A brand new report reveals the business impact of Coronavirus so far in the US, including which categories are up and which are down. The report was published by Yelp this week and reflects data gathered from March 1 through March 22. Yelp’s report looks at which types of businesses have risen or fallen in…
Consumer sentiment has turned sharply negative as the virus has disrupted every aspect of daily American life. According to a consumer survey from Engine, 88% of consumers in the U.S. are now concerned about the pandemic. And according to another survey of roughly 2,600 U.S. adults from L.E.K. Consulting and Civis (.pdf), between 80% and…
Yelp is partnering with GoFundMe to introduce a way for independent businesses to accept donations through their Yelp pages. “The impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has been incredibly challenging for small businesses… Many businesses have been required to temporarily close, making it seemingly impossible to continue to pay their staff and cover rent.“ In…
“There’s a lot of variety here in terms of what businesses are growing and which ones are falling,” said Alexis Sanders, senior SEO manager for Merkle, referencing the striking departure from typical search behavior due to the COVID-19 pandemic during our first Live With Search Engine Land video chat Monday. “You can see with things…
Bing is now using a new type of structured data markup for special announcements related specifically to COVID-19. This new markup is designed for announcements such as: Special hours and closures for local businesses. Information on risk assessment and testing centers. Travel restrictions and guidelines. Here’s more information about each of these types of announcements…
On Friday, Google temporarily disabled new local reviews as well as the ability of businesses to post review responses. This initially surprised many local SEOs, although it was previewed in Google’s earlier announcement about limited GMB functionality during the coronavirus crisis. There are a LOT of things with Google My Business that are not functioning…
Snapchat is huge. Despite hits and losses, it’s still gaining millions of new users per year. In fact, it now has over 218 million daily active users. As a marketer, this alone is a huge reason to promote your brand’s message on Snapchat. And there are other reasons to use this popular social network. For instance,…
Google Ads has new policies, going into effect in May, on advertising government documents and official services. Government documents and official services now fall under the ‘other restricted businesses’ policy, which means Google will no longer show ads for them. As stated by Google, this policy applies to the government itself and companies that provide…
Google is temporarily removing some features from Google My Business as a result of limitations caused by the COVID-19 situation. “During the unprecedented COVID-19 situation, we are taking steps to protect the health of our team members and reduce the need for people to come into our offices. As a result, there may be some…
Google has apparently disabled local reviews functionality — both for consumers and business owners. SterlingSky’s Jason Brown first flagged this issue on Friday. Joy Hawkins, also of SterlingSky, added, “Any review responses posted right now aren’t publishing live. Same thing with leaving new reviews. None of the reviews I left 5 min ago are publishing.”…