#copied this over on my phone sorry for the lack of formatting

[edge-oftheworld]

Apple Music interview

“[There’s an] eerily similar melancholy,” Luke Hemmings tells Apple Music, comparing his sophomore album, boy, to his 2021 debut, When Facing the Things We Turn Away From. “And that really propelled the emotion of boy and these seven songs. A lot of the stuff I write is very existential and trying to understand who I am and why I am. At this time, I was very disorientated and maybe a bit emotionally lost, even though life was moving forward in a really great way.”

The two albums were conceived and recorded in vastly different circumstances. His debut came together in isolation under the cloak of COVID lockdowns, while boy was written as he toured the world with 5 Seconds of Summer, the Sydney band the singer/guitarist co-founded as a 15-year-old in 2011. Still, the pair have much in common: turns out you can feel just as alone spending months traversing the globe as you can sitting in your house waiting for the world to open up.

Part of the reason for that disorientation was the dawning realisation that he was entering his late twenties, leading Hemmings to reflect deeply on his youth while considering a potential future as a father. “You want to be the most fully realised version of yourself before stepping into that sort of role, which is a work in progress,” he explains.

Taking inspiration from artists such as Damon Albarn, Beach House, LCD Soundsystem and Richard Ashcroft, boy exhibits a dreamlike quality, one that bathes in melancholy without ever sinking into depression—witness the way in which opener “I’m Still Your Boy” builds from a whispered acoustic beginning into a grandiose and uplifting climax; or the sad-happy mélange of synths and dance beats that propel “Close My Eyes”. Here, Hemmings takes Apple Music through boy, track by track.

“I’m Still Your Boy” “This song really encompasses the ache I wanted to get across and the growing pains it took to become a fully realised adult version of myself. It’s only until I started thinking of having children of my own that I began reflecting on the struggles I had myself as a teenager who grew up in the public eye. This song is about understanding my youth that was marred with trauma amidst beauty, whilst trying to become a good man. ‘I’m Still Your Boy’ walks on the high wire between boyhood and adulthood, looking both ways.”

“Shakes” “‘Shakes’ was written on a dreary evening in between long periods of travel and touring, so it easily came from an incredibly melancholy place. A feeling of yearning to be back home, of feeling lonely and emotionally desperate and depleted. There is a longing for love and self-acceptance in the lyrics, and I hope it to be a song that anyone listening [to] can find themselves in and attach their own story.”

“Benny” “This song is named after my brother, Ben, but in its entirety, it represents all of my loved ones and the guilt I feel being away from my family and living on the periphery of their world. It represents the mornings I wake up in a panic, anxious and worried that today will be the day I get bad news. News that would make my dreams of making music seem infantile and pointless. I’d do anything for the people I love.”

“Close My Eyes” “I wrote ‘Close My Eyes’ as I headed into my late twenties and felt an unavoidable wave of fear and anxiety towards the inevitable death of my youth. I found myself unable to sleep because every time I tried, it was as if a film of my life was projected onto the back of my eyelids—the mistakes, successes, everything that could have been and everything that was. I was sonically trying to tap into 2000s indie rock bands like LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture.”

“Garden Life” “I had the idea for ‘Garden Life’ when I couldn’t sleep in a hotel room somewhere in the world, sometime around 3am. The next morning, I went for a walk and wrote the lyrics on a park bench, watching life pass me by. It’s really just an existential love song to my happiest and safest place. The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realised that sometimes the most beautiful and visceral memories in life are not the most grand and obvious ones, they can be simple and powerful. It’s not always the fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Sometimes it’s a Friday night sitting on the couch listening to your favourite person laugh.”

“Close Enough to Feel You” “This song was inspired by sounds from Cocteau Twins and my bloody valentine, who I listened to heavily during the making of boy. The beauty in ‘Close Enough to Feel You’ is all in the details, both sonically and lyrically. Sometimes when you suffer a big emotional loss, something so mundane and otherwise unnoticed can become earth-shattering. A glimpse of a photo out of the corner of your eye, a stain on the carpet, an old sweater, sends you into the foetal position. This song is about the willingness and desire to live in that pain in order to feel close to who or what you lost, rather than moving on.”

“Promises” “‘Promises’ was the song written for the EP that finally made me feel like I was really onto something. It started with merely a drum beat, which I find ironic as I’m not a drummer. But I think maybe it’s that naïveté that led to this song being created. It’s about a time in my life when I saw the world through grey-coloured glasses. I was a pessimist, struggling with depression and my mental health, who fell in love and started to see colour for the first time.”

[purdledooturt]

songs to break your back to (respectfully)

Ignore the title - this is my first attempt at writing smut and I'm just snowballing ideas at the moment for a multi-chapter fic I want to write. There is a bit of context missing to this, but take it as PWP for the time being.

I did write this with old Heisy in mind, but realistically you can probably sub in anyone else - it's not like I go into detail describing him, but he does get mentioned by name every once in a while.

Uh. This is written in second person POV (self-indulgent). There is daddy-kink (which is abandoned midway), and a breeding-kink (which the reader questions themself about). Please practice safe sex, I'm begging you - condoms do prevent more than just pregnancies.

