From Selling Computers in Rural Markets to Throwing Away Nine Yellow Page Books

I asked Mike to tell me about the first point in getting into marketing. He's been in it for 44 years. What was that like?

He was working in a family business. He built a new division in the family business selling computers. They lived in an unusual market which only has 13,000 people in the immediate market. To get to a quarter million potential customers, they had to go out 60 miles.

So he had to learn how to find and target those people 60 miles away through a range of small towns and counties, rural counties, and businesses within that. That's what got him started.

Then he started selling computers. Ultimately, that led him to get into the internet in the late 1999. They built an early CMS content management system. They closed the retail business. He went into web hosting, web design in 2000.

It became clear to him that these websites sitting isolated on the internet without internet marketing were pretty useless. So he learned SEO in the early 2000s.

Then when Google released Google Maps in 2005, and particularly when they merged Google Maps and Google Local in late 2005, it was an epiphany.

Because he needed at that time nine Yellow Page books to identify clients, potential clients, and the market. He was able to throw away those nine Yellow Page books with great joy because he had a lot of resentment against the Yellow Page companies.

Early on, to him it was obvious that the Yellow Page companies were toast. It took them many years to actually get toasted, but it was clear that they were toast and that local digital marketing was going to invert everything.

The whole process where it used to be big companies sold locally on the internet was going to be able to allow little companies to sell globally on the internet. That was a very exciting prospect for him.

2005, 2006, he started writing about local SEO with his blog. From that, he made great friends, great acquaintances. David Mihm, Aaron Weiche, Don Campbell, Joy Hawkins along the way. Those people have been instrumental in helping him build businesses, sell businesses, help other businesses succeed.

The Switch That Wasn't as Fast as Expected

Mike really saw the whole evolution of marketing going digital. I asked him to tell me a little bit more of what that was like. Was it more of a slow process or did it feel like it all just hit at once?

Up until 2005, there really was very little internet local. There was some. CitySearch was around. AOL had sort of MapQuest. They had sort of early indicators that there's going to be both an advertising possibility in local as well as other free options.

Then there was this boom in the mid-2000s of all of these local sites that ultimately crashed and burned. Some are still around, but Yelp is still around. CitySearch is no longer. Insider Pages, no longer.

At that point, there was this battle as to who was going to control local internet. Google on the one hand took on the mapping companies of the world, MapQuest and Bing on one side. On the other side of that battle, they took on the listing companies like CitySearch and Insider Pages and the Yellow Pages.

Essentially, they used self-preference. In other words, they used maps to sell their listings to highlight their listings to compete with Yellow Pages. They sold their listings to their Maps users to compete with the maps.

By merging the two products, they were able to compete and ultimately destroy all of that value, all those companies and many others.

That switch Mike thought was going to happen quickly. He was naive enough to think that everybody could see how valuable local SEO was. But he started writing about it in 2006 quite religiously, mostly as a way for him to articulate his thinking, try to understand what was happening, do experiments publicly so they could be reviewed by his peers and together increase their understanding of local SEO.

He didn't get his first local SEO contract until 2011. But after that, fairly rapidly, 2011, 2012, 2013, the world inverted and local SEO became largely what it is today.

Why Less Than 50% of People Actually Read Reviews

Mike's been doing consumer behavior research at Near Media, and what they do is absolutely fascinating. They put together panels of 200, 300, 400 consumers. They give them a problem, like oh, you're moving next month, you have some excess furniture, you need to do something with it. Go to Google and solve your problem.

Then they watch. They put a piece of software on their phone or their computer. They videotape their behavior. They record their audio commentary. They tabulate all of that to understand what drives their behavior in different verticals.

They're seeing both what Google is presenting to these people, which nobody really gets to see in real time, as well as how people respond to it.

Most understanding comes from after-the-fact analytics or some large-scale million URL study that looks at averages. They look at specific verticals and specific behaviors within those verticals to really understand what drives decision-making.

