This is The Search Session. I'm Gianluca Fiorelli, and in this episode, I sit down with Darren Shaw, a Canada-based leading authority on local search marketing and founder of Whitespark.
Local SEO has never been more complex or more interesting. Darren breaks down how AI is changing what it takes to be visible, why community prominence now matters beyond traditional optimization, and where reviews and content fit into the new local search landscape.
What you'll take away:
How AI is reshaping local search: Google is bringing local results into AI Overviews, while Ask Maps points toward a more conversational future for local discovery.
Why local prominence matters more: AI rewards businesses with real community recognition, not just basic citations.
How local SEO has expanded into a multi-source data game: social feeds, Reddit, YouTube, local mentions, and community signals are becoming extra data sources that show whether a business is active and trusted.
How to prepare for agentic local search: websites need detailed answers on services, pricing, availability, brands, models, and specialties.
Why local content needs real experience: instead of educational blog posts, businesses should create case studies, portfolio pages, and content that documents real jobs, problems, and solutions.
Why Merchant Center is a missed opportunity: local retailers can connect inventory to Google Business Profile to appear for specific local product searches.
How to attract multilingual customers via Google Business Profile: a little-known Google Maps trick lets businesses add translated versions of their name to reach local customers searching in other languages.
When schema still matters for local SEO: it may not directly improve rankings, but it can help AI systems understand site entities, relationships, and FAQs, while outdated schema can block business data updates.
How Google is tightening review trust signals: reviews are a major local ranking signal, so Google uses AI to detect manipulation patterns, while higher-level Local Guides tend to carry more trust and stick around longer.
Why AI search demands a broader reputation strategy: LLMs rely on third-party platforms, surface outdated data, and reward unstructured signals like local PR and community mentions.
Tune in for a wide-ranging conversation packed with practical insights on local search today.
Topics covered: local SEO · local search · AI search · Ask Maps · agentic search · Google Business Profile · Merchant Center · schema markup · Local Guides · review management · local content strategy
About the Guest
Darren Shaw
Founder of Whitespark
Darren is a local search expert and digital entrepreneur with over 19 years of experience. In 2005, he founded Whitespark, now a leading local SEO software and services company helping businesses, agencies, and enterprises improve visibility in Google Maps and local search.
Beyond running Whitespark, Darren is also a local SEO educator. He regularly shares local search strategies, tips, research, and advice through Whitespark’s resources, videos, newsletter, blog, and free training materials.
He also leads major local search research initiatives, including the Local Search Ranking Factors survey and the Local Search Ecosystem, and speaks at search marketing conferences around the world.
Video Chapters
Transcript
Full conversation between Gianluca Fiorelli and Darren Shaw.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Hi, I'm Gianluca Fiorelli, and welcome back to The Search Session. Today we're going to have as a guest a name that, at least for me, I don't know you, but for many years, his name and the name of the company he founded were substantially synonymous. The company is Whitespark, so you probably already know who our guest is going to be.
He's one of the, I would say, most prominent experts in local search with other peers like, I don't know, Mike Blumenthal, David Mihm, and others. But he is very, very keen on educating businesses about local search. As his LinkedIn profile states, he has more than 45,000 newsletter subscribers, 10,000 YouTube subscribers, and 3,000 email course sign-ups, and that is when he wrote this bio, so surely it's bigger now.
So this is a clear sign of how much our guest is pushing on education and sharing information with the public. Our guest is Darren Shaw. Hey, Darren. How are you doing?
Darren Shaw: Hey. Doing well, thanks.
The Scale of Local Search vs. Traditional SEO
Gianluca Fiorelli: And let's start with the classic question I always ask my guests. How is SEO treating you lately?
Darren Shaw: It is treating us very well at Whitespark, I would say. In general, we are up and to the right on the software side, on the services side, and in particular on the listing side. I think AI has really rejuvenated the concept of the local citation, and we have a whole service around that. So we're busier than ever on that, so it's going well.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, and because obviously when we are talking about AI in search, because AI is bigger than search, but let's say when we talk about AI search, usually, don't you have this idea that sometimes local SEO, local search, is somehow forgotten by the general discussion?
Maybe not in your niche, with the people you are used to talking with, but in the broader SEO community.
Darren Shaw: Yes, in my world, of course, it's all we talk about. And so I talk about it with a lot of my peers and lots of businesses, and it's a funny thing to me. I am always surprised by that concept. It is true. It feels like SEO, as a discipline, is relatively big and local SEO is a small thing within it.
But it is always surprising to me because, if you think about the number of businesses and brands, we're talking about e-commerce brands and SaaS companies and all that, that care about SEO, the broader SEO, there is an order of magnitude more small businesses that have a website, they have a Google Business Profile, they care about SEO as well, and they get huge benefits from SEO.
The actual market is 10 times the size of the regular SEO market. So it’s always a little surprising to me, but it is true that local SEO feels like a small sub-niche of SEO.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, and as an international SEO practitioner, and I can say that is my specialization, I feel your pain. I mean, nobody really cares about international SEO until you see companies that want to target something different than just the national market.
But for instance, even your same type of client, the small businesses, the local businesses. I live in Spain. I'm Italian, and so many are targeting tourists. So for this reason, they are also targeting English at least.
That's why I usually say that, for me, international SEO and SEO were substantially synonymous from the very beginning.
And yes, I understand your concern about the lack of attention. But also because, and this is something that I already talked about with other people, like Greg Gifford, for instance, when talking about local search, there are so many, let's call them enterprise businesses, that actually live both online and offline.