I wrote the entirety of this on my phone, because apparently the Notes app just gets them creative juices flowing. Apologies for any spelling or grammatical errors - I tried really hard to keep my tenses straight. Trying to copy and paste from Word to tumblr is a pain - sorry for any formatting mishaps as well.

I hope this is as hot as the stories that inspired it.

❤

You never quite understood ‘backbreaking’ until you met Karl Heisenberg.

Not until you found yourself laying prone on the bed that you swear is the epicentre of a magnitude 7 earthquake, with his delicious weight on your thighs, pounding into you like there was no tomorrow. You can’t match his pace, no matter how hard you tried. You are nothing but a doll made to be used. He has such a firm grip on your hips you swear you’ll be bruised for weeks, and his breath comes out in pants that made you wetter with every sound. At one point he gathered your hair like reins and force you to arch your back, but his ministrations have made your arms weak and unable to hold you up for long. Mercifully, he let you go, but you committed the action to your memory, to ask him to try again later, in a different position.

You can do nothing but lay there as he fucked noises out of you — your knuckles have cramped closed gripping on the sheets like a lifeline but he refused to let up. You’ve tried to hold your head up but could barely manage, as every thrust knocked you back down again.

Simply put, he was a man starved, and you were all too happy to provide.

He leans down on you, slowing to a roll. He grabs at your hair at the nape of your neck and twists your head sideways as he gives the corner of your mouth a breathy lick, and you moan at the intimacy of it. You try to catch his tongue with yours. “You like that?” He asks, tucking his lips close to your ear in a growl, “your cunt just gave me a little squeeze.”

You try to nod, but he keeps your head still, continuing with his slowed assault of your poor, bruised cunt. What he now lacked in speed he made up for with raw force. “Yes,” you gasp out when he hummed.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, daddy.”

He moans, leaning his head against the back of your right shoulder blade as he gave you a particularly hard thrust to punctuate the erotic sentence he was writing. “Good girl,” you hear him mutter, as he pulls back upright. You feel him spread your ass cheeks to get a better look at where you’re joined. He massages the flesh as he does so, “look how well you take me.”

You look at him over your shoulder, throwing your hair out of the way. All the other guys you’d been with always loved this angle and Karl was not immune. He slows to a halt, raising an eyebrow at you. You muster up your best innocent smile, batting your lashes at him. “Thank you, daddy,” you say, and he rolls his eyes at you with a shake of his head. He gives your ass a slap. The move didn’t have the effect you wanted but you didn’t mind — you love that he called you out on the cheesiness of it. You laugh.

He gasps, pulling out of you roughly. He is crouched over your legs, breathing heavy and giving you an amused and lopsided smile. “Geez, buttercup — warn a guy, won’t you?”

You roll over quickly — surely he hasn’t…? “What’s wrong?”

“Fucking vice grip,” he mutters as he crawls back over you, retaking his position between your legs. You can feel a slight burn in your thighs as you spread your legs wider than you’re used to in order to accommodate him, but the burn only adds to the excitement of it all. You watch him hook one of your legs up with his, in a move that got your brain short circuiting. “When you giggled.”

“Sorry?”

He takes his cock in hand, giving it slow strokes. “Don’t be,” he says, as he holds the base and slaps the head against your clit. You jump at the motion, and he chuckles. God — the sound of his chuckle, in the situation, is somehow hotter than the grunts and pants and dirty talking. You’ve never had so much fun during sex before, often feeling more like there was a role you were meant to play and you were gunning for best performance. “Was good.”

He rubs the head of his cock up and down against your dripping, slick slit, teasing you with a knowing grin that looked a little sharper than what you’re used to. Occasionally the head catches on your entrance and threatens to slip, but he coaxes it out to continue the slow teasing. He’s using your wetness to lubricate himself. You whine and try to wiggle to catch him but he is far too good at anticipating your moves. 

Finally, when he’s had enough, he keeps his eyes on you as he slides back in, slowly and tantalisingly. You moan as you are filled again, and your walls are stretched around his thick cock. As he bottoms out in you with a low groan, your eyes flutter close and your head tilts back. Your legs jerk — your knees dig as best as they could to his sides, and your ankles try to find each other behind him. Your left hand finds his thigh, nails digging in to the bulk of his muscle, not to push him but to anchor yourself before you float away. “So big,” you gasp out, as your lower back lifts off the bed, and he takes the opportunity to slide his arm underneath to support you, providing you with a lovely, lovely angle. With his other arm, he supports himself, leaning over you.

Given his height, he is bent over you, caging you. The idea excites you, and makes you feel oddly safe. Protected. You’ll unpack what this means later. He presses his forehead against yours. “Only the best for my baby girl.”

Your eyes flutter back open and you giggle once again, and he groans at the action but stays in you. Your right hand finds his cheek, and you cup it with a gentle smile as you give him an Eskimo kiss. You take the moment to catch his lips in a quick, cheeky kiss, which he smiles into, returning the gesture with his own light kiss back. It was a quick, tender moment, like the eye of a storm passing over and enveloping you in a peaceful silence. Slowly, he rolls his hips and the dance begins again, but this time you are more familiar with the steps as you push back. For such a well built man, Karl is so fluid, and you were enamoured with the way he moves, looking down between your bodies and watching him undulate.

