Month: October 2017

Why Aren’t We Listening To The Evidence On Practical Science?

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We’ve all seen the headlines on school science practicals – they’re too boring, or too predictable, or just not happening often enough.

But when new research comes along, with evidence of what good practical science looks like, it seems we’re not listening.

Part of the debate about practical science rests on the fact that we don’t even agree on the basics: what makes a good practical lesson? What are practical lessons supposed to achieve? How can schools improve the quality of their practical science?

In 2015, Ofqual removed practical exams from science GCSEs and A levels. Instead, practical skills and knowledge are tested through written exams. Students are supposed to do some practicals – but if they perform poorly, it doesn’t affect their grade.

The goal was to give teachers the freedom to do more interesting, open-ended experiments with their students – not just follow recipes at the lab bench. But many people disagreed with these changes, including the Education Secretary at the time, Nicky Morgan, who said it would harm the next generation of scientists, and the Wellcome Trust who said the reformed A levels won’t reflect students’ abilities. The professional bodies complained that many of the existing practical exams for A level had already been interesting, open-ended investigations, exactly the kind of experiments that the changes were supposed to favour – and they had just been scrapped.

There is a risk that teachers use their new freedom to cut the number of practicals they offer students. Most teachers believe that for A levels, the changes have been positive – but not all do.

So, what is new?

The Gatsby Foundation’s new report, Good Practical Science, draws together research from around the world on good quality practical science at school. The report authors visited teachers and education experts in 19 schools in Australia, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore and the USA – all countries which perform very highly on the PISA rankings that compare countries’ education systems.

Sir John Holman, who led the report, and his colleagues identified ten benchmarks for good practical work. The benchmarks are pragmatic and workable. They include things like ‘teachers know the purpose of any practical activity’ and ‘each lab has enough equipment for students to work in small groups’. Yet, a sample of 10% of the UK’s schools found that none of them achieved more than seven out of ten of the benchmarks. A third of UK schools didn’t achieve a single benchmark.

You might think these benchmarks are just for science teachers – that groups of science teachers and technicians need to get together and work through the benchmarks, one by one. But most of the Good Practical Science report’s recommendations are aimed at people who aren’t teachers, including government, Ofqual, Ofsted, teaching unions, teacher trainers, science professional bodies, funders, and others.

To achieve the benchmarks, science departments need support from this wider group – and that means those of us who work to support schools need to consider how we contribute to these recommendations.

Teachers face tough decisions every day: shall I do a practical or a revision class? Shall we arrange a trip to a local science centre or university, or will that disrupt the teaching timetable too much? We can’t just keep adding more and more tasks to teachers’ already hefty workloads.

At the British Science Association, we are committed to helping schools achieve these benchmarks. Benchmark Eight is ‘investigative projects: students should have opportunities to do open-ended and extended investigative projects’. For over thirty years, the British Science Association and partner organisations have provided the CREST Awards scheme, which supports five to 19-year-olds to do their own open-ended, investigative projects in science, technology, engineering or maths. We recently launched a new digital platform that enables all teachers, right across the UK, to sign up for a free CREST account. This year sees our biggest-ever programme of grants for schools, to enable them to do engaging, investigative science activities with their students and local communities.

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Why Unscalable Marketing Activities are Best for B2B Companies

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Most blog posts talk about going viral.

They talk about network effects and refer-a-friend tactics.

They talk about switching your orange button to a green one.

They talk about sending out automated, cold emails.

Well, guess what?

None of that works in B2B. Not at a high level. Not when you’re selling to smart, educated people. Not when there are tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) at stake.

All of those easy, ‘scalable’ tactics that blogs love to rave about fall flat.

The best way to close high-dollar B2B accounts is to do the opposite. You need one-to-one communication ASAP.

The problem is that the best methods are largely unscalable. At least on the surface. So they appear to require tons of your time and energy. Of which, you’re already running dangerously short.

Here’s why seemingly ‘unscalable’ activities work best. And what you can do to lessen the pain.