It was very enlightening for Mike. He's been doing this a fair bit of time, and every research project ends up surprisingly. Consumer behavior is infinitely variable. It varies depending on exactly what it is they need, how important it is in their life.

They're finding that virtually every category has a different set of behaviors. If you imagine sort of a six-pointed spider chart of some sort, in one vertical it's going to weight very heavily in one direction, another vertical in another.

For example, price and proximity. If you look at storage, price and proximity are key drivers. Reviews are important but only important as an eliminator. They're not important as a primary decision-maker.

People will find places that are nearby and have some deal, and then maybe they'll find four or five, which is common. People want choice. Then they'll eliminate a couple based on the reviews. So in that context, reviews are just sort of a secondary impact.

Whereas in physicians, they looked at OBGYN and general practitioners. People will go 20 deep in the local finder to find the top three or four or five physicians in their area and then use other criteria to pick between them, using reviews to pick.

In that particular vertical, they saw very deep long tail in the local finder. So positions 4 through 20 were wildly busy if you had good photos and good reviews. Then once they found those four or five, they'd use other criteria to pick. Did they have my insurance? Were they available, taking new appointments? Do they look like me?

This whole decision process, reviews were critical.

Now interestingly, less than 50% of the people actually read the reviews. They use star ratings and quantity of reviews as a proxy for quality. Sometimes they'll do brand searches to get a holistic picture of the reviews, but very few people actually read the reviews.

"I think um most businesses think that every written review is going to change the you know their existential reality and they come into the Google forums um where I Vol have been volunteering since 2007 you know just draw that they got negative review and oh my God their life's going to go to hell in a hand basket and you know the reality is that people don't read them most people don't read them so uh you know you have to worry less and do your job better and you'll get good reviews," Mike explained.

The Biggest Ranking Signal: Click-Through and Dwell Time

The problem with almost all of the current SEO tools, and well, the problem with analytics, is it's statistical analysis after the fact. You can change something and maybe see a result in analytics, but you have no idea if that correlation is causal. You change something, who knows what else changed? You get a different result.

SEO tools all have an underlying theory of how SEO works, and those theories drive those numbers. Things like domain prominence. These are numbers that Google doesn't use. They're designed as proxies, but you put too many proxies together and you end up with garbage because you're making too many assumptions about the reality.

Mike's looking at the reality and then making conclusions based on that. So it's a totally different approach to understanding how your vertical works.

The lessons we learn in SEO, he'll go read his blog, he'll say XYZ is important. Every spammer and local SEO will do it. Darren Shaw will do it. Joy will do it. But what people don't realize is it's only important in that particular context for that particular business in that particular location.

Local is all about this sort of uniqueness of the business in that contextual situation where the person with a phone is maybe driving down the road. Nobody else is ever going to do the search in the exact same position. Every vertical you're in is going to be different, and the rank of the important things is different.

Now in aggregate, you'll see certain things crop up over and over again. But they just finished some research in a home service business overseas. What was amazing was the frequent depth of the click-through rates to the websites and how most users, 70%, ended up clicking through to the websites.

In this home remodeling vertical, they wanted before-and-after pictures. They wanted to see if the style and the tastes of this company were compatible with the style and tastes of the searcher.

It was just fascinating because it's hard to know exactly what drives consumers.

At some point, with the Google leaks that came out and the Google Department of Justice revelations, it became clear that Google doesn't really understand the page that the user is going to. They understand that the user clicked to that page, and they understand that the user spent time on that page.

It became clear from all of this that that click to the home remodeling site and the time they spent on the page because they had great photos, before and after, in style, whatever, it became clear that that's the biggest ranking signal.

Not inbound links. Not blog posts. Not any of this other stuff. But whether the users found your title tags and meta descriptions significant enough to click, and once they got there, whether they stuck around to pay attention to what you had on offer.

"That's probably 30% of the ranking algorithm and it that knowledge that understanding which is only now hitting local SEO seos in general should cause every marketer to reframe how they're thinking about local SEO," Mike said.