Your hands travel to the base of his ribcage, sliding over his wide chest, scratching upwards before you wrap your arms around his neck. Your breaths mingle as you keep your foreheads connected, staring deep into each other’s eyes. His pupils are blown wide, and your eyes flicker between his steely greys. It hardly registers in your head that he is asking you if you’re liking it, and your mind is blank as you agree, your voice disembodied and far away: Yes. Yes. Keep going, please. Harder, please, please, please —

He’s slowly building up to his brutal pace again, and like a roller coaster your core tightens in anticipation of the heights you’re about to be taken to. He slams into you, over and over, until the room is filled with the obscene noises of your slick union and the sound of skin slapping against skin, mingled with your panting and the punctuated gasps he thrusts out of you. He breaks eye contact when he nudges your head to the side to start whispering praises in your ear — oh, how tight you are. How well you take him. How your cunt was made for his cock, and how he was going to absolutely ruin you. You feel the familiar ache in your lower belly — you’re close. So, so close. And you can’t get enough of him, grasping at what you can with clawing hands and desperate legs. Like a mantra you plead, fervently praying to the shrine you built in your mind for this man you met while on this whirlwind holiday.

The angle at which he holds you has you seeing stars soon enough — he continually hits a spot that makes you spasm, and he grins proudly. “That good?” He asks, as you come down from the soundless scream from your climax. He hardly slowed to accomodate you and let you ride out your release.

"Oh, yeah,” you reply mindlessly, voice hoarse, and as revenge for his cockiness you let out a breathless giggle, followed by a kegel.

“Little bitch,” he swears, but there is no venom at all. He sounds so amused, so enamoured. Like he was having so much fun, too.

You poke your tongue out at him, scrunching your nose in the process. You were feeling carefree and playful in his presence. The arm that was supporting your back slides out from under you, and he uses his hand to grasp your face roughly, his thumb on your cheek and the rest of his hand wrapped across your neck and around your jaw, locking you in place. He takes the opportunity to lick your from your chin to your lips. You stick your tongue out again, less playful now and more desperate. He sucks on your tongue to punish you. He pulls away but you remain connected with a thin trail of saliva. His hips never slow. Oh God — everything he does is hot.

He’s made you cum at least four times since the night started and as much as you enjoy the treatment you were hitting your limit. You notice his pace stutter — he was close, and chasing the high he’s put you on four times tonight. He starts roughly pawing and kneading at your tit. You cover his hand with one of you own, squeezing along. Your other hand takes care of what he couldn’t. You try to encourage him.

“Karl—“

“Where do you want me?” He asks, sounding breathless and strained, and in a moment of sheer stupidity and fuckdrunk horniness, you gawk at him.

“Inside. Oh, god — inside.”

He groans, his head buried now in the crook of your neck. The hand that was massaging you is now on the bed, and he has now enveloped you. His lips are at your collarbone, leaving ghost kisses with his breath. He alternates between biting what he can reach and muttering “oh, baby” and “please” over and over.

“Fuck,” he pushes himself up slightly and catches your ear again, licking the shell of it. He growls, the timbre of his voice sending a shock down your spine all the way to your tailbone. “You horny little bitch. I’m going to fucking fill you until you’re dripping. I’m going to fucking breed you.”

You moan. ‘Do I have a breeding kink?’, you wonder. Who fucking knows. Who fucking cares? Your mind is blank, and you damn the consequences, begging senselessly.

He moans and stills to a jittery stop after a final hard push, and you can feel the heat of his release inside you. He pauses, his breathing intense. “Fuck. Holy fuck.”

"Holy shit,” was your reply, and he is catching his breath as he pulls out of you. You shift to lean on your elbows, keeping him in your sight as he gets up. He stands at the foot of the bed, taking deep breaths to fill his lungs not unlike an athlete who has just finished their event, and you do the same, involuntarily trying to match his breathing. You watch as he steps away, disappearing into the ensuite. You can feel his spend start dripping towards your ass, and without the added weight of him on your pelvis you take stock of the state of your body more clearly, and you swear you’ve broken something, somehow. As his figure reappears, you declare, “I’m going to keep you.”

He laughs as he approaches with a small towel. He begins to wipe your thighs with the damp cloth with a gentleness that was the stark opposite of the assault he’d mounted against your body previously. God — he helps with clean up too? Heaven help you. “Are you?” He croons.

“Are you kidding?” You ask, as you sit upright with weak, shaky arms and take the towel from him with a smile and a bright ‘thank you’, taking over the wiping. You watch as he wanders over to the kitchenette, still fully nude, now to grab two glasses of water. You could marry him for this alone. “Where have you been all my fucking life?”

He gulps down his drink. “Romania.”

“Ha. Ha. Very funny.”

“That good, huh?” He asks, with a wolfish grin, as he passes you a glass of water and he sits at the bed again with his back to you.  He leans with his elbows on his knees.

You shuffle towards him on your knees, making the bed springs complain. He tilts his head towards you. With your free hand, you brush his hair behind one ear, parting the curtain which hid his face from view. You place your chin on his shoulder and beam. “That good. I think you’ve pulverised my pelvis but give me a few hours and I can go again.”