Why 1-to-1, unscalable B2B activities convert best

Sales is positioning.

B2B sales, especially.

It all comes back to the bottom line.

Are you an expert or a hack? A partner or a vendor?

Your ability (and almost as important, the perception of your ability) is on the line. It’s what separates cost-plus vs. value pricing. Thin margins from fat ones.

Experts and consultants? They don’t email customers garbage. Customers go to them.

That’s why your approach matters. A lot.

All those fancy growth hacks? They might work on the mass market paying $0.00 for your shiny photo sharing app.

But not as much when tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) are on the line. Not when MBA-toting, C-suite execs with decades of experience can sniff out your bullshit from a mile away.

B2B doesn’t buy on impulse. A rush of blood to the head won’t cut it.

Instead, they’re conducting at least a dozen searches before ever visiting a brand’s website. Most of the purchasing process actually takes place before they consider you personally.

They’re informed. And there are usually many of them required before signing on the dotted line.

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All of this means the average sale is going to take longer. It’s going to be complex. It’s going to require many conversations over many weeks with many different people.

You can scale some of it. You can automate parts of it. But when it matters most, when the chips fall, unscalable activities win.

Take a look at these example conversion benchmarks for the software industry from Capterra:

conversion rates for software companies capterra

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Average website conversions hover around 7%. If you’re lucky.

After that, the qualified conversion rates jump to 36% and 27%. Why?

Why is the top of the funnel conversion rate so low, while the bottom of the funnel one is so high?

One answer is that people become more qualified as you go. And the other is that you’re handling the qualification or sales personally.

Lead scoring might help. A tiny bit. But otherwise, you’re sending emails, making phone calls… selling.

All of which is manual, time-intensive, and unscalable.

That’s the theory, anyway. Now, let’s evaluate it in practice.

What’s the average click-through rate for online ads?

Around 0.5% for display ads and about 3% for search ads according to WordStream.

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Those numbers are… not good.

Doesn’t matter how you frame it. We accept it and continue to spend money on it because it’s scalable. It allows us to go and do other things. We put up with mediocre response rates in the hopes that it’s all justified in the end.

Now let’s compare it to alternatives, so you have some context.

Funnelholic used to see the same average 2-3% results, too. Until they made a few changes.

And then? Open rates shot up to 60%. Reply rates leaped to 31%. And they netted 15 new meetings.

What was the difference?

They took unscalable steps first. They thoroughly researched each prospect and personalized each outreach attempt.

Different channel or medium. Same story.

One company used direct mail to get a foot in the door with $30 million+ companies, receiving a 25% response rate. Another study shows that first-time buyers are 60% more likely to visit a website URL after seeing it on a piece of direct mail.

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Let’s do another one.

Spoke with another founder recently. He literally walked into 13 multimillion-dollar companies cold one day. Now, has two proposals out. That’s ~15% response rate.

Again: Compare that with ~0.5% and ~3% for online ads. And that’s for just a measly click! The vast majority of which won’t go on to become a lead, qualified opportunity, or sales prospect.

So really, you’re looking at fractions of a percent.

The problem with these high-performing tactics?

None of them are scalable. At least, not on the surface.

Researching individual people within accounts isn’t. Hand-writing letters isn’t. Creating and sending personalized packages isn’t. And walking into offices definitely isn’t.

The trick is to make the unscalable scalable. Doesn’t make sense, I know. But it hopefully will in a few minutes.

You should be able to find a way to scale multiple “unscalable” activities with people, processes, and tools. Here’s how.

Start at ground zero with your target accounts

The lazy answer to this quandary is “account-based marketing.” Which is really just a euphemism for “not terrible marketing.”

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Instead of only qualifying and disqualifying toward the end, you do it upfront. You invest more time and energy whittling out the junk so that you can focus more attention and resources on fewer, better potential customers.

Don’t take my word for it.

This is the essence of Predictable Revenue. The same one that added $100 million to the top line of Salesforce. The same one that the fastest-growing SaaS sales teams use today.

