BluShark Digital
Welcome to the SEO Insider with your host, Seth Price, founder of Blushark, taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.
Seth Price
Thrilled today to have Ben Fisher here, he is a platinum Product Specialist for Google My Business and the founder of Steady Demand, it is great to have you here, Ben.
Ben Fisher
Hey, thanks for having me, Seth.
Seth Price
You know, I love following you online and geeking out on all things local with you. I'm going to start with the hot-button issue that's affecting myself and our clients, which is spam. Talk to us. What is going on? Google is the smartest player in the space. They know everything they want to get rid of spam and organic, they got rid of it. They know what's there. It keeps coming. Why do we, why are we still having this battle?
Ben Fisher
Alright, so why are we having this battle? Because spam is not the easiest thing for Google to tackle. That's really what it comes down to. Right. And if you think about it, Google has always had the problem with spam, even when it came to organic results. Ever since day one, right? As soon as somebody learned that you could throw a link at something, or you could stuff a keyword title or whatever it was, you know, or keyword density, etc. You've always had spam. When it comes to Google My Business now GMB, you gotta remember is what we're talking eight years, something like that,
Seth Price
With a couple different iterations.
Ben Fisher
Exactly. Right. Yeah, Google Logo, Google Places, Google Plus. So the problem is, is that because of the way verification works with Google My Business, it's very easy for users to be able to build now users per Blackcats, in a sense, to be able to figure out how to create spammy fake listings. Those are the worst offenders. So there's the ones that have lead gens. Those are the ones where people are trying to basically rank outside of their city. And if way, the only way they figure that they can do it is by creating a fake Google My Business listing, which clogs the ecosystem and hurts customers. So consumers and merchants alike suffer. Well, so getting back to how can they and why can't they control this is because whenever Google put something into place, they have to put it in place in such a way that's scalable. Now, if you look at the like, what happened last year, June of last year, with a Wall Street Journal, put out an article and that was about the millions of fake lawyer Google My Business listings, right. CPC just recently did one a couple months ago about locksmiths we just do one in the door and access magazine that had to deal with garage door spam, as you know-
Seth Price
One of those Wall Street Journals, they called me and said "nah don't speak to me, speak to Ben".
Ben Fisher
So I can't say if I was in that article or not, but I was in the follow-up. So but, but basically, but yeah, so news and media does get their attention. But again, back to the problem, right? The problem is, is that their algorithm is heavily weighted towards keywords, right? Keywords in the title of a business name. So businesses are, of course, going to go ahead and try and exploit this because they want to rank. The other problem is, is that like with a surface area based business, they just don't have a really great way of ranking surface area based businesses based on their surface areas. So again, what's another way that you can get around this is go ahead and people get fake listings, or multiple listings. And sometimes they don't even know that they're outside of the guidelines. And they don't know that they're creating fake listings. But to circle back one more time, to the problem. The problem is, as Google always looks to sell things at scale, so when that wants to journal article came out, they put that redirect to the Google My Business redressal form in place, right? It took it out of the community in the forums, which was the privacy issue all in itself. And then they, they sent that they gave it to the redressal forum. One thing most people don't understand is, is that whenever you submit something through that redressal form, you're actually submitting it to a human being. There is a person who is actually reading through those reports, which is why they asked you to be detailed. So you get to admit and imagine now there's an operator who is reading through hundreds of these spam reports every single day, right? But what ends up happening with that data, and this gets back to a little bit of what why they can't combat it so easily, is that they end up feeding it into the machine learning. Right? And then the machine learning now has to go out and train itself based on the inputted data. The problem is, is that when you have a bunch of people doing the redressal form and they're doing suggested. And this is all getting fed into a machine, right? Bad data in, bad data out. And there becomes the problem. Most people don't know how to use suggestion that in the first place, most people don't know how to figure out a business is actually fake or spammy? Or how to classify it, right? All they know is the rankings are suffering. And these guys are out ranking me.
Seth Price
Well look, I'll say that there's two different categories, right? There's one specific one that pops in there. But, and anything you do to raise volume on your read would be great. But there's ones that are sort of like, hey, there's one guy who got in versus entire sectors where it's a second tier term. So it might be dogged by workers comp, something. It's not the money term. And sometimes you're seeing with the money terms, where it's so pervasive, that if anybody looked at it, because I know I personally turn in forms you do for a living. I mean, they're, you know, that they don't seem to be taking seriously. And the answer may be, they just don't care about the one offs. They're figuring out at scale. It's not there someday, it'll be there or not. But they're never they, they are not going to look at this, they care enough about the industry to create the local service ads and go through the verification process there. But here, you know, you could have somebody who pops up with one or no reviews that's showing in a competitive search area, you're scratching your head, and it's like, you guys know better than that, you know, how long something's been in business. Why are you giving like, have a minimum of three reviews? I don't get they do that, that people put three fake reviews, I get it, but at least have an obstacle or two to get you there in order to, you know, pretend that you're doing something for all the people that have legitimate businesses that are pushing forward.
