E2: SAB Verification, Bing Review Sites, Keyword Stuffing TikTok

and more stuff you missed from last week

September 09, 2025

Hi,

Here’s your weekly dose of local SEO news and advice 👇️

1. New episode of The Whitespark Local Update Podcast

This week, Claire and I discuss:

  • How to verify a service area business on Google (Elizabeth Rule)

  • New research on how to diversify reviews to rank in ChatGPT (Miriam Ellis)

  • Important updates to the Google Business Profile guidelines (Barry Schwartz)

  • The move from search optimization to “answer optimization” (Dana DiTomaso)

  • and more

Watch it here 👇️ 

🎧 Or if you prefer listening, you can find it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

P.S. We’d love love love it if you leave us a review or a comment on whichever platform you use — it would really help us! 🙏

2. Do this to avoid video verification for a new business

Follow the checklist below to get everything set up properly before claiming your Google Business Profile.

This way, you will be much more likely to get additional verification options such as phone, text, email, or maybe even the magical ✨instant verification✨

Save this checklist as a PDF here.

3. Some BAD advice from Google 🙄

Google says that if you have acquired a business and need to update the Google Business Profile, you need to create a new Google Business Profile.

OMG don’t do that! You’ll lose all your reviews and have to start from scratch with your local SEO.

Here’s a much better way to approach this 👇️

4. Surprising citation site you've probably been ignoring

Yellowpages. Hear me out:

  • In the Bing review sources research Miriam and I published last week, Yellow Pages ranked 5th overall (and even higher in some industries).

  • It still shows up in organic results: If you search “plumbers in Denver” you’ll likely see it near the top.

  • In Europe, Google often displays Yellow Pages reviews on Google Business Profiles.

So, clearly, it's still heavily referenced by major search engines and LLMS. And the fact that Google is still indexing it indicates that it still holds value.

So, here’s what you should do:

  1. Claim your listing.

  2. Make sure the information on the listing is accurate.

  3. Make sure your listing is fully optimized (fill out every field, add videos, add photos).

  4. Start sending a few review requests to your Yellow Pages listing (maybe every 10th review request)

This will improve your ranking position on YellowPages, and in turn give you a bit more prominence on Google and AI search.

Easy win.

See this post on LinkedIn.

Darren

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