Google made a significant change in the search results page layout over the last 7 days that removes the powerful advantage that they'd bestowed upon local businesses for about 10 years. Today, I'll dive into the details of those changes.
A Little Background
Google created their original Local Business database in the early 2000s and has morphed it through many permutations with names like Places, Maps, and Local. Today, they call it "Google My Business" or just GMB for short. Having your business... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Online referrals are starting to make an impact on local businesses, but not in the way we all expected them to. A few years ago, the buzz within the online marketing community was that social networks would become a referral engine for people to ask advice through. Facebook even attempted to create a new type of social search engine to capture that referral service. Google also struggled with the idea that the internet would become a big referral engine, and they tried to capture a piece of it through Google+.
It's time to take a drink, or maybe 15 drinks! The official jWAG drinking game is to take a drink every time I mention Google Maps. Why? Because the very first Golden Nugget I wrote was about Google Maps and it's been one of the most common topics I've written about since I started writing these Golden Nuggets on July 27, 2010. I've been writing special edition version of the Golden Nugget every 100 since. Today is my 1500th Golden Nugget.... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Don't want to read? This week you can also watch the video recording of this review here!
This is the weekly #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every Friday, I search for a really bad website in a random town, and provide ideas for how to fix all of its flops.
This week when I searched Google for "jewelers Scottsbluff, NE" I saw these results:
This is a pretty sad edition of #ThrowbackThursday. In fact, it's not even much of a throwback since I'm only jumping back 3 months to September 2015 to my explanation of how to share Google reviews to your website.
Testimonials and online business reviews are an important part of a customer's pre-screening process of you. While every online directory has a review system, arguably Yelp a... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Once again, the Daily Golden Nuggets have reached another milestone: 1300!
It was 1,300 weekdays ago that I wrote the first Nugget about Google Maps. In honor of my first topic, I now write about Google Maps and its subsequent incarnations ever since, and save them for these milestones.
The original Maps service has transformed several times through the years and had names like Local, Places, Local Business, and Google+ Local. Ever since Google started using Google+ to tie all its services together, the p... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Jennifer Shaheen, President of Technology Therapy Group was among those speakers chosen to present at the 2015 JCK Las Vegas show. Jennifer and I are industry colleagues and we share 99% of the same point of view about the internet and how retail jewelers should be using it for their marketing.
Welcome to the Friday website review, where every week I randomly review the website of a local retail jewelry business somewhere in the US. The goal is to find something good, or bad, that we can all learn from and apply to our own business.
For this week's review, I'm heading over to Washington state and searching for "fine jewelry stores bellevue wa." When doing these searches, I always use the Google Chrome browser in incognito mode. This allows me to see non-personalized search results.
Time flies and another one hundred Daily Golden Nuggets have passed. This is the 1100th edition of my 5-day a week newsletter, and to commemorate that milestone, I'm returning back to my favorite topic: how Google drives customers to your door, literally.
Google's free business listing service has morphed over the years from its original simple name of Maps, to Local, to Places, to +Local, and Places for Business. In April 2014, Google finished migrating all business accounts from the "Places" interface to the "Places for Business" inte... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is my 1000th Daily Golden Nugget. That's 1000 weekdays since I started writing them on July 26, 2010 with the headline "Google Maps can drive visitors directly to your doorstep, literally."
In honor of this achievement, I've spent the last 9 days detailing all the features within the redesigned Google Maps and Google Places for Business dashboard and how jewelers should be using them. I have a few more dashboard details to go over next week, but ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The discussion of today's Daily Golden Nugget was requested more than a year ago by a few of my daily readers, but it wasn't until recently that I could provide the correct answer to it.
The topic is how to use Google Places for Business if you are a personal jeweler or a jewelry professional working out of your house. Personal security is usually a bigger factor for these types of jewelers since they will often carry styles with them when visiting clients. ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Google Places can help you get found in local search results, but you'll get into trouble if you disobey the Google Places for Business quality guidelines.
Over the years, I've seen many jewelry stores using a lot of tricks to place higher in Google's ranking results. Perhaps the most common trick is changing your business name to include specific keywords.
Using the jewelry store name Perosi Jewelers, located in Totowa Borough, NJ, here are some examples of what some jewelers ha... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Google Maps will help people locate your business online, but sometimes those online reviews will chase people away screaming, instead of luring them to your door.
The power of the online review is undeniable now. I've read a few case studies about negative online reviews and the affect on a business, and I've had personal experience helping several businesses deal with the aftermath caused by horrible online reviews.
The legitimacy of online reviews has gone through some controversy over the last 4 ye... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
During the summer of 2013, as part of their product unification process, Google converted all YouTube accounts into Google+ accounts. This resulted in duplicate business pages on Google+ Page for several businesses. Now that Google is transitioning the old Places listings into the combined Google Places for Business and Google+, these same businesses now have a triplicate listing.
