Recent content by whitespark

Yeah, I think it was accidentally pushed to production and then they pulled it down.

It’s just that everyone seems to get different results. Doesn’t matter if it’s a tool, or your neighbor, or even your wife in your own house. But each person’s results appear to stay more or less stable. Thus, you can’t compare what a tool sees against what a human sees and claim one is more...

Can confirm that rankings are increasingly volatile these days. There is no single set of rankings. Pretty much every person and every tool gets different results.

I noticed this too, but we track Maps, not local finder, so it hasn't impacted our software.

Hey Syed. I don't think it will cause any problems with rankings for visibility or suspensions. It's just a limit of the API.

Hi @Syed Amir, 1. Our Local Rank Tracker tracks local packs, Google Maps, and organic rankings. Our Local Ranking Grids tracks Google Maps at the time of writing this, but other interfaces are on our roadmap. 2. We do not use the API for data. We get it from the localized search results...

I think it's totally fine to list the same in both sections.

The guidelines say don't do it, but everyone does it, and I have never heard of anyone getting a penalty. Doesn't mean they won't start penalizing for it later, but honestly, they have much more important spam issues to solve before they give this one any attention.

See attached for how I answered this in my Reddit AMA. You might want to review the rest of the Q&A. There’s lots of gold there. https://www.reddit.com/r/whitespark/s/seDqVsMiw0

The service areas do not have any impact on rankings. All they do is show the user where you're willing to travel to. Setting them in GBP will not help you rank in those areas.

I have yet to see any compelling evidence that schema provides any value for AI SEO. Mark Williams-Cook did an interesting test where he showed that while content within the schema does get picked up, it still does even if it's totally fake schema. The conclusion is that the LLMs strip out all...

You could consider the Whitespark Local Citation Finder: https://whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/

It could cause confusion/merges if you're trying to create a new profile with the same number. It's best to set it up with a new number and make that number forward to your real number. You can get a new number at many online sources, like phone dot com, NumberBarn, CallRail.

There is only one way to move an SAB. Here's how: https://www.sterlingsky.ca/move-your-sab-without-destroying-rankings/

There is always a risk of reverification, but in my experience, it's a low risk on name changes. It's almost guaranteed with address changes, it's likely with phone changes, and it's possible (but low risk) with name changes. It also seems to be even lower risk to do the name change through...