We have a problem in our industry, and Mike calls it the silver bullet problem. Somebody will write a blog post about how this is a ranking factor, that's a ranking factor, and we're all looking for that little edge. We'll implement this link, we'll get links or whatever we do, we'll buy links.

Meanwhile, we neglected fundamental basic things like a great meaningful title tag and a great meaningful meta description and a great picture that shows on a mobile search result that's semantically related to the content. When users get to our website, they stay there because they find it valuable and it helps them make a decision.

That reversal, that inversion. We used to think, oh, getting a high rank is what's going to cause people to click through and get them to stay. It's the other way around. Getting people to click through and stay on your site is causing high rank.

Every marketer, every business needs to understand that.

It's the same with reviews. Got to get more reviews. No, you don't have to get more reviews. You hit 10, you get the ranking boost. But then what? Then you need to extract as much intelligence as you can get from your customers, and you need to get a continual stream of reviews.

But you don't need 10 gazillion. You don't have to worry if one gets lost, two get lost, or you get a negative one. You have to run a great business, understand what consumers think about you is what makes it great, keep doing that, keep getting reviews so that Google and consumers can see that your business has a heartbeat.

They see consumer behavior. They're looking for some minimum number in your market, in your vertical. If everybody's got 80 reviews, you need 80 reviews to be competitive.

The standard has increased over the years. Consumers seem to think 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9 are the sweet spot for minimum consideration. You don't need to worry about 5. You don't need to worry about a thousand reviews. You need to worry about being competitive and then you need to worry about running a great business.

Web References in the Google Leak

I asked Mike if there was anything surprising that he found in the Google data leak, anything that maybe he wasn't expecting.

The frequency of the use of the words "web references."

Back in the early days of Google Local, they had the local business center and the local results page. On the local results page, like right now when you go into a business profile, you'll see the summary at the top, the pictures below that, you'll see some organic links.

In the original version of Google Local, these links were called web references. What was fascinating about them was that they did not require links. They were strictly references to the business that Google had enough information that they could associate with the business.

Whether it was a review on some third-party site, whether it was a mention of your business in the New York Times, whether it was something else. It may have a link, but it didn't necessarily need a link.

They could go back, they could look, they could check, they could see all the top web references Google was showing. They could see as far back as 2007, 2008 that Google was ranking businesses based on web references. In other words, not links per se, but Google's understanding of a mention of a business.

That mention was broadly defined. It wasn't limited to a certain type of link or whatever.

When you go back and you look at that leak and you search on the word "references," you find them everywhere.

In a world of entities where we're worried about things, not strings, as Google used to say, and we're ranking an entity in a knowledge graph, so my business becomes an entity in the knowledge graph, that knowledge graph entry is ranked based on whatever criteria Google's going to use.

My web page, my rank on Yelp, my articles in the New York Times, all of those web references accumulate in this knowledge graph pointing to my business.

The point of that is that public relations as we've historically known it is just as valuable now as it ever was then. That Google doesn't distinguish between a reference to your business that has a link or doesn't have a link.

Now a link may increase Google's understanding of your business by maybe referring to some service that is useful or helpful to them to understand it, but links are not the end-all be-all in Google's understanding of your business. Web references are.

Web references could be viewed as brand mentions. There's just enough information that with a link, they know it's your business because they can see it. But with something beyond a link, it's got to be more explicit.

I told Mike I'm actually so glad he mentioned that because I have been preaching that but kind of hypothetically and just on a whim. I actually did not know that was in the Google data leak, but I just kind of intuitively knew that if people are mentioning your business or maybe your name, whatever the entity is, in various sources, that's going to boost the entity, especially if it is other authoritative entities.

I've kind of done that with my personal brand where I'm now associating with other high-level people like Mike. So now, even though I will make a blog about this, even just mentioning his name and having him mention mine establishes a clear connection between me and him.

Most people don't even understand that, but that's like maybe 50% of why I do this podcast: to boost my entity and my agency's entity.