This is a bad situation that needs to be corrected and I'll explain why in this Daily Golden Nugget. I'm documentin... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
That's how it all began way back on Monday, July 26, 2010 with the first Daily Golden Nugget I wrote. It was only 147 words because, after all, it was only supposed to be a "nugget" of information. Many nuggets are now 10 times tha... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
It's the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The normal goal of these Friday reviews is to look at a website to see what we can learn from it, but this week I found something a little more interesting to review than simply a website.
I took a different approach to finding my review candidate this week. I started with the usually incognito mode of Google Chrome, but I changed my browser search location to Lawrence, KS by clicking the Search Tools button on the option menu and then cli... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Today is Daily Golden Nugget number 800! Daily Nugget #1 was a basic introduction to Google Maps on a smartphone and every 100 nuggets since then, jWAG has revisited Google Maps and how it works at that time.
Over the last 3 years we've seen many changes to how Google Maps functions, and we seen a few name changes too. "Maps" became "Places" but then "Places" became "Local." When using Google on a desktop you will find that Places has been merged into Google+ Pages. The whole technology is a little... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
It's happen ending even if you don't realize it, and if you realize I sure hope you are taking steps to accept it and use it for your benefit.
The internet is changing rapidly and it's because of mobile technology. You should be aware of the subtle differences between mobile technologies so you can continue to compete in this new age of business.
It's the evening of Saturday August 10, 2013 as I write this. I'm actually VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Who would have thought that the Daily Golden Nugget series would ever get this far? Today is Nugget Number 600! I have to warn you that this one is going to be a #longread compared to my usual.
My very first Nugget was about Google Maps and how it could drive customers directly to your store. Each multiple of 100 since then has also been about Google Maps, Google Local, Google Places, and Google+ Local. But today it seems I must now include a new interloper... Apple Maps.
In honor of our first Daily Golden Nugget we're going to revisit Google Places today. We've not spoken about it in a while, so it's time to get back to our favorite topic again.
Today's Nugget is a parallel conversation to yesterday's topic. We're going to search for "jewelry stores in Chicago" using Google Maps. Yesterday's discussion was the same search phrase in the regular Google Search.
Navigating our search over to maps.google.com, we see results showing the center of Chicago with Chicago Harbor and Lake Michigan. Google understands that the word "Chicago" is very specific and the results clearly state "jewelry stores near Chicago, IL" even though we didn't type in "IL."
The map shows dozens of little salmon colored dots for many jewelers in the Chicago area. The top ten result... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Today we're revisiting and updating our very first Gold Nugget published back on July 26, 2010.
Google Places drives foot traffic right to your door, but you have to set it up in order for it to work. We covered a full 90 minute session on setting up Google Places in our August 2010 Live 2 event (DVD is available on our website).
Today we're going to expand on some of the features of Google Maps and how it can tie together nicely with Google Places.
The maps service ( http://maps.google.com ) has a lot of features. We deal mostly with the Google Places aspect, but there's also a way to view user uploaded photographs for map, videos of the area, location/tour maps created by users and a whole lot more.
We want to call your attention to the uploaded photo feature. This is p... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Let's face it, our society would rather chat, email or google than have to deal with someone face to face. The telephone? Yuck! Who uses that any more?
When the random foot traffic passes your jewelry store for the first time they will peek at your window display and determine if you are worth their time, and money. They might see something of interest. The first time visitor is taking a chance on you; and they will probably have an aversion to spending until they trust you. The salesmanship g... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Because the Google Maps feature is so much more than getting printable driving directions from your computer.
Smart cell phones can download a mobile version of Google Maps which will lead customer right to your front door. Once your Google Places account is set up it is tied directly into the features of Google Maps. Then, whenever someone is in your neighborhood your jewelry store will appear as a little red pin on the map whenever someone searches for "jewelry."
Better yet, the person could be anywhere in the world planning a trip to your town, yet when they search for "jewelry" they well still see your little red pin on the map.VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
"...articles are easy to follow and seem to have information one can use right away." -Ann, Gallery 4, Hamden CT
"...serious kudos to you. We love your straight talk, pertinent information and plain language. I don't know how many industries have something of jWAG's caliber available, but I learn from the emails every day. Really, really nice work, and very appreciated." -Cheryl Herrick, Global Pathways Jewelry
Don't want to read? This week you can also watch the video recording of this review 
It's the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The normal goal of these Friday reviews is to look at a website to see what we can learn from it, but this week I found something a little more interesting to review than simply a website.
Today is Daily Golden Nugget number 800! Daily Nugget #1 was a basic introduction to Google Maps on a smartphone and every 100 nuggets since then, jWAG has revisited Google Maps and how it works at that time.
It's happen ending even if you don't realize it, and if you realize I sure hope you are taking steps to accept it and use it for your benefit.
Who would have thought that the Daily Golden Nugget series would ever get this far? Today is Nugget Number 600! I have to warn you that this one is going to be a #longread compared to my usual.
Let's face it, our society would rather chat, email or google than have to deal with someone face to face. The telephone? Yuck! Who uses that any more? 