It’s a mix of inbound + outbound. You use the best of both to expedite the process.

Inbound is great. But it takes for.ev.er. And results don’t always pan out like they should. Not like you were told. Not in the beginning. Not in competitive industries filled with low-volume, long-tail queries.

Example: “Content marketing.”

Ninety-freaking-two difficulty score. While the volume range puts it around mid-tail, best case scenario.

Now, try ranking on that term with a 500-word blog post. Try ranking for that term with “Best Content Marketing Tools” or some other inane post.

That might work in the local pool biz. Ain’t gonna cut it here.

That’s why it takes more. It requires more. The only way you’re going to sell five or six-figure deals is to pitch the hell out of a dedicated account.

The trick is to do the hard work upfront. Define your ideal Customer profile, and everything else becomes easy.

But we can’t do that for you. Unfortunately, you’re on your own.

LinkedIn does, however, give you a few ways to pre-qualify prospects at scale.

The first step is their LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can select firmographic criteria like job titles, company size, geography, and more to have them compile a prospecting list for you.

Then, you can save companies as new accounts to get access to all of the individuals inside.

Next, cue: stalking.

LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator will provide a never-ending stream of updates when filled with accounts. Every time your key people do something on the site, you’ll see it.

And you’ll be social selling in no time. The same strategy IBM has used to increase sales 400%.

This is the hard part, though. You need to get on their radar. Not by sending spammy InMail messages. But by reaching out and discussing. You build that whole relationship-thing.

You can also combine some inbound with your outbound here.

For example, you can run content promotion to these target accounts to passively build brand awareness.

Then, you can use LinkedIn’s new Matched Audiences feature. This is more or less their version of Facebook’s custom audiences.

You can target contacts that have been to your site before. Or you can upload a list of contacts that have opted in somewhere along the way.

This is where you add scale. You shouldn’t necessarily automate meetings with prospects. You really can’t, in fact.

But you can start to automate some peripheral activities, like these retargeting ads that run in the background.

And you can also start to streamline “unscalable,” individual prospecting techniques. Here’s how.

Now, make the unscalable, scalable

There’s one thing standing between you and more paying customers.

It’s not time. It’s not money. It’s not a tool.

And it’s not even a hack. It’s a process.

That’s it. Sexy, right?

A little over a year ago, my company sent these out in the mail (among other things).

direct mail advertisement missing piece

Not the best. But not bad.

We sent each one with a handwritten note. Then we stuffed both inside an envelope and mailed it to an individual within an account company’s headquarters.

Now, you’re probably thinking that this sounds time-consuming. And that’s because it was. Very.

Initially, we did all the work. Even bought the envelopes at a Staples (remember those?) and brought them to an honest-to-goodness post office.

The initial results were promising. Solid responses started to roll in.

So here’s where things get fun. You create a process around this to hand off to someone else.

Fortunately, there’s this magical secret to dealing with menial, recurring tasks like this. They’re like little magical elves who just come sweep up after you so that issues go away.

They’re called: interns.

The trick is that you have to tell them exactly what you’re looking for. Most don’t. They just expect them to know. And results suck. “Interns are lazy” etc. etc.

Each step is its own little process. There should be details on how to stalk find key accounts on LinkedIn, how to build a prospecting list, and so on.

Pretty soon, you’ll have hundreds of names. For pennies on the dollar.

Re-visit those stats above. A 10%+ response rate with hundreds of names, with each potential client worth well over $10,000 over the next year?

I’ll take that over ‘going viral’ any day.

Change your perception on what can or can’t be scaled

People like their habits. They like their business-as-usual.

Take forms. Do we need them?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Here’s how it typically works. A person visits your site and opts in. Awesome! Except, they’re not super clear on what comes next.

Internally, that notification goes… somewhere? You get around to vetting the lead, eventually. And then reach out hours, days, or weeks later.

By then, the prospect has already moved on. It’s too late.

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Your chances of qualifying each new prospect fall by 400% past the five-minute mark.

So how can you scale the unscalable?