He throws his head back in a rakish laugh, and you find yourself wishing you could bottle the sound. He’s rearranged your insides, surely — you’ve never felt so many butterflies in your stomach before. You wrap your left arm around his waist, sliding over to the edge of the bed to sit to his right. You spill a bit of water as you move.

“God, I could use a smoke right now.”

“I have never once smoked in my life,” you reveal, unsure of why you couldn’t seem to stop your mouth from running, “but I could also use a smoke right now, too.”

He wraps his arm around your shoulders, and the two of you are oddly tender and soft in the afterglow. You knew of happy drunks — you didn’t realise something similar could apply to this. You were feeling… cuddly. Your cheeks hurt from beaming. “Have I reset your programming? You’re doing wonders to my damn ego, buttercup.”

You take a sip of the water and let silence fall over you. Suddenly the weight of exhaustion bears down on your shoulders, heavy and cloying. You yawn.

“Go wash up,” he says, giving you a slight shove with the arm still wrapped around you. “Don’t want you getting an infection.”

Romantic — not. But very caring. Karl Heisenberg was ticking the boxes swiftly and convincingly, getting closer and closer to your idea of perfection. A voice in your head chastises you for the irrationality of your thoughts, chastises you for hearing wedding bells after three fun-filled days and one passionate night together. Sure, it was out of character, but then again you’d never had anyone fuck your brains out like he just did. “Yes, yes,” you bat his concerns away with a wave of your hand. You try to stand but find your legs stiff and uncooperative. You’re like a newborn foal.

“You sure you only need a few hours to recover?”

You flip him off as you hobble to the ensuite, and he lets out another laugh, flopping on to the bed as he does so. You turn your attention back to your own care, and wash up as you normally do.

You hobble towards your suitcase to look for new underwear. You’ll forgo the sleep shirt tonight, wanting to feel your partner’s skin.

You look up to find him watching you, pillows propped up behind him as he leaned against the headboard. There is something missing in the picture — a cigar. He strikes you as a cigar person. “You need help?”

“No; thank you though,” you say, as you pull your underwear on. You wander back to the bed and take the free spot, sliding into the covers.

“Do you need me to get you anything for the, uh…” he’s at a loss for words for once. Your eyebrows rise as you try to decode what he’s trying to say. “Well, I’m not really keen on little Karls running around, despite what I said.”

“All good,” you say, as you reach to the inside of your left forearm, feeling around for the familiar stick that is your birth control implant. You pinch the ends of it to make it stick out, and he observes it closer. “Birth control.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

You pull the covers up to your chin. You turn to lay on your side to watch him. He brushes your hair back.

“How long is a few hours?” He teases. You slap his hand away, and with an exaggerated huff you turn away from him, and the pettiness of it all makes him laugh. It makes you laugh too, unable to maintain the facade. “Goodnight, doll.”

“Goodnight. Don’t disappear on me or I’ll hunt you down.”

You fall asleep to the sound of his laughter.

[natromanxoff]

I am sure many of you have already read this one but here are some parts from Ash Alexander’s Queen journey for those who haven’t!

“...At some point in early At some point in early 1983 on a visit to Jacky at the QFC, John Deacon wondered into the office. He came into the basement office and said hello as Jacky introduced me, sat down and spent a little time reading through press clippings. He could easily have slipped away back upstairs, but the fact that he stayed was a nice touch.

Another fan club letter arrived with good news. In Another fan club letter arrived with good news. In November 1983, fan club members were invited to help in a video for the new single 'Radio Ga Ga' at Shepperton Studios. Again, my Mum stepped up and drove me down for the day. I took the day off school and had just turned 14. We arrived at the studio and were ushered into a huge hanger where we were kitted out with white body suits and then sprayed with a light grey stripe on each arm - even now I’m not sure what the spray paint was for as you can’t see it in the video. When we had all been prepared, we were taken into an adjoining hanger and were greeted by the band and an initial play through of the song. The rest of the day was spent clapping as you’ll see in the video. I wound up in the front row, opposite Brian. If you look closely and you know what you’re looking for, you can see me!

In between takes, I approached John Deacon who was surprisingly on his own. I remember trying to remain calm as I approached him. I didn’t mention our brief meeting, I asked him how to get a job in recording studios and that I was interested in pursuing a career as a sound engineer. He was really helpful and took time to explain the usual route.

On 22, March 1984 at Limehouse Studios in London’s docklands, the video for ‘I Want To Break Free’ was filmed, again with the help of fan club members. I went along with my brother Andrew. The set was a big dark staircase that we all stood on. We were given black bodysuits this time that were sprouted with hello paint on the arms. We also wore a hard hat with a head lamp attached to it. The band were set in the middle of us all. After all the filming, we returned to the main building where we said hello to Roger. He’d come out to say thanks. Later, waiting for a cab down in reception, Freddie glided down the staircase and past us with his entourage. I remember wanting to get up and say thanks, but the opportunity was missed.

...20th April 1992. My friend Chesney Hawkes was managed by Trinifold. They also managed The Who. He invited me along to the Freddie Mercury Tribute gig at Wembley. Roger Daltry was appearing and Ches had a spare ticket. He only had one backstage pass though. This was overcome by him befriending the chap on the security door. Ches came out to meet me with his pass. He returned on his own and got in. I confidently flashed my pass and entered the Hard Rock tented area. Ches beckoned me over from the other side of the room. He was signing autographs for a lady, her two children and an older lady was with them. He introduce me to them saying I was a huge Queen fan. ‘This is Freddie’s mother' he whispered to me. I remember saying to her that I wish we’d met under different circumstances and how deeply sorry I was about her loss and how incredibly proud she should be. I often wonder about her.

