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)Follow us on LinkedIn ❤️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

This week, Claire Carlile and special guest Julian Hooks cover the latest local SEO news, including:📝 The State of Local SEO in 2026 (Joy Hawkins, Sterling Sky)📝 Why Your Google Reviews Disappear (Ex-Googlers Explain) (SterlingSky, Brad Wetherall)📝 Where AI agents get stuck on your site (Kevin Indig)📝 New Google Reviews Bug: You Have No Reviews Yet (Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable)📝 Build your own AI search visibility tracker for under $100/month (Julian Hooks)📝 AI Prioritization Framework for SEOs (Elizabeth Linder)

This week, Claire Carlile is joined by special guest Dayna Lucio to discuss the latest local SEO news and updates, including:📝 See how content from social and video platforms performs on Google Search📝 AI summaries of Tripadvisor hotel reviews downplay serious complaints, investigation finds (Robert Booth)📝 Why TikTok deserves a place in your SEO strategy (Celeste Gonzalez)📝 AI Traffic vs AI Citations: What Clicks and Cited Pages Show About the AI Search Journey (Aleyda Solis)📝 Building a brand worth finding: Signals that fuel discovery (Beth Nunnington)📝 AI Workflows for Local SEO (Amanda Jordan)

This week, Claire Carlile is joined by special guest Krystal Taing to break down the local SEO stories you need to know, including:📝 June 2026 AI Search News (Caroline Green, Carolyn Wilborn)📝 New Gemini Features for Small Businesses | Grow with Google📝 AI's brain is getting bloated with AI content (Megan Morrone)📝 How to safely implement high-impact technical SEO changes (Dayna Lucio)📝 Google AI Overviews Study Finds Lost Clicks Weren’t Lower Quality (Matt G. Southern)📝 AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools

🔥 Whitespark Local Ranking Grids 🔥This week, Darren Shaw and Claire Carlile are unpacking the local SEO stories you need to know, including:📝 Connect your Google Business Profile to Gemini📝 The Review Gap: Finding Client Opportunities In Competitor Feedback (Celeste Gonzalez on the Search Engine Journal Blog) 📝 GBP Help pages have been revised (Hiroko Imai)📝 Google is bringing back GBP Messaging - with an AI chatbot for your business (Darren Shaw)

This week on The Whitespark Local Update, Darren Shaw and Claire Carlile break down the latest local SEO news, including:📝 Study: How Review Profiles Impact Brand AI Visibility (Trustpilot and Seer Interactive)📝 This is the AI prompt you need to track and aren't (Wil Reynolds)📝 The Click Is Now Optional. Here’s What Isn’t. (Amanda Natividad)📝 Colorado Banning Lead Gen Companies from Selling Legal Leads to Law Firms (Jason Hennessey)📝 Apple introduces Siri AI (Apple Newsroom)📝 Internal Data Mining and Strategic Review Acquisition (Krystal Taing, Near Media)📝 Social Signals as a Ranking Factor (Michael B. Snow, SOCi)