Sometimes it seems that we think all businesses exist only on the internet. But then let's think Macy's. It has a marketplace, it is an e-commerce, but it also has stores. Let's think about Zara. It is also substantially living on stores, physical stores.
So there is also this strong connection between what is usually considered an enterprise-only, internet-living entity and a local entity.
How AI Overviews and "Ask Maps" Are Reshaping Local Search
Gianluca Fiorelli: And talking about AI and local search, let’s be honest; let’s talk more about Google, and then we can also dive into local search in environments like ChatGPT. How are you seeing Google implement and introduce local search in AI search surfaces like AI Overviews or Gemini, especially?
Darren Shaw: Well, we're certainly seeing that if you just go to the regular Google search bar and you search for a local term, we're seeing the AI Overviews start to pull in local results.
So let's say you type in something like “restaurants near me," or “plumbers near me," or “lawyers for criminal defense law," right? So whatever you're searching for, these localized terms, the AI Overviews are now displaying local results.
So you'll get a little map, you'll get local results with the review star rating, but then the local pack is still under there.
So there is that. Now that's a new thing that people have to think about. Like, “Oh, well, how do I make sure my business is present in that interface?”
The other thing that's really huge is Google's new Ask Maps feature, and this is currently only available in the United States and India, but this, to me, represents the future of local search, and it's conversational.
So rather than typing in a keyword like "plumbers near me," you would type something like, “Hey, I'm looking for a plumber to repair my hot water tank. This is the model, this is the issue I'm having with it.” And then it's just like a regular AI conversation. So that it goes back, it might ask you some follow-up questions.
So local discovery will shift to a more conversational, long-prompt kind of structure rather than a keyword-based thing. So we're seeing that too. And then the results that are getting pulled into there are different. The factors that would pull someone in are different.
And so the strategies that we've been doing for a very long time have to start to shift for this new coming world of conversational local search discovery.
Gianluca Fiorelli: And I think I'm right also considering that everything you are describing is also because of the extremely higher personalization of search in the sense that Google is using even more of all the data about you, the location, and the physical location.
Because sometimes, even using incognito mode, because I need it, I am more and more obliged to use a VPN even if I want to do a search, as it is shown in Madrid and not in Valencia, which is 300 kilometers away. I need to use a VPN because the localization of the user is still persistent, even in incognito mode.
So I think that maybe it's this deeper personalization, including the geolocalization of a user when he's logged in, that is also pushing all this kind of super targeted and personalized recommendations that Google does, also in terms of local search opportunities.
If you want to see Google results the way real users do in different cities, countries, languages, or on different devices — without relying on VPNs or proxies — try AWR’s free Chrome extension, AWR Search Anywhere.
It lets you perform Google searches from virtually any location worldwide, down to street-level precision using GPS coordinates, while also customizing language, Google domain, and device type.
How the Traditional Local SEO Pillars Are Changing
Gianluca Fiorelli: But you are also saying that you have started to see different types of, let's call them ranking factors, maybe it's not the very correct word, but elements that can make a local business appear in AI Mode, for instance, that are not the same as the way that we have learned to use and optimize, for instance, a Google Business page for the local pack.
What are these things that you are detecting?
Darren Shaw: Yes, I would say that in local search, a lot of businesses could get away with just optimizing for roughly two signals.
The local search algorithm, traditionally, for ranking in Google Maps and local packs, is based on three key pillars: location (how close you are to the searcher?), relevance (are you relevant?), and prominence (links and mentions on the web).
A lot of local businesses were generally getting away with a pretty basic version of that.
Relevance was the main thing they would focus on.
Location, you can't do much about it. Your location is your location. But the actual relevance is where most of the effort has been put in. Like optimizing your website, making sure you cover all the topics, making sure you're talking about all the entities, making sure your content is excellent and readable, and people are consuming it, making sure your Google Business Profile is fully optimized.
And then the version of prominence that they were doing was a one-time citation build-out on local business directories. So most businesses could get away with that baseline. If they only did that, that would be enough to do very well.
What we're seeing happening in the world of AI-driven local SEO is that the prominence signal has really been cranked up.
So yes, of course, you need to be relevant, and you need to do some additional stuff to make sure your content is structured in the right way, but that prominence signal is so critical now.
So it really comes down to your brand prominence within your local community. And so if you are unknown, you are going to mostly be unknown in the AI results.
Google is looking for businesses that are recognized. They're mentioned in blogs, they're mentioned in local newspapers, they're mentioned at community events. When you add AI to the equation, they have the entire knowledge in a way that they weren't really using or emphasizing as much, and so this becomes very important.
You need your brand to be famous within its own locality. So either in the city or even down to the micro-neighborhood level, you need to make your brand much more famous.
You have to get into digital PR, you have to do community outreach. You have to be engaged with the local community, in blogs and that kind of stuff.
That is the new world of local SEO, and so these are some of the additional things that small businesses need to start thinking about.
Gianluca Fiorelli: So, in other words, substantially, a local business has to be more engaging also with classic offline community events. For instance, a flower shop could create courses for the local community where the shop is physically present.
And I think this is also because, AI or not, a shop should normally do these activities, as they also reverberate online, especially on social media.
Google Pulling Social Feeds Into Google Business Profiles
Gianluca Fiorelli: And here comes another question. Maybe it's also because, as you recently shared in a Short, Google started to present on the Google Business page the social feed related to the business.
