The Whitespark Local Update

Darren Shaw and Claire Carlile are back with another roundup of the biggest updates, insights, and conversations shaping local SEO and AI search, including:

📝 Google Business Profiles Asking Businesses For EIN (Barry Schwartz)

📝 A masterclass on how to set up AI prompt tracking the RIGHT way (Elizabeth Linder)

📝 More control over the ordering links on Google (Lisa Landsman)

📝 How to build topic clusters for SEO and AI search (Adam Tanguay)

📝 Google Business Home - New Google Business Profiles Home (Barry Schwartz)

📝 You need to update your About Us page (Lily Ray)

🔥 Whitespark Webinar

Whitespark Local Ranking Grids

Darren Shaw and Claire Carlile are back to break down the latest news, trends, and developments in local SEO and AI search, including:

📝 Can You Change The Order of Google Business Profile Photos? (Miriam Ellis)

📝 AI Picks the Shortlist: Are You Even Showing Up Locally? (Krystal Taing)

📝 The Local Customer Journey: What AI Has and Hasn't Changed (Duda Webinar with Greg Sterling, Mike Blumenthal, Claudia Tomina, & Gyi Tsakalakis)

📝 Google Business Profiles Verification With Government ID (Barry Schwartz)

📝 Is AI visibility a scam? (Rand Fishkin)

📝 Google Business Profiles Review Appeals Are Delayed Again (Barry Schwartz)

Additional Resources:

📝 Report Inappropriate Reviews on Your Business Profile

📝 GBP Review Appeal Delays

🔥 Whitespark Webinar

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Darren Shaw
Claire Carlile

Claire Carlile and Elizabeth Linder break down the biggest news and developments from the past week in local SEO, Google, and AI search, including:

📝 How to Coordinate AI Search Optimization Across Marketing Teams (Crawling Mondays by Aleyda)

📝 How to Coordinate AI Search Optimization Efforts Across Areas (Aleyda Solís)

📝 Google Business Profile Now Has Expanded Dietary Attributes (Lisa Landsman)

📝 You can search in Google Maps directly from Gemini (Andy Simpson)

📝 This Gemini Map feature solved my biggest search frustration in seconds (Haroun Adamu)

📝 How to segment SEO data for multi-location brands (Dayna Lucio)

📝 SparkToro Audience Quiz Tool (Rand Fishkin)

📝 Re-imagining AI Visibility KPIs in a Query Fan Out world (Wil Reynolds): https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/ai-visibility-kpis

📝 Track What You Can, Let Go of the Rest: Dana DiTomaso on Attribution After GA4 (Near Media, Dana DiTomaso)

Darren Shaw and Claire Carlile are back with another roundup of the news and updates shaping local SEO and AI search, including:

📝 Google Maps 2026 Fan-Favorite Dining List
📝 How to Use AI Mode’s Follow-Up Questions to Create Non-Commodity Local Service Content (Claudia Tomina)
📝 Your competitors’ negative reviews could improve your PPC ads (Laura I. Abreu)
📝 Re-imagining AI Visibility KPIs in a Query Fan Out world (Wil Reynolds)
📝 Google’s Policy Update (Hiroko Imai)
📝 AI and SPAM team up in Alabama and beyond… (Conrad Saam)

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📑 LinkedIn:
Darren Shaw: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenshawwhitespark/
Claire Carlile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairecarlile/

Claire Carlile is joined by Elizabeth Linder to cover the biggest stories and updates from the past week in local SEO, Google, and AI search, including:

📝 Google Business Profiles Policies Adds Misuse Of Support Channels (Barry Schwartz)

Google Business Profile third-party policies

📝 SEO & AI Tip: Grade Every Page the Way Google's Quality Raters Would, Then Map Them Semantically and Size Them by Clicks (Dan Hinckley)

📝 Why Customers Leave Good and Bad Google Reviews (Miriam Ellis)

📝 Earlier today I attended the GEO KNOW HOW conference. Here is everything I learned (Malte Landwehr)

