. It almost always takes the from the
the grounding snippets in the first couple paragraphs, first paragraph. Whatever it is should be at the top. That actually gives you some sense that is valuable to make multiple pages per topic, not make a massive document with everything in it because the way that the AI retrieval system works, if it's buried halfway down a 10,000 word document, unlikely to get included and cited in the AI response.
Darren Shaw (12:52.078)
So this is where smaller pages are going to be helpful. So put the important information at the top. Write in clear factual sentences, since the AI extracts one sentence at a time. And answer specific questions directly, as the AI extracts information based on how well it matches the specific user's query. So be very clear and answer directly. So that's some interesting tips about how that whole system works and how you could think about your content strategy around
Claire Carlile (13:21.518)
I love that in the first paragraph, I can see the word grounding chunks.
Darren Shaw (13:29.688)
thought you would like that actually. Grounding chunks. I hope you're feeling okay. I don't want you to feel sick to your stomach. You can't blame the AI bros for this. This is what the damn LLMs called it in their systems. They just called it a chunk.
Claire Carlile (13:37.559)
I'm crying
Claire Carlile (13:49.134)
Chunks chunks chunks chunks chunks chunks chunks chunks
Darren Shaw (13:51.692)
So it's the engineer.
Claire Carlile (13:59.02)
for my next trick, I will talk about Claudia Tamina. cause I think this is something that, thing is about Claudia, like my love for Claudia is that, Claudia is just good at noticing things when they change. And when there's things and there, is value in that. obviously Claudia also says clever things about those changes, but this is something that, was picked up.
Darren Shaw (14:04.354)
Yeah
Claire Carlile (14:27.362)
By one of our favorites, we've spoken about a pair of shorts, Barry Schwartz. So here we are in search engine round table, called pair of shorts eye, talking about the new page on the verification flow. So when you do your verification workflow, you go through and there is a little pagey page that then says, what type of business are you?
Darren Shaw (14:33.41)
Yeah, pair of shorts.
Claire Carlile (14:57.4)
So there are four different options. So if you look at the new screen, I guess, in the verification status, the last one is my business is online only. Now, spoiler alert. What do we know about online businesses that don't have a bricks and mortar offering or service anyone in a geographic area?
Darren Shaw (15:19.622)
Yeah, what I am aware is that it's a trap. you Google is going to say, sorry, not eligible.
Claire Carlile (15:31.104)
Yeah. So Google is going to say, sorry, not eligible, but klaxons don't go off and you're not grabbed off stage with like a shepherd's crook. It basically just means, you not get that? You know, when someone's overrun their time on stage.
Darren Shaw (15:48.78)
You said the word klaxons, which I think is some kind of like Wales word Welsh word. I've never heard this word before.
Claire Carlile (15:58.222)
son is like
Darren Shaw (16:02.51)
Like a siren? Is that what it Wow, okay. Learn new things every day. That's great.
Claire Carlile (16:10.686)
is it just says, if you are online only, you're not eligible for a business listing. And then what you can do is click the back button and then it takes you to the other options. basically it is letting you know, but it doesn't mean that you accidentally chose the wrong thing. can go back. so apart from that, so it's the four options. My business has a physical location for customers like a restaurant or store. That's quite straightforward, isn't it? know, if you're doing a verification, that's going to be an easy video.
showing people in that place. The other two, I was just wondering why they separate them. So my business has a physical location, but travels to work at customer's locations. For example, it's hybrid, but it's interesting because yeah, I wish they'd just say hybrid there because it's making me feel a bit like that's a service area business, but it is a hybrid. It is the four different options.
And then my business travels to meet customers without a staff physical location. So pure service area business. So yeah, make sure that you choose the right one because I guess the things that Google will expect to see might be different. I don't know if it changes the workflow further down the line. I guess they'll expect to see signage if you've said you've got a physical location.
Definitely something to look at. I find it interesting when they change the workflows because you're like, what is this a clue to tell me? Is this going to change what happens downstream or is this just another sort red herring to make me confused? Yeah, that's it. I thought it was quite interesting.
Darren Shaw (17:47.694)
That's good. I think they must have just been dealing with this problem where a lot of online-only businesses keep trying to create a Google business profile and they're like, how do we help these people? You're not eligible. I know. Let's put it at the beginning of the verification. that make sense? Yep. It would be better if they had reworded the hybrid version, because the hybrid version reads like this. My business has a physical location, but travels to work at customers' locations. For example, a plumber or photographer.
And that's like not clear.
Claire Carlile (18:19.03)
It should be AND.
Darren Shaw (18:20.886)
It should say my business has a physical location that is staffed that people can come to and also travels to customers locations. That would have been way clearer. So anyway.
Claire Carlile (18:33.134)
think so. It would be nice to have that clarity, but there we are.
Darren Shaw (18:36.866)
Is that it? Anything else, Claire?
Claire Carlile (18:39.288)
Well, it would be it, but it is traditional for me to add an extra link. I like to get an extra link tally. So this is actually a rather exciting, and that is that we have launched our Google business profile reinstatement service. So if you are in a bind and you are having a tricky, tricky, tricky time trying to get your
and good business listing reinstated, then we are in a position where we would love to help you. all we're going to do is we will just add that little linky link into the show notes and you can read all about it there. But we are pretty excited about it.
Darren Shaw (19:27.182)
Very excited. New service launched at White Whitespark. Unsuspend your profile with our expert team. And our expert team is mostly Claire Carlisle. We have Claire. And then we have the amazing Hava, who is also a Google Business Profile product expert. And then we just put my face on the landing page, just because people recognize it. If you sign up for our read statement service, I'm going to have really nothing to do with it.
Claire Carlile (19:56.622)
You can press the buttons.
Darren Shaw (19:58.956)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will accept the email or something and be like, hey, Claire, there's a new reinstatement request.
Claire Carlile (20:06.41)
it? Those are the linky links plus the secret extra linky links that I always like to sneak in. Thank you!
Darren Shaw (20:13.742)
Thank you and leave us review on Apple. We love you. Okay, bye.
Claire Carlile (20:18.252)
Okay, bye.