The Near Memo
Exploring the big stories for the week at the intersection of local business & marketing across the spectrum of search, social and commerce. With Greg Sterling, Mike Blumenthal & David Mihm.
The Near Memo
Latest Episodes
Correcting the Machine: Citation Labs on the Six Layers of AI Visibility (Part 1)
AI answers get brands wrong all the time: old pricing, expired offers, comparisons nobody updated. Garrett French, James Wirth and Valerie Cecil of Citation Labs explain how they find where a brand drops out of an AI answer and what they do to ...
Rankings Up, Calls Down: What AI Visibility Is Really Worth to Local Businesses.
Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Guide) and Mark Kabana (Places Scout, now part of Yext) rejoin Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal for Part 2 of our conversation. We get into how agencies are turning "AI visibility" into a product, why clients can't t...
Why "Position One" Doesn't Exist in Local Anymore (Brighton SEO Recap)
Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Guide) and Mark Kabana (founder of Places Scout, now VP of Data Innovation at Yext) join Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal fresh off Brighton SEO San Diego for an open-agenda conversation: what the conference floor ac...
Fragmented Discovery, Google's €460M DMA Fine, and Apple's Distribution Bet
Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal break down four stories shaping local search and AI discovery. First, a preview of new consumer-journey research Near Media ran for Lastmile Retail (heading to Brighton SEO): search and AI dominate discovery, b...
The Verification Loop: How People *Really* Find Local Businesses Now (SOCi's Damian Rollison)
The path to a local purchase used to be a straight line. It isn't anymore. Damian Rollison, Senior Director of Market Insights at SOCi, joins Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal to unpack SOCi's third annual consumer study and the idea at its cen...