Ben Fisher
Yeah. And this is the thing that people don't like to hear. And the fact is, is this, since Google does look at things at scale, they look at things with large numbers, is that spam, according to them, is less than a percent of all listings. Now, we in the SEO world, in the marketing world, as businesses go, Whoa, that's gotta be BS, that can't be true. 1%, what are you talking about? When you take a look at listings in the numbers of millions, you know, across the world, not just the United States, but across the world, then it starts to come and you start to have to look at it and say, Okay, well, maybe they're right.
Seth Price
Well, they may be right, but the some of these monetizable local search areas are so important that they have added a second layer of ads to double dip on ad revenue. So these are these are sort of gold star areas, they know what's going on. They know it's different than everything else. And I, you know, you know that within and again, I understand, like, I understand the kindness, but they need to be able to unscalable. But if they chose to do something about it, it seems that it could be is there a cynical hat on Google his bottom line revenue numbers to hit? When you put spam in there, it pushes people who are fighting for the limited organic space to then look towards other avenues? Is this one of those crazy things, but like, yeah, there might be some spam. But that means these guys with money, you're gonna spend spend more on AdWords?
Ben Fisher
Yeah, that's been a conspiracy theory for I think, ever in Google search, right? Since probably right around 2001, I think was when that conspiracy kind of popped up. And there may or may not be.
Seth Price
So but in organic, you don't see that? You really don't. I know it's been around longer. But when they decided that they wanted to get rid of spam, they're just stupid. Can you manipulate? Absolutely. But has the has the really blatant awful stuff disappeared? It has they've made it so that for those people that are playing legitimate long term games, you've got to be pretty careful about how you behave in the organic ecosystem. That just doesn't seem to be, again, it may get there. And maybe that's not at scale. But there are multiple, I'm guessing if they gave you an hour, you could give them seven scalable ideas that would at least flag things under five reviews, exact match terms that are there, again, not that you're gonna knock them out. But you got to at least put that through an extra, an extra piece of the algorithm.
Ben Fisher
But it doesn't work. So that's-
Seth Price
You're pretty smart. I think that if we gave you time that you'd figure that out.
Ben Fisher
Well, no. What I mean is, is it doesn't work because we, we meaning the group of the product experts. But whenever I say we I that's what I usually mean, by the way, anyway, but we talked to them all the time about these types of things. There's a lot going on behind the scenes that, that nobody's ever going to know about actually. And, you know, we meet with their abuse teams. We met with them two weeks ago. directly with the people who are in charge of exactly what you're talking about. And we float, quote things by them all the time. Like, this is stupid easy. How come you can't do this? How come what's going on? You know, here's an idea use this for maybe crowdsourcing it. I mean, I can say this now, because my idea, but you know, there, there was recently something that was released on Android Central, I think it was where people can now use the Street View app, to go ahead and do street view globes and take pictures of businesses, right? And they probably get local guide points for that. I was like, why don't use that, and incentivize people to go check out and see if these businesses are real or not, and use that data. They said, yeah. We'll think about it. You know?
Seth Price
That's a lot of effort. I mean, I guess, to me, it's there. Like, when you do send in requests, and you look, it's part of your game party, I mean, you, you get this better than anybody, it does not appear that the level of scrutiny that the forms get is significant, that it's a numbers game. And that stuff that if you were just to get my seven-year-old to be asked the question, you know, that, that she would be able to say, oh, yeah, that's not real. But yet, whoever's at the other end of the, the Google human form answer is, if there still is a human answering it, that that it really is not getting, I mean, look, you've, you've probably had clients with issues and you've put stuff in and you have, you have juice, and you still see stuff that doesn't of course.
Ben Fisher
Like homes, for instance, homes or private residences, right, somebody will drop a pin on somebody's home, right, and they don't actually have a business there. Or let's say you have a garage door company, and they are licensed, however, they're showing their address on the home, which is a violation of the guidelines. Remember, guidelines, by the way, are always guidelines, not rules. So...