📝 GEO Is CRO: Ross Hudgens on Chasing Influence, Not Citations, in AI Search (Near Media)

📝 How to Check What Google & LLMs See in Website HTML (Daniel Foley Carter)

Darren Shaw is joined by special guest Edward Sturm to break down the biggest local SEO, Google, and AI search news and updates from the past week, including:

📝 Hacking AI Overviews with LinkedIn Hashtags (Steve Toth)

📝 NotebookLM Parasite SEO (Gagan Ghotra)

📝 5 reasons why I'm skeptical of the entire AI tracking industry (Rand Fishkin)

📝 I Tracked 70K+ ChatGPT and AI Overview Responses to Measure Their Volatility (Glen Allsopp)

📝 King of AEO: The Exact Tactics Ranking Pages and Changing AI Overviews in Hours (Edward Sturm)

📝 How to check if AI has your content in its index (Myriam Jessier)

📝 Rank Faster With the Topical Authority You Already Have (Edward Sturm)

🔥 Compact Keywords
🗺️ Whitespark Local Ranking Grids

Darren Shaw and Claire Carlile break down the biggest local SEO, Google, and AI search updates from the past week, including:

📝 Google Business Profile Verification: Submit a Business Photo (Ben Fisher)

📝 Claude Project for Improving Information Gain for SEO (Steve Toth)

📝 The new rules of AI search (Crystal Carter)

📝 Study: How Keywords in Business Names Currently Impact Google Local Pack Rank and AI Search (Miriam Ellis)

📝 Has excessive use of AI slop knocked us back to an “anti-digital” age? (iPullRank newsletter, Carly Stoenner)

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📝 We Are Living in a ‘ChatGPT Flyer Pandemic’ (Jason Koebler)

📝 Side of slop? Bizarre AI food images jump from online to IRL menus (NBC News)

📝 Google is now asking about edits BEFORE they go live (Claudia Tomina)

Darren Shaw and Claire Carlile are here to unpack the latest local SEO news, updates, and takeaways, including:

📝 Wordfence Argus Finds Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Upload Vulnerability in Gravity Forms (Alex Thomas)

📝 The 2026 Local Discovery Index (SOCi)

📝 How to Grow Your Brand Authority for AI Search (GEO, AEO) (Crawling Mondays by Aleyda Solis)

📝 Practical guide to improving EEAT in your content (Steve Toth)

📝 We tracked 13,184 AI citations across 4 LLMs. Here’s what we learned… (Andy Crestodina, Bill Widmer)

📝 What SEOs Get Wrong About AI Search (Andy Crestodina)

Darren Shaw and Claire Carlile are back with the latest local SEO news, updates, and takeaways from the past week, including:

📝 “Tell Maps” is live! (Claudia Tomina)

📝 Google Business Profile Alert for Local SEOs & Agency Owners (Amy Toman)

📝 What 1.8 million Google Business Profiles tell us about local SEO success (Darren Shaw)

📝 The Best Persona Tool On the Web Is Now Live (Rand Fishkin)

📝 EP 270 - The Hidden Advantage: How Brand Awareness Decides the Click in Legal Search (Near Media, Mike Blumenthal)

📝 THE COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO MARKETING PERSONAS (iPullRank)

In this episode, Darren Shaw and Claire Carlile share the latest local SEO news, updates, and insights from the past two weeks:

📝 Breaking news: View Counts on Google Posts (Muhammad Hussain)

📝Hack to Get Activities on Your Google Business Profile (Claudia Tomina)

📝 Tactics for Building a Local Brand in the Age of AI Search — An Agency Panel (Near Media)

📝 How AI text watermarking works (James Padolsey)

📝 Why AI Search Won’t Rank This Website (Live Audit) (SterlingSky)

📝 Google Local Service Ads Now Pull Content Straight From Your Website (Ishan Gupta)

📝 Direct Traffic in GA4: What It Really Measures (and 10 Ways to Increase It) (Andy Crestodina)