Greg Gifford with Jason Barnard at Search Marketing Summit 2019
Greg has a lot of tattoos. And a great beard. And a cup of tea. And he tells me that the weight of Google My Business and proximity have increased immensely. We discuss the differences in that proximity weighting for car dealerships and coffee shops. As local search becomes more and more no-click, GMB has become your digital showroom – replacing your website. GMB reviews are the be-all-and-end all in local search. I ask a rather naive question about brand searches. Greg puts me straight (despite not watching much TV). GMB is a great feed for the Knowledge Graph about ‘who you are and what you do’. Then onto department listings, which I thought were 100% great, but Greg has a couple of less enthusiastic things to say about. Further, local search is getting increasingly complex to deal with, and mom and pop stores are likely to get left behind, especially as much of this new stuff is Google prepping for voice search. Onto local business Q&A and the low down on Posts. Beyond zero click search we are moving towards zero search search
