Video: Mike Blumenthal on Google Maps spam resource issues

I recently met up with Mike Blumenthal, a long-time local SEO expert and co-founder of customer experience management platform GatherUp. We discussed Google Maps and local SEO.

In this first part of our interview, included below, we talked about Mike’s history in the SEO industry and what he did prior to that. But more interestingly, we talked about the issues with Google Maps. How Google Maps seems to invest a lot of money into user interface changes, monetization techniques but less and less resources in the quality of the results. Spam in Google Maps is still a big problem for Google and one Google doesn’t seem to stay on top of, according to Mike.

But Google Maps is of huge importance to Google, as Mike said, he believes Google Maps will be the third-largest discovery engine behind Google Search and YouTube.

Here is part one of the video:

If you’re a search professional interested in appearing on Barry’s vlog, you can fill out this form on Search Engine Roundtable; he’s currently looking to do socially distant, outside interviews in the NY/NJ tri-state area. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel by clicking here.