...In Spring 1993, I was in front office. It was well after midnight and I’d left a s session for a little break. As usual, I took a look in the studio diary to see what was coming up. I flicked through the weeks and came upon an booking entry “Studio 3 - QUEEN” for 2 weeks that was pencilled in. There was no further info than that. I put my initials next to the booking thinking there would be a rational explanation as to what the booking really was. I soon found myself on a 2 week session with Queen.My diary from 1993 is lost, so I have only a mental note as to when & what songs were touched upon at this initial stage of 'Made In Heaven'. We started taking delivery of various multitrack tapes on varied formats. These were then transferred to digital 48 track tapes for future work. Roger & John were alone on these sessions as Brian was touring in Japan. I remember Roger being rather dismissive of Brian being unavailable, much like a brother sledging his sibling would do, with a slightly jealous edge but genuine at the same time.

...Over the 2 week session, Roger would suggest we went out for dinner. We had 3 or 4 meals out at a local Italian restaurant. Even now I laugh at jumping into the back of Roger’s Merc and the four of us driving down Abbey Road to the restaurant. It was owned by an Italian lady that would force you to smell her ‘wonderful mushrooms’ from a jar, which she made Roger do. On our initial meal she told Roger he looked familiar. ‘I know you’, she said. ‘Where have I seen you before?’ ‘Well, I’m in a band and we’ve been on TV before.’ Roger replied. John seemed calm with his lack of recognition. ‘What group do you play for?’ she asked. ‘I’m the drummer in a rock n roll band called Queen’ he replied. ‘No - I don’t hear of this band’ …We finished our food and the bill was called for. It showed up. John took it and asked Roger if he should use the Queen card to pay for it or his own card.

Roger’s drum kit arriving half way through the first week of sessions was a surprise for Noel Harris (the engineer) & me. We expected the sessions to be playing back tapes and working through the various formats to find possible material to be worked on at a later date. Noel was unfamiliar with the room in studio 3 and asked my opinion where to set the kit up and what microphones I would use. Eventually he left me to it. The kit was positioned and I mic’d it up that evening. John had his red Fender bass DI’d (no amp was used) and sat with us in the control room. I doubt these recordings made it through to the final mixes, it’s nice to think that they did.

...Tuesday 5th September

During the afternoon Brian’s guitar and a Vox AC30 appeared in the studio, brought in by Pete Malandrone. We were to do guitar overdubs on ‘You Don't Fool Me’. David asked me to put two Shure 421 microphones pointing into the back of the speaker cabinet. We did have two SM57’s on the front but these weren’t used in the recording.

I had to do a recall of the mix, which meant noting all of the studio outboard settings so we could get back to the mix and finish it off.

We had a technical problem with the Sony 3348 tape machine and eventually had it swapped for a new one. Brian clearly wasn’t aware we weren’t ready for him. I was half way through telling him and Jim Beach jumped in and finished off my explanation. Brian got really cross with him and slammed an empty coffee mug down on the studio table. Later Brian was so apologetic for his outburst. He must have told Jim he was sorry 4 times. As I type this I note it was Freddie’s birthday.

Brian slipped on his guitar that was linked to his amp with one lead. No pedals. His sound was instant and we were soon ready to record. He stood in front of the console in the control facing David & me.

Brian had an idea of what he wanted to play. The guitar riff had already been recorded. The solo guitar is what was added. Brian used a scrap of paper that he drew a map of dots on. Not like musical notation but his own short hand. It reminded me of being at the 'Radio Ga Ga' video shoot 13 years earlier. I was the same distance from Brian as I was then, but the scenario was beyond my imagination.

...Friday 8th September

Day Off - I may have met Pete Malandron at the Sun Inn in Barnes this afternoon. The QIFC was based round the corner at the time & Brian had a house there too, although I'm not sure he lived there at the time. I was with a friend and Pete joined us in the pub. He sat near the window and kept looking out of it. I asked what he was looking at and he replied "I always get worried when I'm out with Brian's guitar. It's in the boot of the car you see." He stayed for one drink and decided it was time to leave.

...One of the evenings of this second week, George Michael came to visit. There was a strong possibility that he would sing on one of the songs. Roger, John, Brian, David, George & I sat chatting in the control room. One of the conversations moved onto the Beatles and their current 'best of' release. I think Brian suggested that it was a bad idea releasing all their old material and I piped up that the fans would buy it regardless, much like the scenario Queen were about to face with the imminent release of the album. There was a deathly hush as I realised what I was saying. I wasn’t being at all derogatory. I was helped out of the hole I was digging by George who agreed with me and we moved on. No one actually spoke about doing a vocal. After George left the studio that evening, Roger was clear that he wasn’t keen on the idea.After looking through the Vintage Car garage across the road from the studio one afternoon, Roger saw a black Cadillack convertible that he quite liked. The following morning he came into the studio and said ‘Don’t tell Jim, but I bought the car.’ It was £80, 000.