Darren Shaw: Yes, so your own social feed has become a much more prominent source of data.
One of the other things that you have to worry about moving into this new world of AI is that a lot of small businesses have made a website, done. They made a Google Business Profile, filled all the fields, done as well. And then they haven't been doing anything.
And so Google is like, "What is new, business?” They're not using Google Posts, and so now they're looking for other feeds to understand the business's latest specials, if they are active, or what's going on.
They want to pull that data into the Google Business Profile, and they are looking for signals that this business is alive and active.
And so social becomes much more important in this world as well, because those signals are just like an extra data source. Consider each one of those like a database for the business.
Your website is a database. Your Google Business Profile is another database. What is said on the broader web is another database. What is happening in your social media is a database.
Even another one is, like, what's happening on Reddit? What's happening in other social feeds? Are other social media creators and influencers mentioning your business?
That's this mindset shift you have to have. It just becomes so much bigger. Local SEO, I've always said, was harder than regular SEO because with regular SEO, you just had to worry about two things: your website content and technical SEO, so all the website stuff, and links.
You did those two things, those are the main things that are driving your SEO. But local SEO was always harder because you had to worry about your website, your links, plus review strategy, plus citations, plus your Google Business Profile.
You had three extra things that you had to manage in order to be successful at local SEO. And now the list of things that you have to be aware of and manage is even bigger. You have to be worrying about your community stuff, your mentions, other social channels, Reddit, and YouTube. It's just like it's become so much bigger and harder now.
Agentic Search and the "Extreme Data Dumping" Strategy
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, totally, totally. And I think also that in the near future we are going to have agentic search. So our agents are going to be new users that local businesses will need to talk to, and prepare accordingly.
I know that there are already, especially there in the US, testing “agentic solutions” for local search. But surely it's going to be even more so in the future. So, what is your idea about this kind of evolution for local search?
Darren Shaw: I think from an optimization perspective, it's pretty much the same. It's like, if you want to appear in AI results, then the strategies you're going to do are the same things you would do if an agent were searching for your business.
So let's say in an agent world, it would be like this. I'm looking for a plumber. So you don't ask a search bar, you don't ask an AI chat, you ask your personal agent. It could even be Siri. Maybe Siri finally gets better, and you ask your watch. You'd be like, “Hey, I need a plumber to come and fix my hot water tank.”
You send the message, and then the agent goes out and does all the digging and the finding. Then it comes back to you and says, “Okay, I found these three. This one's highly rated and has been in business for 20 years. This one, blah, blah, blah. This one specifically specializes in your specific type of hot water tank.”
This is the way search could potentially be in the future. How do you optimize for that? I think it's the same way that you optimize for AI search, which is a number of the prominence things I've already talked about.
But the other huge thing is going way overboard in the data thing. You need to put this on your website: that you service these specific models, you service these specific brands, you offer this type of thing, you have the 24/7 thing, your pricing is this much.
Everything anyone could ever ask about your business, you need to describe that and answer it on your website, because your website is the database that the agents are looking for.
And so if your competitors say that they service these specific brands and models, and you don't, you are now out of the running.
So this is where another big thing coming for AI local SEO is extreme data dumping. Everything you could possibly say has to be on your website.
Gianluca Fiorelli: I'm correct in saying that this is substantially the base of what you define as conversational keywords. All these data points are those data points that you now have to be sure you have on your website and not just hidden, maybe in the footer, as information that comes along with maybe now less important stuff. Because these are the things that people search for and ask in a conversation.
Ditching "How-To" Blogs for High-Impact Portfolio Content
Darren Shaw: And a big shift is in your local SEO content strategy. A lot of local SEO content has been, “Okay, well, we’ve got our homepage, we’ve got our service pages, we have a Contact Us page.” So, you know, a typical local business website has 10 pages, and then they have a blog.
And you know what they do? Every week, every month, they pump out a new blog post: “How to fix a clogged drain”, “How you can stop your pipes from bursting in the winter”. That content is all BS. It is useless. Stop making it.
Instead of making that content, you should be making content that is just really going into detail about everything that your business does.
Gianluca Fiorelli: No, yes, totally. But I think that that content is BS, as you say, or commodity content, as Google would say…
Darren Shaw: Commodity.
Gianluca Fiorelli: … if it's done as it’s usually done. But on the other hand, you can have information gain just by using a different type of format.
For instance, we always talk about experience, and surely local businesses see in the E of experience a big driver for being considered relevant.
And so, for instance, it can be simply a short video where you are saying how to repair, I don't know, a joint as a plumber. Simply saying, “Okay, this is how you do it, and this is my trick.”
And so doing this kind of thinking out of the box, creating your own perspective, your own experience in a video that then you use in your YouTube channel as a Short, as a video, then replicate it as a Short on your TikTok or Instagram, and then republish it on your website.
Maybe that is the kind of content that could be commodity, but it’s not commodity content, that is going to be prized.
But yes, I totally agree that the kind of content that local businesses must answer is how we do stuff, when we are open, when you can return stuff, when you can call us, what are our numbers, what is our customer policy, and so on.
But again, when it comes to local businesses, because this is a question that comes from my personal experience with local businesses that also have a strong e-commerce section on their own website, because they have a sort of dual nature. They sell their products nationwide with the e-commerce, but they also use and sell the products in the shop, in the stores.
So how much do the kinds of clients that you work with really use well the opportunity of connecting Merchant with a local inventory?
