How to contact a real human at Google Support

and more local SEO tips

March 09, 2026

Happy belated International Women’s Day 🌷

Tell all the women in your life about these crazy local SEO tips 👇️

1. How to contact a real human at Google Support

Here’s a little trick most people don’t know about:

When you email Google Business Profile Support, the first reply you get will be automated. And if you respond to that email, you’ll get ANOTHER automated response. Google is clearly trying to reduce support costs, so they’ve automated most replies.

But if you reply to that second automated email, you will finally reach a real human.

So now you know, third time’s the charm. I hope that saves you some frustration.

@darrenshawseo

Ugh! Is there a way to contact a real human at Google Support? Yes, there is. Here’s a little trick most people don’t know about. When you... See more

No TikTok? Watch this video on Instagram.

2. A simple SEO tactic that can drive BIG results

Joy Hawkins recently shared a 10-step Local SEO Audit checklist, and one tip in there really stood out to me: Consolidate your navigation.

Many websites have cluttered navigation menus with too many pages competing for attention:

Instead of helping users, cluttered navigation menus often spread authority and traffic too thin across the site, confusing both people and Google.

Joy shared results from two real businesses that cleaned up their navigation and removed unnecessary links:

  • One saw traffic to remaining pages increase by 40%

  • Another saw 89% more traffic and a 25% increase in conversions

So, your SEO task for today is to take a look at your website navigation. If it’s cluttered, clean it up.

See what other local SEOs are saying about this tactic on LinkedIn.

3. We just launched an incredible competitor analysis feature in Local Ranking Grids

You can now instantly visualize your competitors on the map:

  • Who’s outranking you at that exact location

  • Where they’re physically located

  • How close (or far) they are from that grid point

  • How competitor clusters shift across the grid

You can even expand it from Top 10 all the way to Top 100 (we track rankings all the way to 100, unlike all of our outdated competitors).

This new feature makes proximity, density, and competition incredibly obvious and easy to explain to potential clients.

This data is incredibly valuable for:

  • Showing prospects exactly who is outranking them and how close those competitors are.

  • Spotting weak areas and competitive clusters on the map and adjusting your strategy accordingly.

  • Identifying areas where competitors are farther away and a new location could do really well.

This is one of those features that makes you look really smart on a sales call because instead of overexplaining rankings to potential clients, you can visually show them what’s happening in just a few clicks, and they instantly get it.

If you want to test the software for yourself, you can run 8 free 5×5 grid scans with our trial (no credit card required). Go click around. It’s actually fun 👇️

4. Catch up on the pod

How do you structure your page in such a way that Google’s AI cites it in its answers?

Dan Petrovic recently did some amazing technical research into Google’s “grounding snippets”, i.e. the sentences it selects from your page to then build its answer to the user’s query.

Claire and I discussed how grounding snippets work on last week’s episode of the Whitespark Local Update, plus:

  • Google’s Minimum Viable Content Refresh (Steve Toth)

  • Google is Nudging Reviewers to Edit Their Old Reviews (Claudia Tomina)

  • Reviews + The Real World: Learnings From Famed Restaurant Reviewer, Marilyn Hagerty (Miriam Ellis)

  • Updated Privacy Guidelines for Suspension & Reinstatement Requests (Vinay Toshniwal)

  • Careful With Google Business Profile Verification Flow (Claudia Tomina)

  • Whitespark’s New Google Business Profile Reinstatement Service 👀

Watch the full episode 👇️

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

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Darren

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