Seth Price
I think we saw it, we should-
Ben Fisher
Hold on, because I'm going to try I'm trying to answer a question for you here. And that is this. Is that, I hear what you're saying, Oh, this is obvious. Oh, if it's under three reviews, we should take a look at it. You know, if it's got keywords and its business name, we should look at it. This is where things get sticky. And where if we enacted what you're talking about, or if Google enacted what you're talking about, then the number of suspensions would go through the roof. And here's why I'm saying this, is that if you look again, when I'm pointing back to the Wall Street Journal article, The Wall Street Journal article uncovered a huge amount of stuff. Bam. So what did Google do? They turned up the dial. They said, Okay, cool. Here's the match. Because you're right, we were feeding a lot of information to Google about these patterns for over a year. Anyway. So, but they did, and what ended up happening is we had hundreds of now, real merchants get suspended. Those are called false positives, right? And this is what happens when they do a tweak. So, and I say this a lot when I'm speaking, but I also that Google always has to play a very delicate balancing act between consumers and merchants. But they also have to play a delicate balancing act between spam and real merchants. So if they were to say, Okay, anybody with less than three reviews that has three or more keywords in their name, we are just going to suspend.
Seth Price
No, but that could get a higher level of scrutiny. And when you send a form in maybe that would be a US based person looking at it with real, you know, who is not going through that that is a red flag, there's got to be a way, again, I get it. We lived through it. We saw people who got caught up in those suspensions. Most people that got caught up that I saw, there was some non clean element. It may have been overbroad where there was a satellite office in a regular office, and they took out both I get it so that we did see that. But generally, and I guess why the frustration, I know you're not Google, you are just a conduit to them. But that if you do, if you look at it within a subset of some of the when you see where the spam is highest, where it's not 1% under injury, or criminal defense or something else, and they know that subset, and you're looking at the subset and you're looking at the low reviews, and you're looking at an exact match, that you could be much more circumspect and get the false positives way down to the point of almost nothing if you got there because this is look, there's a whole, a world of lawyers not lead gen that are doing some dubious stuff. Take that aside for a second. But put that aside the stuff that's there, it's what appears to be either Russian bots, or something that anybody looking at it would know. Now I get statistically it may not matter, but within our ecosystem and our ecosystem is enough, was what I would push back on that you have an entire business division, it's just been built around it. So that you would think if you guys think it's valuable enough to create a whole new business line that isn't needed, like in the locksmith space lawyers are barred. So you're now creating a verified listing, that I don't know how much the Pinkerton background check supersedes being a member of the bar. But a little bit but not, not, you know, a little bit. But the idea that within that ecosystem, you wouldn't, because yes, I'm sure there's spam, and there's a battle somewhere between used bookshops in Albuquerque, and I get it in those for those people, that means a lot. But within the legal space we are dealing with, there are entire minefields where you can't even again, it's not generally the money terms, because those are too obvious but the second tier terms where you see just spam it for as far as you can see in certain search results. It's just It's nonsensical. And the idea that there's not, again, this is my, for when you get your brain trust moment, if there was some way they could say, hey, for these pull downs, For we know that these specific sectors are more ripe than others, if not 1%, it may be a double digit percentage there on local. And it just seems sad, because as somebody who loves Google and has built a business around it and built an agency around it, it seems that they have generally incentivize positive behavior. And it's for the first time ever, that I've seen-
Ben Fisher
Negative behavior?
Seth Price
Well, they're incentivizing it without an end in sight.
Ben Fisher
So one thing I can tell you is, is that they do take they do make tweaks on a regular basis. So, and they're micro tweaks, and be thankful for that. Because otherwise, we see what we saw after the Wall Street Journal. Right?
Seth Price
Right. Because we did there were lawyers that like lost business for months. And I gotta tell you, you know, I remember sitting at a convention, and some lady was just yelling at me, I'm like lady, it's not me.
Ben Fisher
I think the backlog was over six weeks.