Mike said exactly. Solve the problems. Yeah, we're only half hour in though.

Why Feedback Matters More Than Reviews

Mike told me about the research he's been doing. I asked if he can tell me more about that. So that's in person. Do you have a group of people in a room? How does that go?

No. They contract with a company that assembles people across the geography they're looking for. So they do research in the United States, Canada, Europe, United Kingdom. They work with this company that helps them find panelists. They agree to the terms.

Depending on the country you're in, it might be different terms. They install a little widget on their desktop or mobile device that allows them to give them a task and then record video and audio of their actions as they move through the task.

They can see what searches they're doing, how many searches they make, which things attract them, what things do they verbally say are important to them. How often, for example, do they say, "I'm an ad skeptic"? Roughly 20% of the people say they're ad skeptics, that they won't even read the ads.

Now interestingly, when they see that, it turns out to not be totally true. What they say isn't always reflected in their action. Sometimes they go back and click at it.

Particularly they saw in the legal space, they were doing research for an employment lawyer. What they saw in that case, which employment law, you have a serious problem at work, a really big life decision. It's not like a restaurant where you're going to go once and maybe don't have to go back if you make a mistake. You're only out the $50 or whatever.

Finding an employment lawyer is a much bigger life decision. People are more likely in that kind of situation to go to a website. So they saw, I think it was 55% of the people went to a website, maybe 45% went into the local finder, and maybe 5% from an ad.

But when Google then introduced a local service ad into that mix, it switched to a third organic, a third local, and a third local service ads. User behaviors dramatically switched from one way of looking to a different way of looking because Google included the Google Guarantee, the image, the review stars, the years in business.

These are all things in this particular vertical, in this particular need, that matter to people. Years in business are incredibly important to somebody whose job and life is essentially on the line.

Their behaviors changed dramatically. Those are the kinds of things they can see, and you can't see them otherwise.

I told Mike that feedback from customers is probably more important than reviews. That's why they designed GatherUp with NPS score and first-party feedback at its core because you're going to get 30 times the feedback of first-party feedback as you're going to get in any review process.

Some people don't want to do public reviews. They don't want to speak ill of you. They don't feel comfortable going out leaving a review, but they will give you direct feedback.

To Mike, the beauty of reviews, whether it's first-party or third-party, is that collection of feedback so that you really can understand which employees are doing great.

You don't really want to be steering it any more than he wants to steer his research. It is the best research you have into the hive mind of your consumers: first-party review content.

You want to just make it easy for them to do it. What reviews you get, yeah, Google is great, but make it super easy for them to do. Take what you get and build it into the process.

You meet the customer, you give them a quote, they agree to do it. You say to them, "Mr. Customer, if you're happy with our work or even if you're not, we're going to ask you to give us feedback. We hope you'll take the time to do that." So you get a social commitment from them early on.

When the worker finishes the job, he confirms that. Either here's a QR code, or we hope that you're satisfied and would leave us feedback. That's followed up with an email or two.

Right now Mike's getting texts from his vet and his doctor and his dentist. They're asking for reviews every time. He doesn't want to give his dentist a review every time. They're not asking for feedback. How many times can you ask for reviews? You can always ask for feedback.

Make it smooth. Build it in. Take what you get on the review site, but focus more on the incredible insights you're going to get from feedback. You'll be able to tell which employees are good, which ones are average. You'll be able to tell which processes your company is not doing well.

There's a saying in the customer experience world that a complaint is the building block of a better business.

The problem is reviews do not solicit complaints. Feedback does. People don't feel comfortable complaining in public as a general rule. Now some percentage do clearly, because otherwise there wouldn't be any negative reviews. But it takes a lot to push a person to leave a public negative review socially. They've got to really be wronged.

The benefit of feedback is not only do you get that information early where you can fix it, but you can fix it for that customer, but you can fix it for every future customer as well. You don't get that with reviews.

To Mike, a process that includes both first-party feedback and reviews is the optimal process.