Brian asked me if had been involved in the Abbey Road Sessions. Perhaps he’d seen my name on the tape boxes. I said that I was. Immediately he made a phone call. I didn’t hear all that he said, but I knew it was about a special thanks on the album credits. The following morning, after the artwork had been finalised, Roger came in and said ‘morning Aardvark’. Because the special thanks were alphabetic, I was on top of the list. It wasn’t until I bought a copy of the album and saw my name on it that I finally took on board that I had actually achieved one of my dreams.”

[the-original-b]

Archangel: For the Good of the Public, Part 3

Format: Prose / Fiction, multi-entry

Part in Series: 3 of 3 (Part 1 | Part 2)

Word Count: c. 4,700

Premise: She’s an assassin--one of the finest in the world--which gives her the right to ask for vast sums of money to do what she does so well. But every so often there comes a job she’s happy to do for free.

Warning(s): blood, graphic violence

Seza remained in her car after Teller dismissed his staff for the evening, tucked out of sight to observe the Pehle Avenue office from behind her dashboard. When the last person in the building left that night, she waited for an additional half-hour before exiting the car and heading back to the building.

She tapped the keycard she lifted earlier that afternoon on a reader next to the front door to gain entry to the space, then headed up the stairs adjacent to the elevator toward Teller’s office. Luckily for her, he hadn’t locked the office door on his way out so she wouldn’t have to pick the lock; she turned the doorknob down and walked right in, heading straight for the desktop computer and moving the mouse to wake it from sleep.

She remarked to herself about his lack of security on the device and combed through the documents on Teller’s desktop, eventually finding a staff directory that listed the names, home addresses, and next of kin for his top lieutenants. Seza retrieved a USB flash drive from her pants pocket and plugged it into a port, then executed a copy-paste command to transfer the information to the drive.

Moments after the transfer was complete, she heard the elevator doors open across the hall. She yanked the USB drive from the computer and sprang to find cover; the keys fumbling in the already-disengaged lock gave her just enough time to put the computer back to sleep and tuck herself behind the doorway.

She watched a distraught Chris Teller stagger through the office doors and make his way to the desk. He hung his coat on the rack then took a seat and immediately rested his face in his palms, his shoulders heaving as he wept.

Then Seza realized, circumstance hadn’t given the man the opportunity to mourn his wife. Silently, she sidestepped to the office door and let herself out, allowing him to grieve properly. Then she headed back down the stairs to the lobby, and then her car to return to her safe house.

Once there she headed for the kitchen area to lift a piece of the flooring loose and inspect the weapons she kept cached away there—a .380 Makarov clone and a V40 fragmentation grenade. She slid a magazine into the Makarov and placed it into a specially designed holster before returning it to her cache, then undressed and headed to her bedroom to steal a few hours of sleep. When she awoke, she decided, she was going to study those documents, then use them to tear Chris Teller’s enterprise down.

~~~~

The man in the hospital bed blearily opened his eyes to the quiet, high-pitched beeps of the equipment he was tethered to. He felt the poor state of his ribs and face despite the pain killers coursing through his bloodstream and groaned weakly, barely able to move with all the tubes coming out of him.

He felt a sharp pain under his jaw when he tried to get more comfortable, but this one was different—it was cold. He tilted his gaze downward to see a Ka-Bar knife resting on his throat, and the ice blue eyes of woman holding it in place. The beeping of the monitoring equipment started to quicken.

“Make a sound,” Seza said, “and you die.” She had her hair tied back to keep it out of her face, and wore dark tactical pants, boots, and a black commando sweater under a pale gray swing coat. “You were there the night Scarlett was moved from the warehouse,” she continued in her native accent, “yes?”

The man gestured the hospital bed with his eyes, trying to communicate to her I can’t move.

Seza got the message. “Blink once for yes… twice for no”

The man blinked once.

“Good. You’re going to tell me where she is.” She circled to his right, keeping the blade against the man’s neck as she moved, and took a seat on a stool while she unfolded a public bus map with her left hand. “Point it out to me on this,” she ordered, holding it under his right hand.

The man followed her with his eyes, and studied the map. He was able to identify the waterfront, Park Avenue, and the warehouses out of which Teller’s entire operation was run. He rested his finger on an area near North Bergen.

Seza followed his lead. “The Pier?”

He blinked twice.

She looked back at the map. “The park, then?”

He blinked twice again.

Seza thought back to the documents she studied earler and recalled a house in North New Jersey, reserved for what were described as special conditions. She took the map away from his hand to find where the house would be, near a park in North Bergen. “Is she here?” she asked, indicating the intersection mentioned in the stolen documents.

The man blinked once.

She had a location now, and a plan for eliminating everyone in the organization who could ever threaten the girl again. “How many men are guarding her?” she questioned.

The man looked blankly at her.

Seza sighed. “You don’t know, do you?”

He blinked twice.

“I see.” She took the knife away from his neck and returned it to its sheath, inspecting the area of his neck it rested on for any marks that would give her away to hospital staff. “Thank you for cooperating.”

An attending physician entered the room with two nurses on either side of her. “I’m sorry miss,” the doctor said. “Unless you’re family, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Seza straightened up immediately to address them. “He’s my brother,” she returned in her false accent. She subtly pulled her coat together to conceal her attire from them. “I heard he was hit by a car, I had to see him..!”

“I understand. But you’ll need a visitor’s pass if you want to stay.”

Seza looked down at her coat, feigning guilt. “Oh, I’m sorry. I must have walked right past the check-in. Which direction is it in?”

“Down the hall to your right,” the doctor said. “Past Physical Therapy.”

“Perfect, thank you.” She flashed the doctor and nurses a warm smile before heading down the hallway. She of course turned left toward the exit, making a note to be better prepared the next time her work took her to a hospital setting. She headed right for her car and started the engine when she entered it, putting the car into drive to head to where the first of Teller’s lieutenants lived, squinting in the early morning sun.

By late that afternoon, she had successfully dispatched all but one of her targets. Her burner phone buzzed in her pocket as she descended the steps of the apartment complex in which her most recent victim resided. She retrieved it to read a text message Teller sent to all of his top lieutenants, calling a meeting at 5pm that day.

She turned her wrist upward to glance at her watch, deciding she would have to intercept her last target at the office along with Teller himself. She trotted back to her car and started the engine.