Seth Price
Right. Now, again, if you're going to do stuff like that, you have to have the support to back it up, especially if you're that imprecise, but they were also pretty, I would argue, that was not a carefully tailored one. That was one that's meaning that, that was a pretty broad algorithms sweep. I saw what they were doing, it was obvious what they were trying to do. But you would think that if you combined the algorithm, you could combine factors read it again. They're smarter than me. That's why I'm like it, I don't buy it. Well, let's talk about the reinstatement process, which is, you know, the dovetail side of this. So some people, so the good news is that and that's also the frustration when somebody does get suspended, you're like, really, you're suspended and all these other jokers are not. So it's an emotional, it's an emotional toll that it takes. But what are some of the advice you give to our listeners? What are the steps in thoughts you do when there is a suspension to give yourself the best chance and something that I've sort of preached for a while and I'm sure that you some of these best practices came from you and your camp were, What should you have on hand to be able to pull out of the file when that happens? You don't need to scramble and find stuff and put it together. So what are the best practices getting back? And then secondarily, if you could work on what would you think Procope, prophylactically you'd want to have on file to be able to turn in God forbid that happens.
Ben Fisher
Gotcha. All right. So first thing is, let's talk about steps. Okay? My first step is, relax. Literally, if you have to, go take a chill pill. Okay, I'm not saying that you should take drugs, but I'm just saying-
Seth Price
Whatever your chill pill, whatever your happy place is, go.
Ben Fisher
Exactly. Go there. Get away from your computer. Because if you don't, you're going to do something stupid. Which stupid to me equates with creating a new listing, which-
Seth Price
Oh, right, right. No, I wasn't even thinking to me, I just like, I speak and I tell people on a bad review, forget about what we're talking about here, which is catastrophic, but a single bad review. I have the 24 hour rule. You're not allowed to do crap for 24 hours, you got to get the emotion out of you and realize you're not ,you don't do something to lose your bar license. You don't want to anger that person. You know, you may decide to reach out to the person who may decide to respond to it. You could you could flag and do whatever you want. But give yourself 24 hours to get the right.
Ben Fisher
Yeah. So step one, relax. Step two, read the guidelines. Everybody says they read the guidelines. Nobody reads the guidelines, they skim the guidelines. If you're going to read the guidelines, it's going to take you about three hours.
Seth Price
Is there a, an amalgamation or a place that you can go that's not the three hours that gives you what you need?
Ben Fisher
Not really.
Seth Price
There should be, that would be a good thing for a blog post.
Ben Fisher
It might be, it might be it's, I can tell you this man. I mean, I've done over 1000 reinstatement this year. My company has done a lot more than that. And every reinstatement literally is a unique snowflake. There is a little bit that's different between every single reinstatement. And they seem kind of straightforward. But for the most part, they're not. And when we're talking about lawyers, it gets even much more convoluted income and conflict, there's so many conflicts that can occur. We'll get to that in a second. But so number one, again, relax. Number two, don't submit for reinstatement right away. Number three, is read the guidelines. Okay, number four, get some advice. I don't care, ping me, ping you, ping somebody, ping your best friend, ping an enemy, ping somebody and get some advice and be like, hey, you know, would you take a look at my listing? What do you think? Right? Do that, you know, you can sometimes you can go to local search forum to do that. I don't, I don't say I don't suggest going to the community to do that. Because we're there more to fix problems, then help with triage. I'll tell you about something else in a second. Anyway, once you've done that, then you can start the process for reinstatement. And if you're unsure, we got to be straight up about it, hire somebody, hire somebody who knows what the hell they're going. Because there is something that's called two, there's two strike rule. It's an unsaid rule. It's just something that I've learned through experience, especially with lawyers. And that is that if you go through the reinstatement process a couple times, and you fail a couple times, they will stop talking to you, almost forever. Almost. There's ways around it. But as far as you're concerned that-
Seth Price
And you don't want to get to that point. So what you're saying, and look, that's an I, in lots of life, you see that. Something happens, you're so certain of your answer, that you're like, there's no way it could be like I'm no different. I you know, you're there's a level of certainty because you think you've done everything that's out there as fresh set of eyes. You know, what, you know, is always is always valuable, for sure.
Ben Fisher
Yeah. And everybody, whenever I get whenever I get on the phone with somebody who's doing who's been suspended, they say the exact same thing to me. It's like literally, it's like, I think they're copying each other. Now, I'm just, I'm kidding, of course. But they say, I've been in business for over 20 years. I have a storefront location. That was signage, everything. I've got 500 glowing stuff, five star reviews. How can this happen to me? I hate to drone on but that's kind of what it sounds like. Me I'm very I'm extremely empathetic. And I'm sympathetic to-
Seth Price
I thought you would use a different word. I thought you were very cynical.
Ben Fisher
No, no, no, I, I've picked up phone, phone calls literally on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. Did one on Halloween. You know where somebody's calling me at like 10 o'clock my time. PM, you know, and they're like, I just got suspended. I'm like, chill out. Relax. Don't worry about it. We're going to help you out. It's no, I'm no. It's like it's a passion for me getting people reinstated because I know how much it means.