Live chat is one solution. It satisfies 92% of peeps. Companies like Influx have used it to bring in 27% of inbound leads and grow companies by 20% each month.

But not the way you’re thinking. You can’t afford to hire someone to sit there all day.

Thankfully, you can now use chatbots to do everything from qualifying new prospects to scheduling sales calls with hot prospects. And then helping you close more deals.

You can pre-program the sequence. And your chatbot will do all of the heavy-lifting for you.

TrainedUp, a video training service for church leaders, recently implemented this approach.

Think about your average form-based conversions for a minute. You’re lucky if 7-9% of visitors are opting in for your services.

TrainedUp is seeing 25% of visitors interacting with their chatbot. Then 15% of those go through with scheduling a demo. And 40% of those chatbot-driven demos are converting to paying customers.

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A lot of TrainedUp’s success is coming from using Drift’s Playbooks. This feature poses three simple questions to completely onboard new leads for you.

Directive Consulting does something similar. For example, the chatbot can qualify (or disqualify) prospects for you without a single person manning the station.

For example, you only want to work with decision makers. So ideally, you’re looking for “CEOs” and “VP/Directors” who can sign on the dotted line. Then, you can customize a different response for “Managers” to make sure nobody’s wasting each other’s time.

Let’s select “VP/Director” to keep the conversation going.

Next up, you can get some basic budget information. Once again, this helps better qualify and segment new leads. If someone’s budget is “Less than 5k,” for example, the chatbot politely informs them about project minimums.

It can even help you route leads to different reps or divisions. The services you deliver to a client in the $5-10k range might be vastly different from those in the $50k+. So this allows you to figure out who each visitor should be speaking with internally.

Because the next step is to solve the main problem we had earlier: planning the next step.

You now have all of this valuable data. You know if they’re a good fit or not. You know exactly which department, division, or rep to refer them to.

So why make them wait for a “follow-up” that’s not likely to happen anytime soon?

Instead, you can then immediately have them schedule a new sales call.

Drift has a built-in calendar feature that integrates with most calendars. So, the chatbot can even schedule conversations in real-time.

Otherwise, you can respond with a Calendly link (even customizing different links and availabilities for different types of leads).

So if someone successfully makes it through the first three questions, they receive a link to schedule a conversation immediately:

Replacing a traditional “Thank You” page with a Calendly link so that visitors could schedule appointments on their own helped Virtru increase conversions from around 30% to over 61% in a single month.

virtru schedule demo ab test

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Conclusion

‘Viral’ marketing might work for B2C. Network effects might help you get more users into a free photo sharing app.

But none of that realistically works for B2B.

The problem is that you often shoot yourself in the foot when you focus exclusively on scalable marketing activities. Those things only work at the bottom of the food chain.

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All-new MarTech Today guide: Enterprise Digital Personalization Tools

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5 ways to capitalize on Google Tag Manager

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Google Tag Manager (GTM) has revolutionized the way we implement scripts and tags on websites. However, many marketers aren’t fully utilizing this tool or capitalizing on its potential benefits.

Here are five easy and impactful ways to use GTM. These tips will help you improve your analytics dashboards, your SEO results and your marketing automation programs.

1. Improve the accuracy of website traffic data

Marketers often need to identify and isolate various types of traffic in Google Analytics dashboards and reports. For example, many companies want to eliminate spam or internal (employee) traffic and visits from partners. Typically, they do this by using excluding filters in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics limits the number of filters to 100. If you have a large number of internal IPs you wish to exclude, I recommend that you use GTM to implement blocking triggers. Blocking triggers are built with a custom variable and a custom event trigger.

Keep in mind that if you use a blocking trigger, these traffic types will be excluded from any or all Google Analytics views — including the unfiltered view.

2. Implement structured data

Structured data is a key way to improve organic search results, but it can be difficult for marketers to implement — especially if you need to rely on technical resources. Google Tag Manager makes it easy for non-developers to implement structured data on any page of a website.

