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
AI Overviews, Brand Search & Local SEO: Cyrus Shepard on Earning the Click - from the archives
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We're on vacation this week, so we're re-running one of our favorite April conversations. It still speaks to our current series on brand in local, and a live panel on local digital brand strategy follows next week.
Cyrus Shepard (founder of Zyppy) joins David Mihm and Mike Blumenthal to unpack what the Google antitrust trial, the leaked patents, and the API leak revealed about how Google really ranks: user click data. They walk through the three signals that matter — clicks, long clicks, and the "last longest click" — why brand search keeps correlating with rankings, and what AI Overviews are doing to the click ecosystem, including how local businesses can still earn (and satisfy) the click.
Practical throughout: consolidating reviews and booking onto owned surfaces, using Search Console's branded-query filter as an AI-Overviews scorecard, and why a too-clickable title tag quietly costs you traffic.
Be sure to listen to our series on branding.
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