How to Build Your Brand Online by Tom Ward #438
How to Build Your Brand OnlineAre you looking to build your brand online? Check out Matt’s Book “Build Your Brand Mania”.
Ecommerce SEO
Universal Search, Yelp Review and SEO - #seopodcast 115
Google removed third-party review snippets from Local Places pages, showing only Google user reviews, while Universal Search favors Google-owned products like YouTube and Maps for top rankings.
Key takeaways
- Google removed Yelp and CitySearch review snippets from Places pages, replacing them with a prompt for Google user reviews.
- In Universal Search, Google or Google products took four of the top five category slots, missing only in news results.
- Using YouTube for video and Google Maps for embeds on your site may help rankings because Google favors its own products.
- Google Plus One signals on specific search result pages may act similarly to reviews for local ranking purposes.
- WP e-commerce caused major client problems with Authorize.net integration; Cart 66 is recommended as a working alternative.
review snippets from other web sources have now been removed from place pages. Rating and review counts reflect only those that have been written by fellow Google users.
About this episode
In this podcast we discuss WP-Ecommerce solutions specifically WP-Ecommerce and the horrible experience we have had with this product and support for this product. We also discuss Universal Search and how it changes SEO. Finally we discuss reviews and specifically Yelp reviews and how these reviews can affect your SEO efforts. The most popular Internet Marketing Podcast on iTunes. E-Webstyle provides Houston SEO .
Questions this episode answers
Why did Google remove Yelp reviews from Google Places pages?
Google's Places product manager stated that after careful thought and user feedback, review snippets from third-party sites were removed so that ratings and review counts reflect only Google user reviews. Google still provides links to external review sites like Yelp so users can find comprehensive information.
What types of content win in Google Universal Search?
According to a Search Engine Land article by Barry Schwartz discussed in this episode, Google or Google products took four of the top five Universal Search category slots, covering video, maps, shopping, and images. News was the one category where Google did not come first, with the Wall Street Journal appearing instead.
Is WP e-commerce a reliable WordPress shopping cart plugin for Authorize.net?
Based on this episode, WP e-commerce had serious compatibility problems with Authorize.net through their Gold Cart premium upgrade. The hosts experienced unresolved support issues and a broken ticket system, and instead recommend Cart 66 as a WordPress shopping cart that worked correctly on first install.
In their words
if you're going to use Google products and Google products, Google interfaces, then we're going to give you a little bit more credit, a little more value to whatever it is that you're doing.
Host
If that content hadn't been scraped, a whole lot of their visitors would have never visited or even known about Yelp.
Host
Terms defined in this episode
- Universal Search
- Google search results that blend multiple content types such as video, images, maps, news, and shopping into a single results page, with Google favoring its own products in most categories.
- Google Local Places
- Google's local business listing pages, which previously showed third-party review snippets from sites like Yelp but now show only reviews written by Google users.
- Plus One
- A Google social signal where users endorse a search result or page, which the hosts suggest may carry ranking value similar to a review, especially for local listings.
- Gold Cart
- A paid premium upgrade for the WP e-commerce WordPress plugin, costing forty dollars, intended to enable integration with payment processors like Authorize.net.
Full transcript is being added.
This episode answers
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint
Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG™ (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.
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