For more information on how to do this, see “How to add schema markup to your website using Google Tag Manager.”

3. Ensure accurate indexing

With Google Tag Manager, we can define URL variables to strip out any additional parameters that might have been added. Then, we can build a custom HTML tag with JavaScript code to insert self-referencing canonical tags in the <head> section of the page. This ensures that no variation of a URL except the default one is indexed by Google.

You can follow the same logic to insert mobile switchboard tags — if your website uses a mobile subdomain.

4. Import marketing automation parameters

Most companies use marketing automation software to capture lead data and track leads through the sales funnel. With Google Tag Manager, you can easily implement lead-tracking parameters and marry this data with Google Analytics information.

With the built-in variable of first-party cookie, Google Tag Manager can pass lead ID number, along with other parameters, into Google Analytics.

5. Understand website behavior

With Tag Manager, it’s easy to track user behavior, actions and conversions with auto events. For example, you can track clicks on certain areas of a page, interactions with a video, or users’ scrolling behavior.

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Google May Message Webmasters With Mobile First Indexing Issues

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So we know Google is testing that mobile first index and that the rollout will be done in batches and now John Mueller has explained how they think they might roll this mobile first index out.

First, it is likely that based on those classifiers, which we mentioned here, that Google will roll out the first batch to pages that are equivalent between desktop and mobile. Then, Google will likely begin some level of communication, be it via blog posts, direct communication and/or Google Search Console notifications for those who have issues.

Google may classify a percentage of the web pages on the internet as having issue X, when it comes to this roll out and notify them all via Search Console with steps they can take to resolve the issue. Then the same with issue Y and Z. As Google is able to classify more and more issues, they can aid more and more webmasters on how to fix these issues so the rollout has quality neutral release.

Here is the video embed where John talks about the plans for the rollout:

[embedded content]


Transcript:

It is one of those things that we need to make sure that the changes we make actually work out well. We are creating some classifiers internally to make sure that the mobile pages are actually equivalent to the desktop pages and that sites don’t see any negative effects from that switch. And those are things we need to test with real content, we can’t just make up pages and say this is well kind of like a normal web page. We really have to see what happens when you run it with real content.

At some point there may be aspects [of the mobile first index rollout] that are more visible but like with a lot of search experiments, these are things that most people don’t notice because in an ideal world, things should just work the same.

So that is kind of what we are looking at there, looking to do it as a step by step way. Rather then just switch it on and everything breaks. To kind of do this gradually.

The idea behind this classifier is to kind of recognize common problems that we can do some blog posts around those common problems, so people are aware of what they should watch out for, what they should be fixing, what kind of issues they should be looking at.

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Local SEO: 7 Google My Business questions asked and answered

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Consumers are increasingly searching online for shops, grocery stores, restaurants, car dealers, realtors and other businesses in their local area. Not surprisingly, four out of five people use search engines to find local information, like a company’s business hours, address, phone number, online reviews, busy times and more, according to Google.

Google research also shows that businesses with detailed, complete, up-to-date online business listings are twice as likely to be considered reputable by consumers. (If you’ve ever looked up a local business online and driven all the way across town to their location only to find that they’ve moved, you know how frustrating that can be. When that happens, do you blame Google? Nope. You blame the business. And you’ve just lost trust in the business.)

Getting a local business listed on Google My Business (GMB) and other online directories is one of the fastest and easiest ways to get a local business to start showing up for local search results on Google. Google My Business connects businesses directly with their customers — whether they’re searching on Google Search or Maps.

Most SEOs who work with local clients consider claiming their GMB listing a first step in their SEO strategy. Surprisingly, 56 percent of local businesses haven’t claimed their Google My Business listing, according to Local Business Institute.

SEOs have a lot of questions about Google My Business

At the outset, Google My Business looks pretty straightforward. You fill in the company’s information, claim and verify the listing, add information about the company, post a few images and you’re good, right? Well, not so fast. Depending on the client, their business type and their listing, GMB can get complex. Here are seven common questions about Google My Business:

Q. I’ve heard people in the search industry talk about “Google Top Contributors.” What is a Google Top Contributor, and what is their relationship with Google?

