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.
Episodes
281 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...
The Path of Enshittification: Apple Ads, Google's Toll Booth, and Meta's $18B Escape Hatch
Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal go guest-free this week to connect three stories that are really one story. Apple has launched ads in Apple Maps — contextual, largely on-device, and with no way to turn them off — which quietly undercuts the "...
The Hidden Advantage: How Brand Awareness Decides the Click in Legal Search
Greg Sterling walks Mike Blumenthal through original Near Media user research — the "Choosing a Lawyer" study of the Atlanta personal-injury market, first presented at the Lunch Hour Legal Marketing Summit in Nashville. Using a user-testing vid...
Tactics for Building a Local Brand in the Age of AI Search — An Agency Panel
Four agency operators join Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal to close out the Near Memo brand-building series: Paula French (Search Influence), Joy Hawkins (Sterling Sky), Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Guide), and Matt McGee (SEO Savvy Agent). It'...
AI Overviews, Brand Search & Local SEO: Cyrus Shepard on Earning the Click - from the archives
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...
Legal Marketing in the AI Era: LSAs, Reviews, and Manufacturing Brand Demand
Part 3 of the Near Memo brand-building series brings brand down to earth in professional services — specifically legal, where a client hires once in a lifetime, can't judge quality, and every ad on the screen looks identical. Gyi Tsakalakis, co...
Cyrus Shepard Interview: What "Local Brand" Actually Means to Google and AI
Cyrus Shepard, founder of Zyppy, joins Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal for Part 2 of the Near Memo brand-building series — this time on the technical side: how Google and AI systems actually model a brand, and what a local business can do abo...
The 3-Step Trust Equation: How to Build a Local Brand That Customers (& AI) Trust
What separates a commodity local provider from a business that easily commands premium pricing? In this kickoff to our four-part brand series, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal are joined by marketing pioneer John Jantsch.John details...
Ep. 264: Web Authenticity & The Agentic Future of the SMB Website with Raj Singh
Are traditional websites dying, or are they just changing shapes? Hosts Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal catch up with serial entrepreneur and Mozilla VP of Product Raj Singh to discuss how AI search friction is changing the local web. Learn w...
Beyond the Star Rating: Extracting Strategic Content Insights from Customer Feedback
Local SEO strategy often gets stuck playing a quantitative numbers game with review counts and velocity benchmarks. But what happens when you treat the collective text of your market's customer reviews as an ongoing, free focus group? Thi...
Ep. 262: Regulating the Digital Wild West: Inside the FTC’s Battle Against Review Fraud and AI Deception with Michael Atleson
What happens when federal regulators take on fake reviews and predatory AI applications? This week on NearMemo, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal host Michael Atleson, former Senior Attorney at the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices ...
Google Maps' AI Shift: Why Brand Building, Reviews & Social Presence Are the New Local SEO
Are your local search frameworks ready for a probabilistic, AI-driven Map interface? This week, Greg, Mike, and local search practitioner Craig Burton map out the massive influx of automated algorithmic categorization structures rolling across ...
Goodbye Traffic, Hello Sales: The New Playbook for Local SEO Visibility
How do you build brand permanence in a local market when web attribution metrics are fading? This week, we dive into Part 2 of our post-Google I/O masterclass with Cindy Krum, Krystal Taing, and Greg Gifford. The panel shifts completely f...
What Does I/O Mean for Marketers with Cindy Krum, Gregg Gifford & Krystal Tang - Part 1
The rules of user discovery are undergoing a massive rewrite. This week, the Near Media roundtable features top search minds Cindy Krum, Krystal Taing, and Greg Gifford to analyze the long-term strategic impacts of Google I/O and Google M...
From Keyword Rankings to Brand Reverence: The New Local AI SEO Blueprint
In this Duda webinar, Darren Shaw and Mike Blumenthal explore the paradigm shift occurring in local search as Google increasingly incorporates generative AI into Google Business Profiles and Google Maps. Through new features like "Know Be...
Google Already Knows Everything About You — And Their New AI Features Make It Worse
Google just revealed the future of Search at Google I/O and Google Marketing Live — and it’s far more personal, predictive, and invasive than most people realize.In this episode of Near Memo, Mike Blumenthal and Greg Sterling break down:...
The Death of Keywords: How Google’s Personal Intelligence is defining the future of Local Search
In Part 2 of Near Media’s conversation with Garrett Sussman, the discussion shifts from AI personalization theory to the real-world impact on local search, SEO, reviews, attribution, and marketing strategy.Garrett joins Greg Sterling and...
How Google’s Personal Intelligence is Quietly Revolutionizing Your Search Results
Is Google getting too personal? In this episode of the Near Memo, Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal are joined by Garrett Sussman (iPullRank) to discuss his provocative 12-month study on AI personalization. We dive deep into how Google’s "AI Mo...
Google Ask Maps Deep Dive: The Future of Local SEO & AI Search
Join our celebrity local SEO panel—Claudia Tomina, Adam Dorfman, and Darren "The Canadian" Shaw—as they explore "Ask Maps," Google’s AI-powered conversational interface for local search. We demo the new desktop UI, discuss how hyper-personaliza...
Review Fraud, FTC Fines, and Yelp’s Legal Strike
Greg and Mike discuss the shifting landscape of local search. From the FTC’s latest crackdown on incentivized reviews to Yelp’s attempt to fast-forward their antitrust case against Google using recent federal rulings. We also explore the expans...
Google Reviews Crackdown, Meta vs Google, and the AI Search Shift (What Marketers Are Missing)
Google just changed the rules on reviews—and businesses may already be getting penalized. Meanwhile, Meta is projected to overtake Google in ad revenue, despite ongoing legal battles and ethical concerns.In this episode, Mike ...