 ~~~~

Running her fingertips over the grenade in her coat pocket, Seza watched the building from her car parked in the shadows, waiting for the last of Teller’s lieutenants to arrive. When he did, he quickly scanned the area for the others, but headed inside when none were there to meet him. She waited in the car for a little while longer, then stepped out of the vehicle to half-run up to the building and navigate between the arrays of flat desks set up throughout the lobby to meet him.

“We’re already late,” he said to her. “Are we it?”

“Do you think we should wait for the others?” She addressed him with her American accent, trying to mimic his air of bewildered concern.

He shook his head. “No, it’s bad enough we kept him waiting this long.” He gestured the elevator. “Let’s head up, maybe we can reach them later.”

She followed him into the elevator, and look a place behind him to his left.

He sighed and retrieved his cell phone from his coat pocket. “Let me see if I can get a hold of one of them—”

Seza interrupted him with a kick to the back of his knee to drop him to the floor, then wrapped her left arm around his neck and pressed it harder into her arm with her right hand. “That won’t be necessary,” she said, reclaiming her native accent.

When she felt him lose consciousness in her arms, she moved her hands to either side of his head and twisted it to break his neck. He hit the floor just as the elevator came to a stop. “I know,” she said to his lifeless body as she stepped over it into the hallway. “It’s not fair.” She quietly made her way to Teller’s office and stepped through the door. Knowing nobody else would be in the room but the two of them, she stepped up to the direct center of the office, opposite Teller on the other side of the desk. The man wore a black waistcoat and slacks over a white shirt, his collar was open.

He looked up at Seza, befuddled. “Where are the others?”

Seza shrugged, taking a moment to switch back to her false self. “They’re not coming.”

“Like they have a fucking choice..?” He retrieved his cell phone from his pocket to reach one of his lieutenants.

“You mistake me,” she clarified. “They’re not absent by choice.” She pressed down on the Makarov in her holster, freeing it while disengaging the safety and chambering a round at the same time, and raised it one-handed to hold Teller in the sights. “They’re dead,” she continued, finally dropping her persona once and for all.

Teller’s eyes narrowed as he slowly put the phone down and made sense of the events of the last few days. “Is that how it is, then?” he snarled. “You come here with that looking-for-work shite just to kill me..? Is that what they hired you to do?”

“No. I’ve been hired to return Scarlett to her family. Killing you,” she added as she took aim. “That’s a bonus.”

She squeezed the trigger once just as Teller made his move, catching him just under his right collarbone. She kept the gun at the ready as Teller fell backward, landing behind his desk and hiding there.

Seza figured he was waiting for her to get closer and confirm the kill to lash out and counter-attack, at a range where the handgun would be useless. But she thought ahead—backing toward the door, she fired again and again over the desk to keep Teller behind it as she fished in her coat pocket for the small grenade and retrieved it. She held the pin in her teeth as she fired her seventh and eighth shots, then yanked the explosive away from her face and pitched the device over the desk as she backed out of the office and shut the door behind her.

She backed away from the door and held herself against the wall, holding her breath as she waited for the boom of the grenade.

It came three seconds afterward, shaking the hall and causing the lights to flicker for a short while.

Seza let herself breathe again and headed for the elevator. She hit the button for the ground floor—her empty Makarov still in her hand—and leaned against the wall as the elevator descended. She took a breath to calm herself before reengaging the safety on her handgun and placing it back into the holster. She could relax now; Chris Teller was dealt with, and in just a few hours the girl would be safe with her family again. She breathed a content sigh as the elevator doors opened, and she stepped off to head for the exit, past the stairwell.

The stairway door flew open just as she walked by it, and she registered the glint of a fire axe swung in her direction at eye-level from behind the open door.

She threw her head backward to avoid the blade with such force she landed flat onto her back just as the axe buried itself into the wall to her left. She crawled backward away from Chris Teller and his axe, distancing herself from the giant man as he wrenched his weapon free and turned to pursue her, murderous intent in his eyes.

She scrambled back to her feet and slid behind one of the desks in the lobby to break his line of sight, and Teller bounded over to the table in pursuit.

