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Largely uncovered in the news, Amazon has announced a new program, Local Selling, that allows local merchants selling on Amazon to apply for the ability to take an order on Amazon and deliver curbside from their location or to deliver via their own delivery process. Clearly this is a response to Google’s successful push of Product Merchant center into local and might lead to additional local relationships for Amazon. 

Google is understanding more and more about the content of images using their Cloud Vision AI and this understanding of entities, labels, logos, sentiment and text is being leveraged to use images to answer searcher intent in ads, local and the mobile web results. This is part of a long arc where Google will now start using images to not just answer queries but to ask them as well using their new MUM AI/ML and is likely part of their AR future. 

 Google Local has been “stealing” local conversions for years. Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky recently reported that Google local leads are both the dominant source for leads as well as the fastest growing source for leads for most of the verticals that she works in. What does this mean 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 39

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