Darren Shaw: Let me just firstly respond to one of the things you were talking about earlier, which was firsthand experience-based content.
So while the blog itself, like educational content, I don't find there's great value in that; I agree with you that there's huge value in what you would call a case studies or portfolio section. Whatever job you do, that is great content.
If you go and you fix a sink, you document the job, you take pictures, you put it into your portfolio section. This is demonstrating experience, to your comment, information gain. You're talking about your thing. And then every one of those, you can be like, “Here was the problem. Here was our approach. This is how we did it.”
This is different than commodity content. That's real actionable content. I love that. So yes, 100%.
Merchant Center: The Massive Local Inventory Opportunity
Darren Shaw: With regards to Merchant Center, firstly, I would say it's very rare for us. We have over 100 clients. Very few of them actually sell products, so the e-commerce connection is rare, where you are selling products in addition.
Most of the businesses in the small business world are kind of service-based. Most of the ones we work with, anyway, are service-based businesses. They're lawyers, they're dentists, they're plumbers, they're home services, locksmiths, and HVAC repair. Those kinds of home services businesses are a big part of local search.
So very few of them actually have products. Retail, of course, if you have a retail store, then you've got the e-commerce connection. And so I would say it's like 10% of local search are businesses that also have retail and sell products, and out of that small 10%, 1% of them have done the work to actually connect Merchant Center.
Merchant Center, you'll see a lot, is big in shopping if you're an e-commerce store, but for local merchants, you don't see a lot of activity there.
And actually, I would say in general retail, people in retail, they're not usually seeking out local SEO advice and local SEO services. They're basically relying on foot traffic, so where their store is located.
But I would say that many of them are sleeping on a huge opportunity. And that opportunity is to connect their product inventory with their Google Business Profile via Merchant Center.
When you do that, you can now rank for very specific product searches, and that actually becomes more and more valuable in agentic SEO and in AI SEO because now you can be like, “Hey, I'm looking for this specific board game. Does anywhere in Edmonton sell this board game?”
It looks, “Oh, yes, this business has that board game.” because I do think Google is the future of AI search.I think that many people will continue to use Google. Google will continue to grow. And so for the discovery of that kind of thing, those queries are just going to happen in Google's AI search.
Maybe they're going to use Ask Maps for that. Maybe they're going to use AI Mode. Maybe they're going to use Gemini directly.
But they're going to look for a local business that carries this specific product so they can get in their car and go and buy it right now, and the AI will return to them, “Yes, this business, it's only a 10-minute drive from your house. They have it in stock today.”
That's what you want to know, and so that is the future. And I really think it's so valuable for these local brands, if you sell products, to make sure you do the work to connect Merchant Center.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, I totally agree because I have a couple of clients. One is in Spain, which is a very weird story because it's actually just one shop, but it sells worldwide.
It specializes in Spanish brands, and from the physical store, they also send everything, for instance, to the United States. But then, for Madrid, because they are based in Madrid, they mostly sell with walk-ins, people going to the shop.
Darren Shaw: Right, walk-ins.
Gianluca Fiorelli: And we connected the local inventory with Merchant Center. Because they sell a very specific type of brand that usually tends to be very popular thanks to Instagram, because they are not the classic Zara, Mango, H&M, and so on. They are a very niche Spanish brand because they are all about Spanish brands.
And so people search for the brands, and they always pop up also with the store if the person is in Madrid. So people usually say, “Okay, let's go to the shop and try this shirt personally, or this dress,” and so on. And so we found it very useful to do this, even if it was just one shop.
We have another client who is selling flowers in many locations in the United States. We found it even more useful because they have a very faithful client base, which really loves to search for a specific bouquet, for instance, and go to the shop to see it, to smell it, to see how it is created, and so on.
So I think, as you were saying, and it's weird because especially enterprise businesses, multinational businesses with a strong local presence, with physical stores, are really sleeping on this mountain of money because it would be super easy.
I mean, they have the people to do it. They have experience because we are spending so much money on Shopping already.
Darren Shaw: Yes, the question is—let's say you're a local electronics store; you're just a small business, you have one shop. You sell camera equipment, you sell televisions, and you sell audio equipment—if you put your product inventory online, will Google, and they do tend to do this, prefer the local business over the big box stores like Best Buy and Staples?
Will they prefer your content because you are a local business? And I do think that it might be a competitive advantage as a small individual shop to be able to put that online because I think you're also going to see people in their queries: “I don't want to go to a big box store. I want to support local.”
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, I don't want to go to Best Buy.
Darren Shaw: Yes, they want to support local. And so unless you give your data to the engines, you don't have a chance. You're out of the running. And so that's why it's just so valuable to connect your local product inventory.
For retailers connecting Merchant Center with local inventory, understanding how products surface in local and AI-powered search results is becoming a competitive advantage.
With Advanced Web Ranking, you can monitor product-focused queries, localized rankings, and SERP features tied to commercial intent and nearby availability.
Try AWR free and monitor how local inventory optimization affects your visibility.
How to Target a Multilingual Audience on Google Maps
Gianluca Fiorelli: And let's go international. Once you shared interesting ideas about how to target multilingual public, potential customers, with your Google Business page. Can you summarize it for our listeners?
Darren Shaw: Yes, this is an awesome little trick that very few people know about. And so it's a great advantage. If you live in a country or if you live in an area where multiple languages are commonly spoken, then you have the opportunity to update your business name in multiple languages.