A. A Google Top Contributor is a digital marketing professional who knows the ins and outs of Google products. These Top Contributors volunteer their time to respond to questions on Google Product Forums. (Yes, there’s even a specific forum for Google My Business.) The Google Product Forums allow people to interact with a community of other users to help answer Google product questions.

If you’re interested in becoming a Top Contributor, you want to be on the forums as much as possible, answering questions and engaging in the conversations. Google is constantly watching who’s saying what and tracking everything that goes on in the various product forums.

To get started, search the forums for questions and answer the questions you have knowledge and expertise on. Once you start answering questions, you’re eligible to join the Top Contributor Program and become a “Rising Star” (the first stage to becoming a Top Contributor.) Google is on the lookout for people who are helpful and show off their product knowledge — and have a willingness to help others.

Why would anyone want to spend a lot of their personal time answering questions on a forum? Well, there are perks that go along with being a Google Top Contributor. First, you often get better access to Google itself. This means that people can contact you directly about an issue they’re having, and you can escalate it to your contacts at Google. You could also become part of beta programs, be invited to groups and Google meetings, become a Google thought leader and more. It takes a lot of time to answer questions, but if you want to be a pro in the Google world, becoming a Google Top Contributor is the way to go!

Q. I’m setting up my client’s GMB account. To do this, I’m creating a separate Gmail email address to claim their listing. Is this the right way to do it?

A. First, it’s always best if the client claims their GMB page and then makes you a manager of the page. You can then log in and optimize their Google My Business listing:

Google My Business Manager

If the client doesn’t feel comfortable claiming their listing, keep a few things in mind before you jump in on their behalf:

  1. Make sure you get express permission from them to claim their Google My Business listing on their behalf.
  2. Don’t create a Gmail email address for the setup of GMB. Instead, use the client’s domain email address as the primary email address (e.g., info@companyname.com) and add yourself as a manager of the listing. This way the client gets all communications and will always maintain control of their listing — but you will also be kept in the loop as a manager.
  3. Additionally, don’t use your personal cell phone or your agency’s number when setting up a client’s GMB account — always use the business owner’s or business’s phone number. Why? What would happen if you left your agency or the client decides to switch agencies? It may be very difficult for the client to get control of their listing. Using the business’s phone number keeps the business owner in complete control of their listing, and it will also prevent your phone number from being flagged by Google as being used too much.

Q. I have a restaurant as a client, and they’ve recently updated their menu. We noticed that there’s an outdated menu on their Google My Business Page. How did it get there, and how can I fix this?

A. Chances are, the menu information was scraped from a site called singleplatform.com. Single Platform is a site that helps restaurants and other service businesses show their menus and service listings consistently across many platforms (including Google.) Think of them as the “Yext” for menus.

To remove the Single Platform menu link from your client’s Google My Business listing, the business owner will need to contact Single Platform and request it be removed. The business listing owner should then contact Google My Business support and request it be removed.

Q. A former employee verified my client’s Google My Business listing, and we don’t know what email address they used. What should I do?

A. This is actually a common problem. Many businesses have a Google My Business listing that’s already been verified by either an employee, an agency or the owner, but they’ve forgotten which email address they used. Now that employee or agency is gone, and the business owner doesn’t know how to get access to their GMB listing.

Since the Google My Business listing is “owned” by the person who verified the listing, it’s important for the owner to get back control of their listing.

First, confirm that the business is listed on Google My Business:

  1. Go to Google My Business.
  2. Sign in with the Google account you think may have been used to claim/login to your business listing.
  3. Search for the business name and address.
  4. If the business appears in the search results, click on the listing.
  5. If you see a dialog that says that someone else has verified the business, select one of these options:

Try a different email address

If you’re like most people, you probably have more than one email address. You might have verified your business using one of your other email addresses. Try signing out, and then sign back in with one of your other Google accounts.