My Main Takeaway

The biggest thing I learned from Mike is that less than 50% of people actually read your reviews. They use star ratings and quantity of reviews as a proxy for quality. Sometimes they'll do brand searches to get a holistic picture, but very few people actually read the reviews. Most businesses think that every written review is going to change their existential reality. They come into the Google forums freaking out that they got a negative review and oh my God, their life's going to go to hell in a handbasket. The reality is people don't read them. Most people don't read them. So you have to worry less and do your job better and you'll get good reviews. Stop obsessing over every single review and start obsessing over running a great business. That's what actually matters.

The second takeaway is that clicking through to your site and staying there is 30% of the ranking algorithm. Not inbound links. Not blog posts. Not any of this other stuff. Whether users found your title tags and meta descriptions significant enough to click, and once they got there, whether they stuck around to pay attention to what you had on offer. That's the biggest ranking signal. We have a silver bullet problem in our industry where we're all looking for that little edge. We'll buy links, we'll do this, we'll do that. Meanwhile, we neglected fundamental basic things like a great meaningful title tag and a great meaningful meta description and a great picture that shows on mobile. That reversal, that inversion. We used to think getting a high rank is what's going to cause people to click through. It's the other way around. Getting people to click through and stay on your site is causing high rank. Every marketer needs to understand that.

The third insight is that web references in the Google leak matter more than links. Google was ranking businesses based on web references as far back as 2007, 2008. Not links per se, but Google's understanding of a mention of a business. That mention was broadly defined. Whether it was a review on some third-party site, whether it was a mention in the New York Times, whether it was something else. It may have a link, but it didn't necessarily need a link. Public relations as we've historically known it is just as valuable now as it ever was then. Google doesn't distinguish between a reference to your business that has a link or doesn't have a link. Web references could be viewed as brand mentions. Links are not the end-all be-all. Web references are.

The fourth thing that struck me is that first-party feedback is 30 times more valuable than reviews. Some people don't want to do public reviews. They don't want to speak ill of you. They don't feel comfortable leaving a review, but they will give you direct feedback. The beauty of first-party feedback is you're going to get 30 times the feedback as you're going to get in any review process. You can tell which employees are good, which ones are average. You can tell which processes your company is not doing well. A complaint is the building block of a better business. Reviews do not solicit complaints. Feedback does. The benefit of feedback is you get that information early where you can fix it for that customer and for every future customer. A process that includes both first-party feedback and reviews is the optimal process.

The fifth lesson is that consumer behavior is infinitely variable, and every vertical is different. Mike's been doing this for 40+ years, and every research project ends up surprisingly different. In storage, price and proximity are key drivers. Reviews are only important as an eliminator. In physicians, people will go 20 deep in the local finder and use reviews to pick. In home remodeling, 70% clicked through to websites to see before-and-after pictures and style compatibility. You can't just pick one thing out of pest control research and apply it to lawyers or doctors or restaurants. Every category has a different set of behaviors. That's why doing actual consumer behavior research with 100 to 200 participants watching them accomplish tasks in real time is the only way to truly understand what drives decision-making in your vertical. Analytics and SEO tools are statistical analysis after the fact. Mike's looking at the reality and making conclusions based on that.

If you want to learn more from Mike, check out NearMedia.co where he writes regularly. They have a newsletter there. His back library is at MikeBlumenthal.com where there's 15 years of backstory. One of the fascinating things is as he periodically goes back and looks at the ranking factors from 2007, they're largely the same as the ranking factors in 2017 and 2024. You can find him on LinkedIn as Mike Blumenthal and on Twitter as MBlumenthal. He has an open email inbox at MBlumenthal@NearMedia.co. If you have a question, if it's going to be extensive, he'll let you know. If it's something he can answer quickly for you, he'll be glad to do it pro bono. Mike's journey from throwing away nine Yellow Page books in 2005 to doing cutting-edge consumer behavior research today is proof that the fundamentals haven't changed as much as we think, and the businesses that focus on running a great business instead of chasing silver bullets will always win.