The Near Memo

Segment 1: Shopify’s investment in Klaviyo improves Shopify’s enterprise cred & may signal acquisitionIn a move to protect and enhance their core product with enterprise, Shopify’s strategic investment in Klaviyo indicates a Segment 2: The golden era of hyper detailed location data intelligence is coming to an endThe marketplace for highly granular location data, fed by smartphones, cars and cell companies, is coming under scrutiny by both Congress and regulators. Despite the value to society that this data might have, its abuse and invasive practices seems to have finally led to some constraints and oversight. If we are lucky, we may be given the ability to opt into surveillance instead of just having to accept it. Segment 3: At Covid start  E-commerce was eating retail, turns out it is retailIn early Covid, pundits talk up the idea that e-commerce had leaped 5 years ahead in its “battle” with retail only to talk up the idea that in store shopping has returned and the e-commerce lost all that it gained. But a closer examination of the data shows that e-commerce did make and sustains real growth but that retail has returned stronger as well. The problem seems to be with comparison between the two. In the end, e-commerce is not really a separate segment from retail but one in the same.

Instagram evolves (?) to target Gen Z but leaves others behind Instagram and Facebook are attempting to cater to the consumption patterns of Gen Z but in doing so are alienating their traditional users. Might these apps be better served by bifurcating their products and developing more focused apps. Google prevents reviews on listings that offer reproductive servicesGoogle has stopped allowing reviews on Planned Parenthood as well as a limited number of businesses offering abortion & reproductive services. While the Planned Parenthood stoppage was probably a manual action, shutting of every business in the categories noted appears to be algorithmically implemented. Why? Google Commerce SERP TrendsFour major trends in commerce serps on the desktop: increasingly  visual, there are a greater variety of serp features to cope with ambiguity, there an increasing number of Local Packs and Ads dominate the space. Local Packs show for 77% of Google commerce query SERP results.The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 75

Amazon AND Google both try to demonstrate their anti fake review bonafides. Both fail to do their job and offer little in the way of substantive reform to prevent review abuses. The American Data Privacy and Protection Act (.pdf) looks like it will make it out of committee, a watershed moment and a step toward a floor vote. This moment is a byproduct of significant compromises and amendments. Instagram has introduced an upgraded, interactive and searchable map experience. Users can now search, browse and drag maps to find things nearby. Results can also be filtered by categories such as restaurants, hotels, cafes, sights.The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 74

In the past year somewhere on the order of 300 independent bookstores have opened. The need for discovery, serendipity, community and increased opportunities are all likely factors in this resurgence Amazon is illegally sharing Ring data with police while ICE is accumulating dossiers on 3 out of 4 Americans with no oversight.  Google’s disclosure that 40% of Gen Z’ers prefer Tik-Tok & Instagram to Google when searching for lunch restaurants, surprised many but puts their long term emphasis on images in the search results into meaningful relief. It also explains new search units that are primarily visual like “Find places through photo”. While the comment appeared to be off-hand it likely reflects an intentional effort to offset antitrust scrutiny as well.The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 73

The Digital Markets Act attempts to create a new framework for understanding and regulating digital monopolies to improve competitiveness and create opportunities for smaller online businesses. Amongst its targets: self preferencing, access to alternative payment systems and messaging services interoperability. The fines for non-compliance are a non-trivial 10% of annual sales. Dark patterns that mislead consumers will be banned, ads that target children or on the basis of religion, gender, race and political opinions will also be banned. “Users will have new rights, including a right to complain to the platform, seek out-of-court settlements, complain to their national authority in their own language, or seek compensation for breaches of the rules.”The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.EP 72 Near Memo

Time to stop lamenting “zero click” search and to embrace the “messy middle” of Google’s entity search and barnacle SEO. Understanding how Google has remade all of search from inventory to brands into entity search as a way to help consumers make a decision is key to building out a successful search optimization strategy. Google is leveraging ever more granular product entities and product information to create a local product search experience that Amazon can’t compete with. Privacy should be a right not a convoluted opt out process. Most users, in choosing to not allow Apple’s app tracking show the way forward on privacy - opt in not opt out. While it is unlikely the federal government will go there states will. Hopefully sooner rather than later. The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 71