You will see any listings that have been verified with this Google account. If you still don’t see the business listing in any of the owner’s Google accounts, then you will need to contact the current listing owner.

Request access from the current listing owner

Google allows you to contact the current listing owner directly through Google My Business so you can request access to own or manage the business listing.

To request access from the current listing owner:

  1. Go to Google My Business.
  2. Sign in with the Google account you want to use to manage the business.
  3. Enter the name or address of the business and select it from the search results.

(Note: You might see a dialog that shows part of the email address that was used to verify the listing. The business owner might recognize that email address snippet. If the owner recognizes the email address, sign into that account to access the business listing.)

  1. Fill out the form with your contact information. The current listing owner might need to contact you, so you need to share your contact details with them.
  2. Click Submit.
  3. The current listing owner will get an email asking them to reach out to you and you’ll receive a confirmation email. Click on the link in the email to check the status of your request.
  4. Allow seven days for the current listing owner to respond to your request. If you don’t hear back from them after seven days, you can then go in and verify your affiliation with the business to get access to the business listing.

Q. There are fake reviews about my business on my Google My Business listing. Can I get them removed?

A. Google encourages businesses to ask for reviews from customers (unlike Yelp). It’s inevitable that at some point you will get a bad review from unhappy customers or people that have had a negative experience with your company. Getting these reviews removed is very difficult (freedom of speech).

If there’s a review that you feel violates Google’s review policies, you can mark the flag next to the review.

Flag Google My Business Reviews

However, typically, flagging the reviews will not get the review taken down unless the review blatantly violated Google’s review terms. Google allows anyone who has an “experience” with a business to leave a review. That means ex-employees, vendors, customers, postal carriers — just about anybody who has contact with your business can leave a positive or negative review about your company.

Since it’s not Google’s position to play “review cop,” it’s better to just try to get more positive reviews from happy customers so the negative/bogus review gets pushed down.

Q. How do you contact Google My Business Support? I’ve tried to find a way to contact them and am getting really frustrated!

A. There are several ways to reach out to Google My Business Support — but they don’t make it easy to find out how! Here are a couple of ways to reach GMB support:

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Google extends olive branch to publishers, lays out new focus on subscriptions

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In a rare joint appearance, Google executives Philipp Schindler, chief business officer, and Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP of ads and commerce, addressed a group of several dozen publishers and broadcasters at an event held at the company’s Chicago offices Tuesday. And, at that event, he extended an olive branch.

In his opening remarks, Schindler said Google returned $11 billion in ad revenues to publishers last year, while acknowledging, “We also know it has not been easy.”

Everyone in the room knew that one key reason publishers have had difficulty generating ad revenue is that Google and Facebook draw some 80 percent of the growth in digital ad dollars directly. But Ramaswamy said there are limits to what the ad ecosystem can do for publishers, adding that the industry must focus on both ads and subscriptions. Schindler said Google is committed to building out subscription programs and plans to significantly ramp investment in this area.

“We come in peace…We are all invested in seeing you [publishers] succeed” — Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler

The “leadership summit” came a day after Google announced the end of its decade-old First Click Free program in response to years of publisher complaints about the requirement to offer free access to content in exchange for Google rankings. Instead, Google said it will offer Flexible Sampling programs that give publishers more control over the subscription process without being penalized in the rankings for putting up paywalls.

Schindler touched on the three elements of Google’s new focus on subscription efforts:

  1.  Google will use machine learning to determine when to present a subscription offer instead of an ad on publisher’s sites to users deemed likely to subscribe. The system will also use publishers’ audience data to build lookalikes much in the way Google does in ad targeting, to identify new potential subscribers. This is in very early testing now, and it’s unclear exactly how this will look.
  2. Reduce friction in the subscription signup process with mobile-optimized checkout flows. Again, Google is doing something similar on the ad product side with Purchases on Google ads enabled with Android Pay. In a briefing last week, Google VP for News Richard Gringas said all subscriber data would be passed to and owned by the publishers.
  3. Help users get more from their subscriptions to boost renewal rates. For example, users might opt in to share subscription information with Google. Content from publications a user subscribes to may then show higher in Google search results for that user. Ramaswamy stressed this is “early days.”

