Local search and reviews analysis from Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal.
No Google update is rolling out. Last: September 2026 spam update, finished Oct 8, 2026 · Google algorithm update history with rollout times →
Local search and reviews analysis from Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal · 12 stories
Publisher
Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal dig into a study of Google review removals and why review spikes get punished, Siri's new local search in iOS 27.2, Google's Let's Confirm Its in Stock inventory…
Read on Near Media →New Data on Review RemovalsReview management tool Reviewflowz and Cartelis published a study of Google review-removal patterns. They tracked nearly 5 million reviews in the US and European countries…
Read on Near Media →Garrett French, Valerie Cecil and James Wirth of Citation Labs tell Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal how a link-building agency rebuilt itself for AI visibility: satellite comparison sites, query…
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on Near Media →Dana DiTomaso of Kick Point tells Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal why attribution was always a little fictional, how much of your traffic you can really track, and the GA4 fixes, brand-search…
Read on Near Media →Study: Why People Leave Bad Reviews Basic communication and service failures are responsible for a majority of bad reviews. By the same token, good service and transparent pricing generally result in…
Read on Near Media →Garrett French, James Wirth and Valerie Cecil of Citation Labs talk to us about how they measure AI visibility across six layers, build the prompts worth tracking, and replace the stale facts AI…
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on Near Media →AI visibility is downstream of real-world influence — reviews, third-party mentions, brand demand and pages that make the decision easy — so the teams that chase today's citation sources will lose…
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on Near Media →Andrew Shotland & Mark Kabana join us for Part 2 to discuss what "AI visibility" actually is as an agency product, why nobody can tie it to revenue yet, and how ads are quietly taking the clicks that…
Read on Near Media →Andrew Shotland & Mark Kabana join us fresh off Brighton SEO for a wide-ranging, no-fixed-agenda convo about what the conference said about local's place in the industry, why a single search rank is…
Read on Near Media →We take a first look at new consumer-journey research Near Media ran for Lastmile Retail, work through the EU's DMA self-preferencing decision, an audit of Google's hotel results in Europe versus the…
Read on Near Media →Damian Rollison, Senior Director of Market Insights at SOCi, joins us to walk through SOCi's third annual consumer study whose headline finding is that local discovery no longer runs in a straight…
Read on Near Media →Lake Ontario FiascoAs trade negotiations with Canada fell apart, Trump issued an order renaming Lake Ontario "Lake America" A petty rebuke, it follows a similar episode in January 2024, when Trump…
Read on Near Media →Last refreshed Oct 30, 2026 · 1:15 AM · Subscribe to our combined RSS feed