There's a growing perception that Google is in decline or dying. In an article in the Atlantic, Charlie Warzel interviews Marie Haynes, Dannie Sullivan and Rand Fishkin to try to understand his growing dissatisfaction with Google’s results. Is it too commercial, too corporate or too sanitized? He is not sure but he does know its not what it used to be.What would Google local search results look like if Google couldn't put the Local 3-Pack at the top of search results? A recently discovered test may give us a clue. New 'Local Cards' have appeared in organic results. They offer less information but still link to GBP pages, not local websites.Even if this test is abandoned, we need to be prepared for change in local SEO and local marketing if the anit-self-preferencing act passes Congress. . There is growing anecdotal evidence that users are switching to alternative methods to discover local goods and services. Is GenZ ready to abandon Google? Have they already moved on to TikTok and Instagram? Google has lost other search battle before but have managed, by hook or by crook, to stay relevant. The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 70

Chewy’s provides great CX and it goes viral: When a dog owner’s pet died and they asked Chewy to refund their unused food, the company went above and beyond. In doing so, they demonstrated the incredible viral value of great customer service. A simple customer service act provides bountiful returns. A look at the top 1000 Google queries on the desktop and what it says about local: Kevin Indig of Shopify looked at the top 1000 searches on Google Desktop. Interestingly at least ⅓ were local in intent and most of those were branded local searches.John Oliver & Rand Fishkin look at the two antitrust bills that might pass this summer: John Oliver, like many comedians these days, does a  better job of explaining the antitrust bills in front of Congress than the news does. And he is more fun to listen to. Rand Fishkin looks at how the bills will dramatically change what we do as marketers.The Near Memo, with David Mihm, Greg Sterling & Mike Blumenthal, is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.

Amazon has been posting new job positions for “rare opportunity to join a start-up business within Amazon Ads and play a strategic role in building the future of Local Ads”. It is hard to know exactly what it is they are building but talk of building relationships with agencies, clients, and service providers to scope solutions, partnerships, and business opportunities that result in the acceleration of Amazon's Advertising growth in New York City, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago. Regardless, it is clear that they are looking to grow their ad business via local and looking to take Google (and perhaps Walmart) on directly in the space. Can Yep It get off the ground and sustain an income stream or is it just another “ankle biter”. There are many wannabes in the search space with many different models, Yep It is trying to partner with content creators first and foremost. Although the question remains how will they get consumer uptake to make it work?There was a great deal of speculation about an “Apple Search Engine” with dreams of a Google competitor that actually had consumer support. What Apple in fact did do was elevate Spotlight to a place of prominence and use AI, the Siri Knowledge Graph and local access to deliver on an improved “federated” search as a feature not a destination. While they were at it they rolled out an incredibly consumer friendly buy now pay later plan that apparently does not get reported to the credit bureaus if you drop the ballThe Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.EP 68 Near Memo

Rumors have surfaced that Apple will roll out a general purpose search engine at WWDC this week. Will it be browser based? Available on the desktop? Apple has historically favored “search as a feature” over the years as they have slowly built out Siri, Spotlight and Safari search. The UI/UX could use a refresh and it could become more obvious but will it be a Google replacement? Probably not. The disappearance of the Product feature from the Google Business Profile caused lots of speculation.Whether it was a bug or a very small test that was not meant to be seen, the removal of the Product feature from the Google Business Profile (and to be replaced by Merchant Center) last week lead many to soul search about the role of real time inventory in Google’s push for ever more granular data. Google has been taking a holistic commerce strategy (online and in-store inventory) to create a more complete consumer offering than Amazon. Walmart announced that they will offer last mile same day delivery to 3rd parties from their storesWalmart continues to push the boundaries of on-line/offline commerce and publicly shared that they will be using their many locations as a warehouse and point of delivery for 3rd party resellers. Can their retail stores efficiently function in this capacity? Can they compete with both Google AND Amazon with this strategy?The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 67

