Nice!

April growth tips 🌸 Warm weather is upon us, and for small business owners, that means more than just blooming flowers. It means a surge in local foot traffic and a fresh opportunity to connect with customers.

I don't see this feature on any of the GBPs I manage. They may be rolling it out by country (I'm in Canada), or it might only be available for food and drink categories. Do you have the feature?

This was just announced in the Google Small Business Bulletin. More here: lnkd.in/gu__KFZH

I love this feature for any business. Set up a series of monthly recurring promos and put them on repeat. This way, you always have a freshly posted special offer running on your Google Business Profile.

- You can set a post to repeat daily, weekly, or monthly.
- You can use this on Offer and Event posts, but not Update posts.
- Perfect to make sure your profile stays looking freshly updated.
- The idea is to use it for recurring events like happy hour or quiz night.

🚨 Breaking Google News: New Google Posts feature to set posts to repeat. Here's what you need to know 👇

Watch out for chickens and ducks

I know you know this client 😂

20 Local Developments You Need to Know About from Q1 2026 | Whitespark Happy 2026 to all the local business owners and marketers riding the rough seas of this first quarter. I can’t recall another start to a new year with quite this much disruption to keep pace with. If ...

Did you see the new “Text Message” button in Google’s mobile Local Pack? Miriam Ellis covers this and 19 more local search developments from the first quarter of 2026 in her newest Local Search Roundup.

Read it below to stay informed about the present and future of local search!

Google’s new Google Business Profile playbooks are actually really good, and you should take a look if you haven’t yet.

6 Crazy Google Business Profile Secrets Almost Nobody Knows YouTube video by Whitespark

I bet you don’t know all of these Google Business Profile hacks. My latest YouTube video covers 6 of my most obscure Google Business Profile tips that you need to know.

So you can actually see what people search for that leads them to your brand.

And then you can use this info to optimize for branded terms you weren’t even aware of. You can improve your website to target these specific branded terms, and that will actually help you get more traffic.

This shows all the searches Google considers related to your brand. And it’s not just your exact brand name. You’ll often see:

- misspellings and variations
- product or service-based searches tied to your business
- sometimes even competitor terms

Have you tried this new brand filter in Google Search Console? It reveals what Google THINKS your brand is. Here’s how to do it:

1. Go to Google Search Console
2. Click Performance > Search Results
3. Click Filter > Query
4. Select Branded queries

who forted? 😂

Whitespark's Guide to Unstructured Citations for AI Visibility This guide will teach you how to earn valuable online mentions of your business to increase your prominence in AI and traditional search results.

Citations are having a major revival because of AI. Unstructured citations are the #4 most important AI visibility factor in the 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey.

Read @miriamellis.bsky.social’s new guide to know how you can earn these valuable unstructured citations.

Good thing they have us SEOs to catch things like this 😉

PS: If you want to show your clients beautiful reports like the one below, check out Whitespark’s Local Ranking Grids. You can run 8 free 5×5 grid scans with our trial (no credit card required).

- We had a quick conversation with the client, and added the keyword back to the site, and their rankings returned.

I know it’s obvious to us SEOs that if you want to rank for a term, you need to add it to your website, but many clients just aren’t thinking about the SEO impact of their decisions.

- Our SEO team noticed the change through our reporting, and did some quick keyword research. It turns out that “climate controlled storage” has monthly search volume of 3000 whereas “heated storage” only has 150.

- They were ranking extremely well for “climate-controlled storage”.
- They went through their site and replaced every instance of “climate-controlled storage” with “heated storage”.

Our client was outranking a major national brand and lost it overnight.

Sometimes the biggest SEO losses aren’t caused by competitors, but by clients who inadvertently mess up their own SEO.

Here’s what happened with one of our clients:

AI in Google Maps, Review Guidelines & Tripadvisor Still Matters | E25 The Whitespark Local Update YouTube video by Whitespark

@clairecarlile.bsky.social and I talk about this and more in today's episode.

Watch the full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify!

Google just added AI to Google Maps, and local businesses need to pay attention.

Google’s new Ask Maps feature brings Gemini into Google Maps, letting people ask detailed questions about places and get personalized recommendations.

Big shout-out to Tadevž, who shared this with me when we were hanging out at BrightonSEO.

He was so thrilled about his local SEO success that he sold his laundromats and is now a full-time SEO!

And this makes sense. If someone is already publicly saying they like your business, they’re much more likely to leave a review if you ask.

3. People started commenting things like “Love this place” and “Best laundromat in town”.
4. Then he sent those people a direct message and asked if they’d be willing to leave a Google review. And many of them did.

1. He created a giveaway post where people had to leave a comment to enter the contest.
2. Then he paid to boost the post.

I have a brilliant review tip for you that you definitely haven’t heard before.
My new Slovenian friend Tadevž Ropert used to own laundromats, and he found a clever way to generate Google reviews through Facebook ads.

Browsing r/googleReviews never disappoints 😂

I think that it's a pretty nice feature! As long as people review the AI-generated response and edit it before submitting, this could make review management faster and easier.

I first saw this shared by Chandan Mishra on LinkedIn. From what he shared in his post, it seems that the AI generates a suggested reply, but you still have to review and submit it yourself.