And so it's quite buried in the Google Maps system on how to do this. But what you do is go to your Google Business Profile in Maps, so you're on the page, then you hit the little hamburger menu on the top left. Change your language into the other language.
So let's say I'm currently in a southern state that borders Mexico in the US. And so my website and my Google Business Profile are in English, but I also want to attract Spanish-speaking people as well. So I can change the language to Spanish, and then I click the Suggest an edit button. And now in that field, you'll have an extra field that says, “What is your name in Spanish?”
So if your name was something like The Expert Plumbing Drain Cleaning Specialists, plumbing drain cleaning specialist is totally different in Spanish. So you would then translate your business name to the Spanish version, enter it there, click Save, and now when someone searches for drain cleaning in the Spanish language, your business is much more likely to come up.
So the process is this: change your language, Suggest an edit. You will get a new field. You can enter your business name and the additional name and click Save.
And you can actually add multiple. So if you were in Switzerland, you want to do German, Italian, French, and English. You can do all those different languages.
And if you're in a city where, let's say, you are in Madrid, and your business and your website are all in Spanish, but you want to also attract English-speaking people that are coming there, go and edit your Google Business Profile name and get the English version of your name. And so that's a cool little tip.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, that's a cool idea, especially in countries like Spain or Italy, which rely so much on tourism as a driver for commerce. It's surely an interesting tip and an unknown thing to do.
The Real Value of Local Schema and Entity Knowledge Graphs
Gianluca Fiorelli: And I want to open a big box. Let's see. There is a lot of talk about schema.
Darren Shaw: Yes.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Because you are an expert in local search, maybe you are the best one for telling us what schema is important for local search and what local businesses should not expect to achieve by implementing schema for local search. The pros and the cons.
Darren Shaw: Yes. The classic local schema is the LocalBusiness schema, and I think it's a pretty useless thing to do. It's not going to be this thing that's going to improve your rankings if you add the LocalBusiness schema, because really, all it does is make it very clear what your name, address, phone number, website URL, and categories are.
You can put all that stuff in your LocalBusiness schema, but Google and other AI crawlers and systems can generally detect that. They already know it, so you're just telling them something they already know in the schema. So I don't think there's a lot of value in that.
Where I actually think there's an interesting use of schema, I read an article from Aimee Jurenka not too long ago, and she talked about using schema as more of an entity knowledge graph for your own website.
So when you use schema to describe every page and how this page connects to the other pages, you're building an internal entity graph. And I actually think that concept makes sense in a world of AI search, trying to help the engines understand your internal structure in a very good way, and connecting the entities on your website.
Aimee Jurenka on Internal Knowledge Graphs
For more on this discussion, listen to Aimee’s conversation with Gianluca Fiorelli on how topic entities, schema markup, and internal knowledge graphs can help structure websites for AI search visibility.
Darren Shaw: It's a bit technical to do that and to set it up, but I do think there's value in that. And I kind of think there's value mostly for AI, not for traditional search, in the FAQ schema.
So, going towards an AI search world, FAQs are very valuable, and so I do like to have my FAQs marked up in schema. And there was a study not too long ago that showed that businesses with FAQ schema are returned much more often in the search results, and so I think there's some value in that.
But prior to an AI world, I didn't really care that much about schema for local businesses. I only cared about it when it would present features in the search results.
So the FAQ schema was amazing when it worked, because you would get these results, and then you would have more space on the page. Even better was when you could use schema to generate the review stars. You get those stars in the search results? That was a dream.
But then Google took all that stuff away, and so the use of schema became less and less valuable.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Well, yes, I am on Jurenka’s side. I always consider schema something more important than just for rich results. It's really related to describing and creating your own knowledge graph of your website.
Darren Shaw: Right. Yes.
Gianluca Fiorelli: And in this sense, I think that even if maybe you do not agree, LocalBusiness schema can be of help eventually for this ambiguity, because there can sometimes be this equation where local businesses can have substantially the same name.
Or, especially in order to appear in the Knowledge Graph, I know that there is a Google Business page, so all the Google Business graphs are part of the Knowledge Graph.
But also confirming, “Okay, this is the Google Business.” If not, I wouldn't understand why Google is also still insisting on using it.
And substantially, LocalBusiness is a subtype of Organization. And Organization, if we pay attention to what Google says in the guidelines, is, along with all the product stuff, but less and less, because now it is the feed on Merchant that becomes very important.
But Organization is the only schema where it says there is no obligated property, there is no recommended property; just put all the properties you can because we use it for feeding the Knowledge Graph. So maybe, in this sense, it is truly not important for thinking, “Am I going to rank higher in the local pack just because I have schema?”
But yes, for things like disambiguating. So when people are searching for you, there are properties, for instance, alias specifying who the owner is, who is working in the local business. There are all these things that give Google the kind of information that you usually cannot put because there are no fields in the Google Business page.
So I think this is where the importance still resides of this kind of schema for local search.
Darren Shaw: I have some evidence that Google certainly looks at your LocalBusiness schema and considers it, and the evidence is this. It's also a warning.
A lot of local businesses, at some point in their 10, 20-year history, will change some fundamental piece of their data. They might change their business name, they might change their phone number, or they might change their address.
And so if you've made that change, and let's say you update your website, you update your citations, and then you update your Google Business Profile, and you say, “Okay, we have a new phone number.”
Then you go to update it on the Google Business Profile, and Google just keeps rejecting it. Why won't Google take my new phone number?