Walmart announced that they were rolling out drone delivery in 6 states this week, offering upto 100,000 picked in the local store. Meanwhile Gorrila (Europe’s largest food delivery company announced massive layoffs and UberEats continued to struggle to find a profitable path forward. Walmart’s many rural & suburban stores gives them a unique advantage in driving their own, same day delivery service. Interestingly Amazon’s drone work seems to have stalled.   Google is moving full steam ahead on a vision of search and advertising that includes an ever increasing amount of AI driven automation and an ever increasing amount of images and other visuals in the search results. They noted at the GML event that “​​we're transforming the SERPS into an endless stream of visual ideas”.  Google sees automated retail ads and local as their path to compet with AmazonGoogle testing new Local inventory ad unit that looks like the 3-packThe Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 66

Bill was instrumental in helping me understand Local search. Over the years he shared his knowledge willingly and unsparingly and he will be missed.My Ad Center - will people use it or is it just another data harvesting tool? Shotland showed a radical increase in rankings for a particular page on a client's website that was talking about baby formula. Over the last X number of weeks, he said the page was on page two plus, and it's now skyrocketed up to the top. His theory? That top ranking national retailers were out of formula and when users left those sites and found the lower ranked ones that did have formula, they stuck around leading to a ranking increase. Shotland made some astute suggestions on how to quickly cope with shortages.  The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 65

SMB more successful with content, typical looks at SMBS often undercounts total Google spent much of their I/O talking about their grand vision for integrating software and hardware as well as Local developments. Most of the hardware is about a future where they hope to compete while Local is moving clearly to a focus on a visual approach to local search. Many of these announcements are likely to not be universally adopted.  Wil local visual search near me drive the future of local commerce? Or is visual search just a subset of what folks really need?The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 64

In three consumer surveys it became clear that a significant minority (~25%)  of the buying public thinks ill of companies that use Earth Day to sell things. But almost 33% noted that when Amazon engaged in Earth Day marketing to sell more products that they were less likely to do business with them. Whether it’s a review rating or an NPS score, all too often businesses focus too intently on the number and not on what's behind the number. Businesses should listen to all feedback wherever it is from and then make the changes so that it improves going forward. And STOP asking for answers to 30 question surveys. With In store shopping up & e-commerce down and ever increasing consumer expectations, for SMBs to survive they need an integrated digital approach. Between supply chain issues, inflations and on-line competition it has been a struggle for SMBs but those that have survived and those that will thrive have done so by doubling down on technology to drive point of sale, the web and their marketing. The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 63

It is generally assumed that the ratings aspect of reviews is what drives conversions and thus they are typically emphasized. However it would appear that in many cases that the content of the “top 3” most visible reviews actually influence purchase decisions more than the star ratings. In a clever study design these researchers were able to disentangle the relative importance of ratings versus the text in the top 3 reviews. Google announced upgrades to their Performance Max product and that it will provide a one-click upgrade (and replacement) path for both previous Smart Campaigns and Local Campaigns. Google Ads have long been moving towards an automated model to maximize effectiveness and away from the need for curated ad management. This is another step on that path and seems to make product ads almost as easy as their hands-off LSA ads. There is a need for rigorous A/B testing by enterprises to determine the value of each approach.Even though Twitter is making user gains, it is likely that advertising on Twitter will be negatively affected by the types of changes that Elon Musk is suggesting. Obviously depending on specific product changes that Musk might make, it is an open question whether data licensing or advertising will be the primary path to profits. The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 62