Seth Price
I know you've done that, I've seen it. I've seen you work magic. Yeah.
Ben Fisher
Oh, yeah. That was true. So, so basically, okay, so you've gone through those, those types of steps right. At that point. Now you can submit for reinstatement. Okay, we're about to get two items of proof except for what to have on hand. When you do submit for reinstatement, a couple of different things might happen. If you're a marketing, if you're a lawyer, right? If you're a lawyer and you're working with a marketing company, they might have already gone hits for the reinstatement for you. If that happens, it's kind of a shame because you can only maintain one line of communication which means now it's in the marketing company's hands to try and calm-
Seth Price
And depending on, depending on who, look in my case, depending on who you have there, you know, we do stuff in consultation with our client. You know very often if somebody knows the we're talking with in language that is to the layperson, not there. So I think part of it is, who's on the other end of your Is it somebody playing in this space, if you're dealing with somebody who's never dealt with GMB, that's where you better pick up the phone and get an expert. There are people that are dealing with people deal with this on a repeat player basis. And as you said, there, there are many different scenarios, some of which are much more basic. And some of which are you better bring the big, big guns.
Ben Fisher
Some which are extremely complicated, and can take a long time to resolve sometimes, because I guess I'm messed up and convoluted. And but the reason I bring this up is because this happens, man. It happens, Seth, where it's like I've worked with, you know, with a lawyer, that works with very large lawyer marketing companies, not under the same name, any names, of course, where they need her, because it was a big client of theirs. And they submitted the reinstatement before the client could even think about looking at it. And they screwed up the reinstatement. It happens.
Seth Price
Well, but, that's also life. Meaning, it's, you know, it's a court that has no rules that you control. It's not like there's some laws passed by Congress or by a state that they need to follow. It's a private organization that holds all the cards, you better have your team. I mean, that's what we preach as in anything, whether it's in house marketing person or out of house, if the team if you're in house marketing director doesn't know from the founder, what shady stuff has gone on, you just like in a criminal case, you better get your act together and not have one person out there as your advocate who doesn't know where not to go.
Ben Fisher
The the messaging, I guess I'd like to put out there is this. Is that if you're an agency, or if you're a practice, or practitioner, is that you make sure that you communicate with each other, if you're an agency, you prep your clients. Because in the lawyer space, it's only a matter of time until you get suspended, it's not if, it's when. So just make sure that that communication is in place, when you initially started your engagement. Say, look, if and when you do get suspended, don't worry about it, we're going to talk before we do anything, you please don't do anything, we will work it out together. And that's what I don't see happening, by the way. So that's why I make that recommendation.
Seth Price
Very fair point. And it looks just the extra pressure, which is, you know, the, the waiting sounds great. And it needs to be done. But there are revenue issues hitting you day to day potentially. And so it's but like, at the end of the day, I just went through something bizarre where something fell out of Google, it was, you know, and that, you know, your first reaction is to be patient, right? And wait for stuff to come back. Well, it turned out something wasn't right, it took a second round. And so as a business owner, there's this pull and tug of you know, from, from where I sit, where you the advice you give is brilliant, it needs to be followed. But there's also the business owner wouldn't have gotten where they got in life if they didn't push. So if you have this cross section between when do you what are you pushing, because it's not going according to even Google plan, versus Hey, take a deep breath, give your 24 hours, get to the happy place, and then come up with your strategy. And so 24 hours? Yes, I think the frustration you get a lot of times is this, you know, you keep hearing a 14 day, you know, catchment period, thrown back to you by Google, and that that's one of those particularly taught during the LSA rollout. I mean, 14 days is a long freakin time that you have any choice. No, but those are the you know, that's where I wish I had a box of happy pills I could send to people to help them get through that period. Because, you know, short of being a nine figure or more advertiser, you're probably not going to get direct access to people and that you are going to end up having some period of time to wait.
Ben Fisher
Did you know that on my blog, I keep an update of the do's and don'ts for reinstatement as well as what the current reinstatement time period is. Okay, all right. Because right now it's two to four days, by the way, just saying.
Seth Price
Right, but much, much better. No, no, no, no, today, but when everybody was panicking a few months back, it was six weeks.
Ben Fisher
Well, that was maybe last that, no that was last year.