And it's because you forgot to update the schema. The schema was buried in the code. Some web developer put it in there 10 years ago. You didn't even know it existed on your website, and it has your old phone number, and you didn't know to update that. And so Google will reject the update because the schema is telling them that's not your phone number.
So that tells you, one, that Google actually does look at it and does care about it, and then it also tells you, don't forget about updating the schema if you've made any changes.
Because that's a common mistake where people will forget that the schema is there. It's hidden in the code, right? They're like, “Oh, what, I have this thing called Rank Math on my website? I never even looked at it,” right?
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, it's that kind of block of all words put together because it's a JSON script. So the classic thing that nobody really wants to look at.
The AI Review Crackdown: Why Legit Reviews Are Vanishing
Gianluca Fiorelli: And let's talk about Google Business pages and reviews.
Darren Shaw: Sure.
Gianluca Fiorelli: In one Short, you were talking about how Google is becoming more and more aggressive in filtering reviews. What's happening?
Darren Shaw: Well, Google has a major review spam problem, and it's a problem of their own making because they put extreme emphasis, from a ranking perspective, on reviews. So the number of reviews, your rating, and particularly the recency and the velocity of reviews that you're getting, that is a huge signal for Google.
And it is applied across the board. So it really impacts your local pack and Maps rankings, but it also, importantly, really impacts your Local Services Ads rankings. So for local businesses that are running those kinds of ads, the reviews are so powerful.
And so what ends up happening is that in competitive spaces, these brands, these small businesses, they know how important reviews are, so they buy them. They get fake reviews. They manipulate reviews. They're doing whatever they can to manipulate the review signal.
And so this is creating a huge problem for Google because if the general public loses all trust in reviews, then it really makes the results less valuable. They're hard to trust. They're hard to use. People will be like, “I don't think Google's results are any good. I don't believe it. I'm going to use Claude instead.” Right? So that is a threat for Google, so they have to make sure that the reviews are trustworthy. They are now really ramping up efforts to fix that, and they are now using AI in a number of ways.
They're looking for signals like lots of reviews coming from the same IP address. If you're manipulating reviews by, let's say, you had a sign in your store with a QR code, and it said, “Please leave us a review.”
And then it's at your dentist's office, and everyone does that. They're sitting in the office, and they leave the review. That location signal, like you're getting hundreds of reviews all from that same location, that's a signal.
They're also looking for review manipulation when people mention a specific person over and over and over. And so that's where you can be like, “Oh, yes, could you leave us a review? And when you do, please make sure you mention my name, Darren Shaw, because we're running a competition at the office. Whoever gets the most reviews wins a gift certificate for dinner or something.”
And so that is a strategy that Google is frowning upon. And so if you get a whole bunch of reviews and they all mention Darren Shaw, those are likely to get stripped.
And then the other thing that’s happening is review spikes. If you get a ton of reviews all at the same time and then no reviews for a long time, that's another signal that Google looks at and is concerned about.
And then the other thing is just detecting patterns with AI. People who will review the same business across multiple locations look very sketchy. Or people who are reviewing all across the whole country in service businesses, that's another signal that the AI is picking up on, just to detect patterns of fake reviews.
And so we're seeing a lot of reviews getting taken down, being removed from the system, which is honestly what we want. But the unfortunate side effect is that a lot of real reviews are getting caught in the same...
Gianluca Fiorelli: Just because they look like spamming, but they are not.
Darren Shaw: Some signal, yes. Google's AI system isn't perfect. It's trying its best to clean out the fake reviews. Yes. And we have a new system that we've built that we're launching right away that gives you review management functionality and also tracks any missing reviews. So if you lose a review, sometimes you have no idea.
Gianluca Fiorelli: It's alerting the business owner that a review has disappeared.
Darren Shaw: Yes. “This review has disappeared. Here's a copy of it.” And then if you have a copy of it and you know it's legit, then you can email Google Support and say, “Hey, this review got removed, but it's totally legit,” and then they often reinstate it.
But you can't do that unless you have a record of it. And so our system keeps the record, sends you an alert, “The review's been removed,” and then queues you up to request it to be reinstated.
As Google becomes more aggressive in filtering reviews, local rankings can fluctuate quickly, especially in competitive verticals.
With Advanced Web Ranking, you can monitor ranking volatility across locations and identify whether changes in reviews, ratings, or local signals correlate with visibility drops.
Start a free AWR trial to keep a closer eye on local ranking movements.
Local Guides: The "Influencers" of the Google Maps Ecosystem
Gianluca Fiorelli: And talking about reviews, I have a question that maybe can sound weird. Does the review by a Local Guide, someone that Google is labeling as a Local Guide, someone who is actively creating reviews and contributing to the local search ecosystem of Google, have more weight than another review or not?
Darren Shaw: Theoretically, it is believed, yes. I would consider the Local Guide levels almost like trust levels. So the higher your Local Guide level, the more trust your reviews will carry. Three or below, not very much trust. You get into the five, six, seven, quite a bit of trust. You get into the eight, nine, and ten levels of Local Guide, especially ten, and I have seen really interesting things.
There's the ability to push an edit to a Google Business Profile, right? So if you go to Google Business, anyone's Google, I could go to yours, and I could say, “This is the wrong phone number,” and I could change your phone number. I can submit an edit.
If I do it as a level six Local Guide, it might go through, but it's kind of unlikely because it's a sensitive field. If a level ten guide says that your phone number is wrong and suggests that on Google, it almost always goes through.
