The Near Memo

Dana DiTomaso brings her practical insights to the often murky waters of Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Dana, who wears multiple hats as the president and co-founder of KickPoint, shares candid thoughts on the challenges of demystifying GA4. She discusses the shortcomings of GA4, emphasizing its strong data collection capabilities but criticizing its reporting features. Dana emphasizes

Ad market dominated by a few players: The Internet Advertising Bureau released their annual report for 2024. Digital advertising reached a record-high of $225 billion, with the biggest share going to search ($88.8 billion) & display ($66.1 billion). The bulk of this income is distributed across the top 10 advertising platforms and with the end of cookies, their dominance is li

Reviews are Like Death & Taxes & Should be Treated that Way: Miriam Ellis wrote a great article at Moz providing small business owners tips on how to overcome their fear of reviews. But they really need to go further. Given that reviews, like death and taxes, are not going anywhere businesses need to not only remove their fear but create stringent business processes around

The need to move SMBs from Tactics to Strategy & how fractional CMO’s can do that: John Jantsch is a seasoned consultant, speaker, and bestselling author, notably recognized for his Duct Tape Marketing brand. He shares his journey of owning an agency for 30 years, highlighting his affinity for small to midsize businesses and the challenges they face, especially regarding budg

In this special edition, Mike and David discuss their visit to Brussels to attend Google’s report on their compliance with the European Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA, targeting large tech entities including Google, aims to regulate their status as gatekeepers to the internet. This session, specifically addressing Google's compliance, saw over 20 presenters from Google o

What on-page factors are associated with sites that see big gains or declines after Google updates? Cyrus Shepard explains his recent research looking at correlations between a range of on page factors that might affect Google’s perception of your site and analyzes which factors were associated with increases or decreases in site visibility. Are stock photos a death knell? Are ad

Google’s March Core Update & FUD: David Mihm sheds light on Google's March core update, marking it as an unusually impactful monthly adjustment from the tech giant. The update has sparked extensive conversation among SEO experts. He highlighted three key focus areas of the update: scaled content, largely driven by AI technologies; site reputation abuse; and what is know

Consumer Research Highlights Limited Impact of DMA Mandated Google's SERP Changes: Near Media unveiled findings from their latest research on the restaurant vertical in Ireland, investigating the effects of Google's Search Engine Results Page (SERP) changes in light of the Digital Markets Act. The study aimed to ascertain whether Google's adjustments to its Irish SER

Long tail searcher behaviors: 10% of Discovery searches involve a brand search on Google: In our most recent multi-location consumer Google search behavior research analyzing restaurant searches we saw roughly 10% of all searchers use the scrolling map for location precision and we saw an equal number of searchers do a local brand search as part of their discovery process. These br

Google adds Reddit to product searches and spammers follow: We discuss a new study by Glenn Alsop that examines the prevalence of discussion and forum search features This module is a tacit admission on Google's part that its algorithm can no longer actually surface good organic content. LikeThe study, which analyzed 10,000 product review search queries, revealed significant