The Near Memo

Exploring the big stories for the week at the intersection of local business & marketing across the spectrum of search, social and commerce. With Greg Sterling, Mike Blumenthal & David Mihm.

The Near Memo is a news podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 280 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts The Near Memo, a news show with 280 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #36

  Rankings Up, Calls Down: What AI Visibility Is Really Worth to Local Businesses.

  Sep 24, 202654 minS4

  Send us Fan Mail Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Guide) and Mark Kabana (Places Scout, now part of Yext) rejoin Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal for Part 2 of our conversation. We get into how agencies are turning "AI visibility" into a product, why clients can't tell what it's worth, and what a Local SEO Guide × Local Falcon study found about where ChatGPT gets its local answers — no Google reviews at all, and a review-count plateau at around 200. Then the uncomfortable part: a 100-location franchise with rankings up 20–30% and calls down 40%, a storage search result that's 43% ads across five screens, the PI firm that quit Google ads and lost its leads, and why "ask every lead how they found you" is still the most honest AI metric there is. Part 1 (EP 274): https://www.nearmedia.co/ep-274-why-position-one-doesnt-exist-in-local-anymore-brighton-seo-recap/ Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

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  Episode #35

  Why "Position One" Doesn't Exist in Local Anymore (Brighton SEO Recap)

  Sep 18, 202637 minS4

  Send us Fan Mail Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Guide) and Mark Kabana (founder of Places Scout, now VP of Data Innovation at Yext) join Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal fresh off Brighton SEO San Diego for an open-agenda conversation: what the conference floor actually said about local's place in the industry, why a single search rank may already be a dead concept, and how permissioned, agentic browsing is quietly showing up inside everyday consumer AI tools. Topics include: why AI vendors already outnumber local vendors on conference expo floors, a Near Media survey finding that most internet use is tied to real-world local intent, why AI visibility still hasn't correlated with direct traffic in Andrew's own client data, Mark Kabana's "no more position one" argument for why AI ranking is becoming a distribution across conversational paths rather than a single number, and two live examples — one from ChatGPT, one from Claude — of AI assistants asking permission to browse the web mid-conversation. Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

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  Episode #34

  Fragmented Discovery, Google's €460M DMA Fine, and Apple's Distribution Bet

  Sep 10, 202642 minS4

  Send us Fan Mail Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal break down four stories shaping local search and AI discovery. First, a preview of new consumer-journey research Near Media ran for Lastmile Retail (heading to Brighton SEO): search and AI dominate discovery, but human referral has barely moved in a decade — and AI usage collapses at the moment of purchase. Then the EU's DMA decision: a €460M fine for Google search self-preferencing (part of a combined €890M penalty), a 60-day cease-and-desist, and the Commission's rejection of the "the local pack is just search" defense. Mike audits Google's hotel results in Berlin vs. the US and finds ~40% of the mobile SERP is ads on both sides of the Atlantic. Finally, Apple's foldable iPhone Duo event — Siri's 2.5-billion-a-day distribution story, wearables as AI inputs, the $2,000 Duo, and whether Apple's privacy moat can hold. Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

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  Episode #33

  The Verification Loop: How People *Really* Find Local Businesses Now (SOCi's Damian Rollison)

  Sep 2, 202650 minS4

  Send us Fan Mail The path to a local purchase used to be a straight line. It isn't anymore. Damian Rollison, Senior Director of Market Insights at SOCi, joins Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal to unpack SOCi's third annual consumer study and the idea at its center: the verification loop. Consumers now bounce among search, social, AI, and review sites — corroborating a choice before they act — and this year AI posted the single biggest behavior jump the survey has ever recorded. We get into the numbers that matter for local marketers: AI usage for local research leaping from 9% to 52% year over year, the 81% of consumers who verify an AI recommendation before acting, why search *gained* ground even as AI exploded, and how the "where do you start" question breaks down very differently across restaurants, financial services, healthcare, property, and fuel & auto. Plus the practitioner reality check — habitual vs. one-time local behavior, the blind spot in last-click attribution, and the short list of surfaces that actually move AI visibility. Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

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  Episode #32

  The Path of Enshittification: Apple Ads, Google's Toll Booth, and Meta's $18B Escape Hatch

  Aug 28, 202637 minS4

  Send us Fan Mail Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal go guest-free this week to connect three stories that are really one story. Apple has launched ads in Apple Maps — contextual, largely on-device, and with no way to turn them off — which quietly undercuts the "you're not the product" brand Apple spent years building. Google is expanding what it charges for: starting October 1, some missed Local Services Ads calls become billable leads, and LSAs have moved into Google's main ad organization as ad real estate keeps eating the results page. Then there's Meta's roughly $18 billion youth-safety settlement with state attorneys general — a number the hosts argue is far smaller than it looks once you read the contingencies and spread it over ten years. Along the way: why the traffic "stolen by AI" is really going to ads, why even ad-skeptics now click rich local ad units, and why the settlement's shared discovery pool may matter more than the dollar figure. Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

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