That tells you that Google does give more weight to a Local Guide edit, and by proxy, one would assume they give more weight to a Local Guide review. So the review will carry more value.
Gianluca Fiorelli: They could be considered, like in the Google search ecosystem, the equivalent of an influencer on Instagram for a local business.
Darren Shaw: It is similar to that. Yes, absolutely. And so getting a review from a high-level Local Guide, one, you know it's going to stick. It's not going to get removed. It just carries that additional trust.
And why does it carry all that trust? Because Google has all that data. That person has been logging into freaking Google Maps every day, adding photos, adding reviews, and is connected to a real Google account. Google's like, “Oh yes, I have no doubt that this is a real person doing real stuff. They're traveling around this one city. They're leaving all this stuff.”
All the signals are there. Whereas you get a review from someone, it’d be like, you just ask somebody, “Hey, can you leave me a review?” And they're like, “On what? Google? Okay.” And so they log into their Gmail account that they never use, and then they leave a review, and then they never use their account again. It's lacking the history, it's lacking the data to prove to Google that this is a real person, and so that is a review that's at risk of getting removed.
Combating "Zombie Information" and Hallucinations in LLMs
Gianluca Fiorelli: And talking now about LLMs, not Google.
Darren Shaw: Yes.
Gianluca Fiorelli: We know, well, it also involves AI Mode or AI Overview, but let's talk more about ChatGPT, which seems to be diminishing in usage, but it’s growing the usage of LLMs in general. So let's say it's a good surface that local businesses might also control.
One of the problems has always been hallucination. So, how much can a local business, or any kind of business with a strong local presence in the territory, create a sort of governance policy for checking, controlling, and eventually correcting these kinds of hallucinations?
Darren Shaw: Yes, I like to use a software called Waikay, (what AI knows about your business). And so that's a pretty good one to just get a sense of what AIs know about your business.
But in terms of hallucinations, in local, I wouldn't even call them hallucinations. One of the things that we're seeing happening is that the most obscure piece of data is somewhere out there on the web, and the AIs will return it.
For example, in the Ask Maps interface, it's kind of the local version of AI Mode, you can ask a question, like, “Hey, I'm looking for a local jeweler.” And this example comes from Claudia Tomina. She gave this great example where she asked Maps for a local jeweler that carries a specific brand of watch. And so Ask Maps returned, “Well, this one is only 10 miles from your house, and they carry that brand of watch.” And so then she goes and checks their website. No, they don't have it. She calls them. No, they don't carry that brand.
And so now the question is, why does Google think that they carry that brand? And it's because she found this thing, like 10 years ago, they used to carry that brand, and it's on some directory somewhere on the internet. And so now the large language model is returning that. And actually, it's not really a hallucination; it's more of a data cleansing issue.
Gianluca Fiorelli: That's why I was saying, talking about governance.
Darren Shaw: Yes. You need to be aware of what some of these things are. And how would you even find that? It's so hard to find those kinds of things.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes. This is more like forensic SEO.
Darren Shaw: It's hard, yes. So, you know, I guess you have to just deal with it, and then when it comes up, you clean it up at that time if it is an issue. I wouldn't necessarily execute a huge project to find every mention of your business anywhere on the web.
Gianluca Fiorelli: No, no. Actually, AI is not making a mistake. It's simply surfacing zombie information.
Darren Shaw: I like that, yes. Back from the dead.
Gianluca Fiorelli: And the problem is that sometimes not all people are going to call the business.
Darren Shaw: No, they can show up.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Maybe they see it, and they go directly with the car. They spend an afternoon, and they say that it was wrong. And they maybe don't blame AI Mode. They blame the business.
Darren Shaw: Well, they should blame Google. It's really Google's fault.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, I know. But we know people sometimes think weirdly because, if it's told by AI, it should be true.
Darren Shaw: I think that the strategy for most small businesses is to just pay attention, right? When you hear about it, try to find the source of it. Like when it comes in, just be like, “Hey, Google told me that you carry this brand of watch, but I'm here, you don't have it. What's up?”
And be like, “Well, I don't know.” And then when you hear about that, go digging. Try to find where that mention is coming from and try to clean it up.
Gianluca Fiorelli: And one question specifically about ChatGPT. When ChatGPT presents information about a local business, maybe with a card inside the answer, do we really understand where it is taking that kind of information from?
Formally, they have this connection with Bing, but in the past, people were also saying this is taken from Google Business. So where is this information coming from?
Darren Shaw: I think it comes from the RAG process. So the search results will often inform what comes into the local results in a ChatGPT query.
But one of the huge things that you have to think about with AI SEO for local, that maybe people weren't thinking about before, is review diversification.
So a lot of people have this strategy where they build reviews only on Google. They don't think about TripAdvisor, HomeAdvisor, or whatever the most prominent business directories for your industry are that offer reviews. That's where ChatGPT is often citing. Like, “Well, they have a 4.9 rating and 400 reviews on homeadvisor.com.”
Whereas Google's going to mostly look at its own review data, ChatGPT and other LLMs are looking at reviews on other sites.
And so this is where our strategy is: if you want to cast a wider net and you want to be present in multiple platforms, you should really be thinking about getting more reviews on the sites that are important in your industry, because that seems to be a huge factor for local, and what they're basing a lot of those results on.