Seth Price
I don't count COVID, I apologize. I've been being facetious, but I just say like, time seemed to have stopped during COVID. So yes-
Ben Fisher
No, no, COVID did not stop there. No-
Seth Price
No, no, no, no, I'm telling you about for me, my own mishegoss like, I don't-
Ben Fisher
Oh, okay. I gotcha. I was gonna, I was gonna say man no during code actually during COVID We were put into a war room almost immediately. The first week COVID hit ever so we made every Friday. And so the one of the first things that came out of my mouth was is reinstatements need to be a priority. Merchants are hurting more than enough right now. I said you got this whole permanently temporarily closed and going on, which is really messing with businesses. And I said you need to make reinstatements priority number one. And then luckily they did. And one day turnaround is what we saw during all of COVID, actually. So I give kudos, Google kudos for that. Before I get into the be into the what should you prep yourself with, right? I gotta say that we do have a service that we offer, and which actually builds up what we call a case file. So, you know, we've been kind of called the like, the lawyers for GMB, quote, unquote, right. So what we do is we treat it like a case. And we actually build up an entire file of whaT all-
Seth Price
You do it before any issues happened. This is what you do as a bulletproof your place.
Ben Fisher
Exactly, exactly. And that's what it is, it's basically making sure that every location that you have is 100% in compliance, and is ready to be reinstated in the first place. Then we do a, basically a full backup of GMB of every single thing that in GMB just in case, because we want all the reviews, all the posts, everything. Because we'll have some times it's point, a half a percentage of time you get a catastrophic error. So, which means you lose everything. And so if we have the backup proof, we can at least try and get it back, which we do about 80% of the time. And then basically. So if we had if somebody's enrolled in that program, we also ran soon for free. So that's kind of a bonus too.
Seth Price
An insurance policy.
Ben Fisher
Exactly, basically. So but we'll get onto some critical items, right, is that every business should have on hand, at the very minimum, if they are storefront, storefront pictures, okay, if they've got logos and signage inside, they should have pictures of that. If they're inside of a building that has directory, they should have picture that directory. If it's a virtual satellite office, make sure you have an executive office, make sure you have a body in that office.
Seth Price
With an office with a sign and a diploma that's yours, as opposed to just a Regis waiting room.
Ben Fisher
Well, and sign on the actual door. Right?
Seth Price
Of the office, of the, of the interior office.
Ben Fisher
Oh, yeah, exactly. Exactly. You don't share an office with 100 other people, you know, it's not really you, you you.
Seth Price
Again, we'll pivot to this after you finish it. But those, these are the business imperatives that I get, I'm sure the middleman in this right, of course, coming to me and saying, Hey, my business needs have changed, finish this off. And then I want to ask you about that.
Ben Fisher
Sure. So, you know, but make sure that you have a barn address for your locations. You know, so assign somebody to that location, have them at that location, if you can, you know, and, you know, make sure that basically you want to it's kind of like citations. Think of it that in that sense, you want to have all of your legal docs in a row with the proper information. I'll give you one example. And then we'll move on because I know we're timewise. But I saw somebody who had a Secretary of State entry. And their zip code was off by one digit. This was enough to block a reinstatement by the way, okay. In other state cases, and this is probably more common, is I'll see somebody who has a physical location. And, but they moved three years prior, never updated the bar.
Seth Price
Yeah, I've seen that for myself, not not the move, but like, a digit, often the phone number, whatever it is, there's always something.
Ben Fisher
Never updated Secretary of State, you know, never updated BBB or whatever the case may be. City licenses, things like that. The problem here is that when you have these, these issues, is that you've now taken what could have been a 24 hour turnaround. And now it's three to four weeks. And I see, I see it happen too many times. Not, not a lawyer, I was talking to you about an air conditioning company, been in business 30 years, blah, blah, blah, signage? Junk, totally missing actually what the actual name of the LLC was. So what do they have to do? They have to go out and get they're all gonna go get a good signage, you know, and then we also found out that they had a Secretary of State entry, which was inactive. They didn't pay their bill. Happens. It happens, this his regular business, you know, so stuff happens. So-
Seth Price
We've got limited time, I just want to go through some rapid fire questions in our remaining minutes. Yes. Okay. Okay, first, a lot of people right now are rethinking their office space needs. That's the irony of all this right? Before really how could you not have an office? Now? Everybody's virtual. So when somebody does, let's say they want a space within a virtual space people come to me and say the right place for me is a space within a shared office space. Not ideal. Tell him not to do it, but they're going to do it. Is the picture on the wall with a google 360? Tour? Like, what are the things you could do? If you are a legitimate office within something that is questionable? Is it just too much of a risk? Or is there a way to sort of at least give yourself a fighting chance?