Facebook announced this summer that it will begin testing ways to let publishers sell subscriptions in Instant Articles and place content behind a paywall after a user reads at least 10 articles.

In framing the new focus on helping publishers drive subscription revenue, Schindler said, “We come in peace,” as he splayed his fingers in the Vulcan peace sign, clearly anticipating publisher skepticism at Google’s motives. “We are here to listen to you. We are all invested in seeing you succeed.”

“We deeply value the publishing ecosystem,” said Ramaswamy later. “It’s also selfish on our part,” he acknowledged, “because Google is nothing without quality information.” Ramaswamy said Tuesday’s announcements are part of a long and ongoing effort. “The advertising ecosystem has been profitable for Google and publishers, but there are limitations. We need to pay attention to subscriptions and commerce.”

Schindler told reporters that details on how the subscription advertising program will be structured in terms of revenue splits haven’t been decided. “The plan isn’t for this to be a huge revenue driver or the next big business or Google,” he said. It could be a revenue share or some other model, but the idea isn’t to push this much beyond cost covering, said Schindler.

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This Elastic Glue Can Seal Wounds In Under 60 Seconds

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A highly-elastic glue could be the future of treating wounds inflicted in car accidents or war zones, after it was shown to successfully seal open incisions in less than one minute.

The “potentially life-saving” MeTro gel, which is just administered directly to the site of the injury by squirting it from a syringe, could transform the way surgery is performed by negating the need for common staples and sutures.

Professor Anthony Weiss said: “The potential applications are powerful.”

Elastagen Pty Ltd

A team of biomedical engineers, from the University of Sydney, developed the adhesive substance, which is similar to silicone sealants used around bathroom and kitchen tiles, according to Professor Weiss.

Once applied to the area, it is treated with UV light and sets within 60 seconds.

It is also at this stage that it can be treated with a built-in degrading enzyme that can be modified to determine how long it lasts (between hours and months) before disintegrating. Unlike stitches that would have often required removal.

Once it has degraded, there is no signs of toxicity left in the body.

Elastagen Pty Ltd

So far it has been most useful for sealing wounds in body tissues that continually expand and relax, such as lungs, heart and arteries, that are otherwise at risk of re-opening with classic methods of stitching.

It also works on internal wounds that are often in hard-to-reach areas and have typically required staples or sutures due to surrounding body fluid hampering the effectiveness of other sealants.

Elastagen Pty Ltd

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SearchCap: Updates to AdWords daily budgets, Bing’s Dynamic Search Ads & more

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • Google announces AdWords daily budgets can overspend by 2x, automatically
    Oct 5, 2017 by Ginny Marvin

    While advertisers won’t be on the hook for overages, the real question is why are daily budgets still the only option?

  • Visually understanding your site structure and external link weight impact
    Oct 5, 2017 by Dave Davies

    Looking for insights not easily gleaned through spreadsheets and raw data? Columnist Dave Davies explains how to use Gephi, a data visualization tool, to create a visual representation of your site structure with regard to inbound link strength.

  • Audiences to employ for extra online marketing bang!
    Oct 5, 2017 by Mona Elesseily

    Which audience lists are you using to amplify your paid search efforts? Columnist Mona Elesseily shares some of her favorites.

  • Bing Ads rolling out Dynamic Search Ads to US and UK
    Oct 5, 2017 by Susan Wenograd

    Advertisers can now let the Bing Ads algorithm match user queries and generate their ads.

  • Are Home Service Ads the death of home-based businesses on Google?
    Oct 5, 2017 by Joy Hawkins

    Google is expanding their Home Service Ads across more and more cities in the US, and some home-based business owners are worried. Columnist Joy Hawkins explains how this move impacts these businesses and what they can do to combat a loss of local search visibility.

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Search News From Around The Web:

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Daily Search Forum Recap: October 4, 2017

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