The Whitespark Local Update

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)

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

📝 Links back in GBP products populated via product editor (Claire Carlile)

📝 Whitespark Analyzed GBP Review Questions for 765 Businesses (Miriam Ellis)

📝 Yelp Licenses Its Review, Photo, and Request-a-Quote Data to ChatGPT ((Krystal Taing)

📝 You Need to Nail Your “Brand Facts” (Cyrus Shepard)

📝 New GBP Feature: Report Owner Response (Vinay Toshniwal, Jacek N. Kozio)

📝 15 Tips for Winning in LLMs (Suganthan Mohanadasan)

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

This week, Darren Shaw and Claire Carlile break down the biggest local SEO stories, including:

📝 These SEO Strategies Drive 90% of Your AI Visibility (Cyrus Shepard)

📝 Low-Effort Leap in Local SEO: Target a 2nd Language on Your Site with a Plugin (Phil Rozek)

📝 How to Generate High Quality Leads Through Your Website (Exposure Ninja)

📝 Google’s LLM patent suggests a new goal for SEO: Teaching AI who you are (Rich Sanger)

📝 Why you need to "TikTokify" your Google Ads (Talia Wolf and Jyll Saskin Gales)

📝 I made my nail lady open her Google Ads account before I left the chair (Ameet Khabra)

This week, Darren Shaw and Claire Carlile are unpacking the local SEO stories you need to know, including:

📝 Claiming a Service Area Business (SAB) has changed (Vinay Toshniwal)

Request ownership of a Business Profile

📝 Why Google Business Profile address changes can disrupt local rankings (Claudia Tomina on Search Engine Land)

📝 Who Owns Your Google Business Profile? The Complete Guide to Ownership, Security, Transfers & Recovery (Ben Fisher)

📝 AI Overview 6-pack (Joy Hawkins)

📝 AI Is Killing Content: The Only Way to Win (Ross Simmonds, SterlingSky)

📝 Reddit Keyword Research with Claude: 3 Levels From Beginner to Pro (Usman Akram)

🔥 Whitespark Local Ranking Grids
This week, Darren Shaw is joined by special guest Amy Toman to break down the local SEO stories you need to know, including:

📝 Hack to Move the Map Pin for an SAB (Mika Lepisto)

📝 Warning About GBP Review Management (Amy Toman)

📝 AI Search Visibility & Ranking Factors - For 1,100 Market Segments

📝 Massive Correlation Study of LLM Ranking Factors (Ben Wills)

📝 Google Review Not Posted (Amy Toman)

📝 What Local Brand Actually Means to Google and AI (Near Media Podcast with Cyrus Shepard)

📝 Two Types of GBP Blocks (Amy Toman): article not yet published.

🔥 Whitespark Local Platform