Ben Fisher
you can do a video. Do a video.
Seth Price
Shows a walk to it that there's something there, again, assuming you have a rational player watching it, the filtering of like type of businesses within a geographic building? Is that something that we're going to see continue? Or is that something that they're, you think they're going to eventually eliminate? There's a building across from the immigration office that every immigration lawyer wants to be in? But in theory, right now, only ones being shown crazy, not great user experience. I'm sure they have their reasons. What's your take is to this days?
Ben Fisher
that's going to be there for probably a long time.
Seth Price
Is there anything that you can see changing the pin to a different part of the flow, is there anything you can do to get yourself free if you're not the a player, in a multi story building that has other people like yourself?
Ben Fisher
Moving your pin is a horrible idea and will lead to a suspension, so.
Seth Price
So what do you, what do you recommend?
Ben Fisher
What do I recommend? Don't be near other people that have your same primary category.
Seth Price
You're like, we live in this this one world, other people, you know, the, your clients can come in see you and go across the street and file. There are there are times when that is, it is the right business answer. Again, if not, if it doesn't include this. So I live, I live digital. First, we have a policy that any client of ours, or potential client is about to make a move has to come to us we you know, we bulletproof it, because it is one of those crazy enigmas that like the right place to be for business may kill your online visibility.
Ben Fisher
Yeah. So unfortunately, no, I get what you're saying. The other thing you could try and do is you could try and make your primary category a little bit different than what everybody else is doing and put your other money categories into your subcategories. That will work actually.
Seth Price
you're competing against an A player with you know, really, if you're trying to again, it's if you're trying to win, that's a harder way to go. But it's better than nothing. I guess. I've seen people do this where they fought for the impossible market, they'll go for, you know, bicycle accidents and give up on auto accident do something like that, where they get a niche within it. What what do you see coming? What should people be prepared for? That, what, what is fun for 2021 that we should be waiting for?
Ben Fisher
For 2021, I mean, what you can expect is you can probably expect more to happen with the Google Guarantee and the Google Screen. I think that's, that's kind of a no brainer.
Seth Price
You think a check from Google Guarantee Google Screen will ever appear in the three-pack?
Ben Fisher
We're already starting to see it. It's very, very, it's small. It's an extremely limited test at this point.
Seth Price
Well it's a test, we don't know if it'll go or not. But that's possible.
Ben Fisher
It's the same always with Google, right? It's a test. What I would say is, if you want to keep an eye out for it is keep an eye on mobile Android, actually the most, because that's where all Google experiments start. So but we've seen it in the local finder, we've seen the, the Google screen badge and the Google guarantee Google screen badge actually. And I believe it's also been spotted in the wild on the three-pack. So I personally have not seen it myself.
Seth Price
And, it makes sense if you're gonna go through and go through all of that. And, you know, to not have to go through that and not have the benefit of it. Because to me, that's again, another spam fighting technique.
Ben Fisher
You would think, you would think. No, I've been learning a ton more about LSA over the past couple of months.
Seth Price
Oh, let me ask you this.
Ben Fisher
So much spam in LSA. It's not funny. Oh, yeah. Go look at LA and type in personal injury.
Seth Price
Well, everything's always different in LA. So final thing along those lines. So look, it's one thing to get during your background check. What about individuals who come to us that are sort of solo practitioners? We're right now. background check is needing an incorporated business EIN number for that person. What do you think that's, have you seen any any issues with that any? Have you seen any issues? But have you seen any people dealing with that with the with getting an LSA when they're still a sole practitioner?
Ben Fisher
I don't know anything. I haven't dealt with that yet. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you.
Seth Price
There's so, there's so much, like what I, I, you know, every time you think that you have a handle on it, there's more to learn and more nuances. And I know that you have spent a lot of time working trying to make things better. And I'm sure that because of NDAs can't talk about all the efforts you put in, but thank you, for those of us that have reaped the benefits of some of the common sense wisdom that you've imparted upon Google. I know you have a long way to go, but it is certainly better than it was.
Ben Fisher
It gets better every single year. I will say this is the surface area businesses next year, I think we're going to see a lot of major changes, for good and for bad. So I can't really get into much more detail than that.
Seth Price
But I didn't quite, I mean, not that I didn't want to hear the proprietary part, but I didn't quite understand what you're saying was coming.
Ben Fisher
I just, I have a feeling that for service area-based businesses, which lawyers have a lot of SAB listings, right? That there's going to be some interesting changes in 2021.