The Next Level of Local Link Building: Unstructured Citations
Gianluca Fiorelli: Last question. Usually, in local search, we always talk about citations, so being present in directories and stuff like that. But what about those that you define as unstructured citations?
Darren Shaw: This goes back to what I was saying earlier about brand fame, right? Becoming famous. And so the unstructured citations would be your local blog, your local community newspaper. The local community league maybe is hosting an event, and you're one of the primary sponsors for it, right? Sponsorships and those.
So those are unstructured citations, and I think in an AI-driven world, that's the work to do. That is one of the huge things that you need to be doing to build.
So directories, that's table stakes. You have to do it. Everyone should have the directories because you need to be present where the search engines and the large language models are expecting to find your business. That's just ground zero.
But in order to be competitive, that's where we're talking about the unstructured citations and building those out. Local digital PR is a huge thing that brands need to do. The trouble is that it's expensive. It's hard to do this at scale because, you know, directories are great. You order a one-time thing, it costs you a few hundred bucks, and you're done.
Whereas this other work, it's like, are you going to go set up a tent and a booth at this community event, and you're going to sponsor it? You're going to give them 500 bucks. You're going to spend a whole afternoon there. It's just a lot more time investment.
But I would say that this is the kind of stuff that will set you apart in the future. So you have to do it if you want to be successful in the new world. But just expect to invest more money into your local search strategy than you may have in the past.
More Local Search Insights from The Search Session
Keep exploring local search with these episodes:
Greg Gifford on how AI is reshaping local search, from changing user behavior to reviews, user-generated content, and multi-location visibility.
Celeste Gonzalez on how local search is evolving toward Search Experience Optimization, where reviews, AI, short-form video, and real-world customer experience all shape visibility.
Darren Shaw Outside of Local SEO
Gianluca Fiorelli: Okay. Let's finish here. But before, I want to ask you a personal question. What does Darren Shaw like to do when he's not thinking about local search?
Darren Shaw: Well, I'm always thinking about local search, but I like to hang out with my wife and my kid, and I like to travel. We do a lot of traveling. Multiple times a year, we'll travel. We love to go to Europe, of course. I was just in Valencia. It was awesome to see it.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, I know. We had the fortune to finally meet at my home. Usually it's me, maybe, especially when I was coming to MozCon, and you were there.
Darren Shaw: That's right. So I like to travel a lot. We went for a bike ride yesterday, which was very nice. Do a little gardening and play the piano. I'm trying to pick up the piano but not putting enough time into it. So that's what I like to do.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Cool. And surely you're going to—because we are recording this as getting closer to the summer—spend a wonderful summer. Because I remember, many, many years ago, I visited your side of the world, especially Alberta, and then went to British Columbia. In May and June, your side of the world is really beautiful.
For instance, let's make you the Local Guide. What would you suggest to someone who comes to Edmonton?
Darren Shaw: Oh. Well, in Edmonton, we have a beautiful river valley. We're known for this huge, I think it's like the largest nature area inside a city. So the river valley runs through the whole city, and it's just this beautiful place. A lot of people should go to the river valley.
We have a wonderful art gallery in Edmonton, a beautiful Art Gallery of Alberta. We have a great museum. We have a very cool thing called Fort Edmonton Park.
Fort Edmonton Park is like the original fort that was set up in the 1700s with the colonialists that came here, and it was a place for fur trade between Europe and the Indigenous people here. So Fort Edmonton Park has a very interesting history of the area.
And then, of course, I can't mention West Edmonton Mall. It's one of the biggest malls in the world. It has a waterpark in it, it has a full amusement park in it, it has a skating rink in it. It used to have submarine rides, but now they have changed it to swan rides. So it's just like this insanely huge mall.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Well, you need a place to spend your free time, especially when it comes to winter.
Darren Shaw: That's right. So we have that. And then I would say get out of the city and go to the mountains. We have the incredible Rocky Mountains. It's just a three-and-a-half-hour drive away. And you can go skiing. There's so much beautiful nature there.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, I remember wonderful trekking there and biking in the Rockies. I was closer to Calgary, but wonderful, wonderful.
So thank you, Darren. It was a real pleasure to have you here at The Search Session.
Darren Shaw: All right. Thanks for having me.
Gianluca Fiorelli: I hope maybe in the future to have you, maybe along with Myriam Ellis. I know that she collaborates with Whitespark on all the content that she is sharing.
Darren Shaw: She doesn't like to do video things.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Wow. Maybe we can convince her.
Darren Shaw: I don't think so.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Oh. I will try to play with my Italian Mediterranean charm.
Darren Shaw: Good luck. Good luck.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Okay. Thank you again, Darren.
And thanks to all of you. Remember, if you want notifications for new episodes, subscribe. And if you liked this episode with Darren Shaw, as I'm sure you did, please give our video a like. Thank you and bye-bye.
Podcast Host
Gianluca Fiorelli
With almost 20 years of experience in web marketing, Gianluca Fiorelli is a Strategic and International SEO Consultant who helps businesses improve their visibility and performance on organic search. Gianluca collaborated with clients from various industries and regions, such as Glassdoor, Idealista, Rastreator.com, Outsystems, Chess.com, SIXT Ride, Vegetables by Bayer, Visit California, Gamepix, James Edition and many others.
A very active member of the SEO community, Gianluca daily shares his insights and best practices on SEO, content, Search marketing strategy and the evolution of Search on social media channels such as X, Bluesky and LinkedIn and through the blog on his website: IloveSEO.net.
