Claire Carlile and Darren Shaw are back with another episode of the Whitespark Local Update. Here’s what they’re talking about today:

📝 Ask Maps in Google Maps – When Local Search Meets Gemini AI (Glenn Gabe)

📝 How we’re reimagining Maps with Gemini (Google’s Official Announcement)

📝 Google Reviews for Businesses: What the New Guidelines Mean for Your Local Reputation (Krystal Taing)

📝 Why Tripadvisor still matters for local SEO in 2026 (Laura I. Abreu)

📝 Star Ratings Are for Humans: AI Reads the Text (Claudia Tomina)

📝 You Know Your Product is Awesome - But Does Anybody Else? (April Dunford)

📝 How AI is impacting local search and what tools to use to get ahead (Miriam Ellis)

Claire Carlile and Darren Shaw are back with your weekly dose of local SEO goodness. Here’s what they’re talking about today:

📝 The AI Playbook for Restaurants: What to Do Right Now (David “Rev” Ciancio)

📝 How should agencies build a business around Google Local Service Ads (LSAs)? (NearMedia)

📝 New Branded Queries Filter in Google Search Console

📝 I Built a 60,000-Page AI Website for $10: GPTBot Crawled It 30,000+ Times in 12 Hours (Metehan Yesilyurt)

📝 New Attribute in Google Business Profile (Claire Carlile, Hava Hadzhiibryam)

📝 New Google Business Profile Playbooks:

• Restaurants & Cafés
• Hotels & Accommodations
• Tour & Activity Operators
• Service-Based Businesses (Plumbers, Cleaners, etc.)
• General Business Playbook

📝 Whitespark + Women in Tech SEO Partnership

In this episode of the Whitespark Local Update, Claire Carlile and Darren Shaw discuss:

📝 New Research: Search Happens Everywhere; an Analysis of 41 Websites with Significant Search Activity (Rand Fishkin)

📝 AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It (Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye)

📝 The AI Prompt That Shows Why Your Contact Page Stinks (Andy Crestodina)

📝 The perfect local business contact page built for Google and conversions (Darren Shaw)

📝 Google Review Discrepancies: AI Response Facts, Missing Reviews, and API Issues

📝 Google Posts 101 Workshop (Lisa Landsman)

Claire Carlile and Darren Shaw are back again with another episode of the Whitespark Local Update Podcast. This time, they cover:

📝 Google’s Minimum Viable Content Refresh (Steve Toth)

📝 Google is Nudging Reviewers to Edit Their Past Reviews (Claudia Tomina)

📝 Reviews + The Real World: Learnings From Famed Restaurant Reviewer, Marilyn Hagerty (Miriam Ellis)

📝 Updated Privacy Guidelines for Suspension & Reinstatement Requests (Vinay Toshniwal)

📝 What Extraction Method Is Google Using to Build Grounding Snippets? (Dan Petrovic)

📝 Careful With Google Business Profile Verification Flow (Claudia Tomina)

📝 Whitespark’s New Google Business Profile Reinstatement Service

The local search world never slows down, and Claire Carlile and Darren Shaw are back to break down the biggest developments from the past week:

📝 How To Mine Google Search Console For Conversation Data (Regex Included) (Chris Long)

📝 Have AI Get Prices – Google Business Profiles – AI Talking to AI (Ben Fisher)

📝 Updated Google Business Profile Policies (Hiroko Imai)

📝 How to Create AI Personas: 5 Prompts for Smart Marketing Alignment (Andy Crestodina)

📝 Stop Chasing the Local 3-Pack, Start Building an Entity That Ranks Beyond it (Claudia Tomina)

📝 Google Business Profile Violations Google ACTUALLY Punishes (SterlingSkyInc)

Claire Carlile and Darren Shaw are back to recap the most important local SEO developments from the past two weeks. In this episode, they cover:

📝 Google Reviews Bug on Chrome (Vinay Toshniwal)

📝 New “Insights” section in GBP (Dipa Gandhi)

📝 AI Isn’t Replacing Local Search (Crystal Carter on the NearMemo podcast)

📝 How to improve LSA visibility (Eric Levine on the NearMemo podcast)

📝 What if User Satisfaction is the most important factor in SEO? (Marie Haynes)

📝 Moving from a Google-shaped Web to an Agent-shaped Web (Mike King)

📝 Does Schema Help with AI Visibility? (Mark Williams-Cook)

😍 Whitespark Local Ranking Grids

Claire Carlile and Darren Shaw are back with a fresh roundup of the most important local SEO updates from last week. In this episode, they cover:

📝 Ranking in Google's AI Results in 2026 with Mike King (SterlingSky)

📝 The local SEO gatekeeper: How Google defines your entity (Claudia Tomina)

📝 Franchise Website Migration & Improved Local SEO For BTDT (Kick Point)

📝 We've Analysed 236 SEO, Content, Social, and Digital PR case studies (Rise at Seven)

📝 Whitespark’s Ultimate Guide to Local Business Reputation Management (Miriam Ellis)

📝 The Future of Brand Visibility: Optimizing for AI Citations with Dan Petrovic & Jes Scholz (Patrick Hathaway, Sitebulb)

📝 How To Contact GBP Support (Stefan Somborac)

It was a busy week in local SEO, so Claire and Darren are breaking down the updates you actually need to know.
In this episode, they talk about:

📝 Query Fan-Out in Practice: Turning One Search into an Omnimedia Content Plan (Francine Monahan)

📝 Tough Reinstatement Season Reminder (Vinay Toshniwal)

📝 Common Crawl is Interesting (Cyrus S.)

📝 Google’s announcement on the ‘Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)’

📝 What UCP Means for Ecommerce SEO: Preparing for Agentic Commerce (Aleyda Solis)

📝 Meta Title Tags Length SEO Experiment (Dr James Davidson)

📝 How to Clone Yourself (or make an AI advisor for anything) (Orbitmedia)