Your New Favorite Local SEO Podcast Just Dropped 👀

Hello hello,

Here’s what you might have missed from last week 👇️

But first… BIG news for the local SEO community 🎊 

1. Whitespark’s new weekly local SEO podcast just dropped 🎉

Claire Carlile and I just launched our brand new local SEO podcast - The Whitespark Local Update!

Every week, we’ll bring you a handpicked roundup of the latest must-read and must-watch local SEO news - all in one quick, easy episode.

In our first episode, we cover:

• iPullRank’s AI Search Manual

• Dan Petrovic’s deep dive into Chrome’s Semantic Engine

• Dan’s schema test with ChatGPT

• Chat Clicks in GBP Performance Metrics

• The new GBP Posts dashboard

• Whitespark’s Local Ranking Grids

🎥 You can watch the whole first episode on Whitespark’s YouTube channel.

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

We’d love to hear what you think of the first episode, so leave us a review (please 🙏) or drop a comment on YouTube.

2. One of my favorite functionalities of our new Local Rankings Grids is that… 👇

They basically tell you WHY you’re ranking worse (or better) than your competitors.

Our “Explore and compare” feature not only shows your grid side by side with any chosen competitor, but also displays key GBP info to help you understand why you’re ranking better/worse:

• Map pin location

• Business name

• Review score (star rating and number of reviews)

• Primary and additional categories

• Business hours and whether the business was open or closed during the scan

This comparison feature makes it infinitely easier to find areas of improvement and subsequently outrank your competitors.

Oh, and you might have noticed that we track up to 100 positions, so you’re not limited to the 20+ ranking positions other tools give you.

Go check it out (no credit card required) 👍

3. Want to rank in ChatGPT? Focus on these review sites (New Research)

Do you get reviews on Yellowpages, Angi, and Porch? You might want to start if you want your local business to be recommended by ChatGPT 👇

If you ask ChatGPT why it recommends specific companies, it will tell you that it’s because of their reviews. There has been a lot of speculation lately about whether ChatGPT uses Google data or not, but research by Joe Youngblood shows that it relies HEAVILY on Bing Places data.

So, Miriam Ellis and I did some research on which review platforms Bing Places references in their results. Here’s the gist:

• Facebook is king

• Yelp and TripAdvisor are great for some categories

• Other categories rely primarily on Angi, Porch, Houzz, and other platforms you probably haven’t heard of

If you’re curious about where you need to get reviews for your specific category, Google “Whitespark blog” and read Miriam Ellis’s latest blog post.

See this post on LinkedIn.

Darren

P.S. Whitespark can help you ⬇️

😍 Visualize your local search performance on the most beautiful ranking grids

🚨 Get notified when Google updates your GBP and reject unwanted changes

🚀 Increase your local rankings and conversions

📈 Track rankings across different zip/post-codes

⭐️ Get more reviews

🧹 Clean up and build citations

🔍 Find citation opportunities

✍️ Learn local SEO for free

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