Amazon’s bold play to push Prime benefits across all of e-commerce is not only a direct threat to Shopify but UPS and FedEx as well. While it will bring trust and convenience to small and local websites,  which types of businesses will actually benefit from Buy Prime on their site?Google’s has stated that AI generated content is against their guidelines. But their guidelines are not so clear as they seem to imply that human edited content will be ok. What is the future of on-line content? Will Google be able to moderate the coming tsunami of AI generated content?Very small businesses want to do their own research when buying SAAS products but which sorts of content do they use to do that? There isn’t really a single content source that drives uptake. Perhaps AI driven content might be able to allow content to be more easily repurposed across content types. The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 61

According to the 2021 IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, online ad revenue grew at the fastest pace since 2006, 35% year over year. In real dollar terms that translated into a $50 billion revenue increase from last year. Mobile revenues comprised roughly 71% of the $189 billion total, while the desktop contributed 28%. Paid search was the largest digital ad revenue category (41%, $78.3 billion), followed by display (30%, $56.7 billion) and digital video (21%, $39.5 billion).  Google has been updating business data for year, not due to AI but because of their massive access to data. This trend is increasing which is both annoying and reflective of their failure to engage SMBs to keep the data updated themselves. Over the past 5 years images have moved from virtually 0% oif the mobile search results to almost 40%. Google is using AI to understand the content of these images and changing them based on the user query. This points towards a new aspect of technical SEO, image optimization, to improve rank, visibility and conversions for local businesses.The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 60

Google’s Local help files have been updated to note that providing real time inventory via Merchant Center will result in increased rank. Anecdotally, we are seeing the 3- Pack populated with more real time inventory over the past several weeks. Google, often accused of self-preferencing, did so again by highlighting their own Point POS product as the only solution. At LocalU’s last virtual event, Joy Hawkins shared insights spam prevalence by vertical and whether agencies should continue to fight it, as a service. Curtis Boyd described the results of a 1000 review case study of takedown and what worked and what didn’t. And there was a discussion of a new update to the Vicinity update which allowed many businesses to gain more visibility. GApocalypse will soon be upon us and Google Universal Analytics will soon be sunset and replaced with GA4. Since GA4 is so bad and agencies seem to have developed reporting chops with Google Data Studio, is it time to look at other base analytics programs and build your own reporting dashboard?The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.EP 59 Near Memo

Last week the European Parliament completed work on its Digital Markets Act. The legislation targets major US tech "gatekeepers" and prohibits app bundling, app store monopolies and so-called "self-preferencing," among other things. In the US, the American Competition and Innovation Act (ACIA) is similar and also seeks to prevent self-preferencing – think: Google Shopping or Maps at the top of search results. Google et all have ramped up the astroturf. Google has announced the ability to schedule an appointment to book with a doctor directly from a Google business profile. Initially as a pilot with CVS Minute Clinics, it is likely to expand. Google has once again picked winners and losers as opposed to making the feature generally available although due to the complexities of the medical arena, this project may face tough sledding. Trust in reviews has been declining since 2017, but consumers still rely on them to make decisions. Businesses must adapt review strategies and embrace the negative review.The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.EP 58 Near Memo

Most featured snippets come from what would have been organic results 1 through 3. However 20% of featured snippets come from results 6-10 and while featured snippets do not offer the click through rate of a #1 organic result, if you can answer a question query well and jump from a position down the page, it can be a huge SEO win and a quick way to the top of the rankings. Consumers had much higher expectations of chat response than SMS. With live chat, users expect responses within minutes and with SMS there is a much greater latitude. What does this mean for business responses to customers when the number of messages coming from different sources? By switching to asynchronous messaging businesses can gain an advantage in responding to customers that customers might prefer. A hallmark of Google’s competition with Amazon strategy is their integration of local product search with local business search. This development, of showing products and product availability in the 3 pack, is a tell of both Google’s product search ambitions and of the direction of their local search results. The ability to integrate real time product availability directly into local search results indicates Google's aggressive move into a local search result that is both more visual AND more transactional.The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.Near Memo Ep 57