Seth Price
That's one of those areas, that's still an issue, less, less regulated. You know, I guess the garage door guys are always the guys who who start that world? Correct? Because they're like, why do we need an office and lawyers are trying to find any way to not just deal with their one pin? And now those two will come to a head.
Ben Fisher
That's in a sense, correct. Yeah.
Seth Price
And what's interesting is the lawyers are closer to gross jail door repair people now than ever, given that they're, the majority of clients are not touching a law firm office from beginning to end. So just, just like, you know, it might, my gut has had the decision to make to tweak the algorithm for virtual offices happened today, it might not have been as extreme because right now, can you really blame somebody for downsizing to a mailing address? Not for multiple ones. And that's also a question as to whether or not let me I'll conclude with this, because it's a question I get a lot. If you're, if you have one location, and that one location, you're not spamming to multiple places, you're one business owner, and you want your one location to be a virtual, that's your business model. Is there, do you think that having the first location versus your second, third or fourth location makes any difference? As far as how Google will see this? If you're saying that it's a, you know, if it's clearly a virtual location, from Google's point of view.
Ben Fisher
Virtualized and virtual office?
Seth Price
A virtual office as your main office. So you're not pretending to have offices everywhere. You have, you use Regis as the, as the brand. So you're saying, Hey, I have one location, I have no need for an office, I'm not going to put it off somewhere because Google thinks it's good. But I do need to show up on Google. I have historically, you know, and a lot of us do with competition, the risk and a tier B or C market is a lot less because no, unless an algorithm picks it up, nobody's turning you in. Versus what I've always told people is if you're playing a video game, or something-
Ben Fisher
I'm just gonna answer your question. The answer is no. So the guidelines very much state very clearly, that even if you only have one office, and it's at a virtual office, it is okay if it is staffed by your staff, and is an executive office.
Seth Price
That is not, not a virtual office, but a fractional office is okay?
Ben Fisher
It has to be an office where there is staff, your staff during your stated business hours.
Seth Price
But when you say staff does the shared receptionist, does not count, it has to be your employee. Yep, has to be your employee. The next thing you're going to see is people running out and giving a contract to the virtual to the staff member at the Regis.
Ben Fisher
That wouldn't work either.
Seth Price
Again, you definitely got pointers, you don't want to litigate. But when you say here's my employment agreement for the lady sitting there nine to five-
Ben Fisher
And she'd be employed by 100 people.
Seth Price
That's what, that's where it gets. That's where it gets to. And that's the next issue I think Google is going to run into is that the new normal is not we don't look at things the same way. I mean, look, I have a lot of office space for my law firm, our digital agency, there's a consideration you know, we're in the cloud now. You know, I plan to have an office when we come out of this but it's, it's one of those things that right now if legally you can't go to the office. Yeah, right. You're you may be paying rents, but your is a fortune. Too often there's nobody there for the foreseeable future.
Ben Fisher
So the only thing I can say is I can wrap it up with this, is that it for that point, at least, is that Google does think long term. I'm not saying they're perfect. I'm not saying they're awesome. I'm not saying they're great, but they think long term right? Now, obviously, if you look at COVID, you look at that long term, it's going to go, not going to go away. It's going that direction, but it's going to get better. All right. So they acted quick. COVID hit, they took measures, they put them in place, temporary closed, permanent close, well not permanently closed. Anyway, mass acquired. Yeah, right. Those things are very difficult to add to the dashboard. But they did. And obviously they put together the online booking, online appointments, online scheduling, online meeting, right.?That is geared towards obviously, people like your clients, they can do online scheduling and online meetings. So that's the stop gap for right now. But the rules will still stay the same is that if you want a storefront, you have to have an office.
Seth Price
Right, and so they, there is an office, it's just everybody's by law, staying at home until a mayor or governor allows you to go back.
Ben Fisher
But have an office, you got an office. So you know.
Seth Price
That's, that's your question. Do you have an office? If you have an office you're gonna be good?
Ben Fisher
Yeah, exactly. Right.
Seth Price
Ben, this has been awesome. Thank you so much. I learned a lot and can't wait to continue this conversation in the future.
Ben Fisher
Sounds good, Seth, anytime you want, man.
Seth Price
Thanks, again. Bye bye.
Ben Fisher
All right. Thanks so much.
BluShark Digital
Thank you for tuning in to the SEO Insider with Seth Price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand's online presence. Episodes are available to stream directly on Blushark Digital's website.