“Come here you slag!” he barked. “I’ll split your fucking head open..!” With his left hand he turned the table over and raised the axe with his right, but stopped when Seza wasn’t there. He returned both his hands to the axe as he scanned the other desks in the lobby, and stalked around the space looking for her. “Come on,” he challenged. “Come and get your bonus..!

Seza peered around the corner of a desk to keep him in sight. She tried to slow her breathing but her fear betrayed her. Teller was twice her size, armed, and angry; without a way to tip the advantage in her favor she wouldn’t stand a chance against him in a one on one fight. She knew she had to even the odds somehow, and with her knife in the car she had no choice but to slowly reach up above her head to grab hold of the only weapon readily available to her in the space: a ballpoint pen. Silently, she broke from cover and moved to attack.

She kept a few feet distance from her prey as she followed him; she had to be close enough to strike while leaving enough room to comfortably avoid his weapon if she had to. She maintained her silence as she slowly closed the distance between them, then jammed the tip of her pen into the back of Teller’s right knee and pulled it out just as quickly, with just enough time to duck out of the way of the axe as he swung it backwards and chipped the floor.

Teller released a pained groan as he collected himself. “Okay, Jane…” he growled. “You want to play!?” He swung the axe across to his left, destroying one of the desks, and then swung it to his right one-handed to bury it into another.

That’s good, Seza thought. Tire yourself out. Keep your heart rate high. Bleed faster. From behind the corner of her desk she watched him move further from her, destroying the tables one by one to eliminate her cover. She couldn’t allow that—she had to draw him to her, and weaken him faster.

With her foot she slid a chair backward, making just enough noise to get his attention, then moved into position.

Teller turned over his shoulder in response to the noise. “Ready or not,” he said, half-running-half-limping toward the distraction, “here I come..!” He raised the axe above his head with both hands and brought it down onto the table top, nearly obliterating it in a single blow. His anger began to build and swell as he sorted through the rubble.

Seza sprang out of cover behind him and jammed her pen high into the inside of his left thigh, then rolled into cover to avoid his gaze as he turned around and brought the axe down again into the floor. He collapsed to his knees this time as he released all his rage.

“Where the fuck are you!?” he roared. He braced himself against the axe with both hands to stand up again, and supported his weight against it like a cane as he slowly moved through the lobby to search for her.

Seza looked on her prey from behind cover as she assessed the state he was in—he had a .380 in his shoulder, a puncture wound in each leg, and was bleeding profusely from all three places. He was leaving bloody imprints of his shoe treads wherever he stepped, and his breathing was labored.

This is the time, she thought. She darted out of cover and leapt toward him with the pen in her hand, targeting the side of his neck.

She would have landed her strike if Teller hadn’t heard her coming and jerked his right arm backward.

A freight train barreled into Seza’s ribs, and she was sent back several feet landing flat onto her back. “Found you!” Teller exclaimed. He looked down at Seza, still stunned from the blow, and chuckled venomously. “Not bad, Jane,” he said. He let go of the axe handle and shuffled over to her. “Not bad at all. You really had me going, there.” He sank his weight down onto her and wrapped his left hand around her neck. Then his right, and began to squeeze.

Seza couldn’t escape him, no matter what she did. She tried in vain to peel his hands off of her, but there was nothing stopping Teller from squeezing the life out of her.

He maintained his vice-like grip on her. “You don’t get to die quick,” he taunted as his lip curled into a sinister smirk. “No, I’m going to take my time crushing your windpipe…”

She kicked her legs out underneath him, trying to throw him off balance as darkness narrowed her vision. She found herself counting each breath she tried to take under him, anything to keep her mind in the moment because to fall asleep now meant death, and probably something worse along with it. She gurgled defiantly under him, denying him the satisfaction of seeing her fear.

“…and I am going to savor every second of it..!”

His arms were longer than hers, and he was much stronger; she couldn’t break his grip even if she targeted his elbow to weaken it. Her only hope lay in the destruction around her. She held her breath and reached down by her side with her right hand, and when she felt her sliver of salvation her fingers wrapped tight around it and jammed the point of her pen into the crook of his left elbow. She did it again when he only cursed in response and didn’t move. She stabbed his arm three more times before it finally bent, then pushed his elbow to bend his arm further and bring his head within reach. Then she inverted the grip on her pen, held the back of his neck with her free hand, and drove the point of the pen deep into his neck right where it met his jaw.

Teller stopped applying pressure immediately, in shocked disbelief at what just happened. He freed Seza’s neck and put both hands around his new wound, trying but failing to stop the bleeding as he fell onto his side.

Seza clutched her own neck as she gasped for air. She rolled onto her elbows and knees as she took deep breath after deep breath to fill her lungs with fresh oxygen and regain her strength. Fortunately for her, she was able to act before Teller’s attempt on her life left any visible marks; after a moment she was able to slow her breathing to a normal rate and collect herself.

“Who was it?” Teller hacked “Who sent you to get the girl?”

Seza looked over her shoulder at Teller, dying in a puddle of his own blood next to her. When she was sure enough of her footing, she exhaled and stood up to retrieve the fire axe a few yards from them. She picked it up by the far end of its handle, allowing its head to drag behind her as she returned to Teller.

“Was it Cross..? That skinny bitch on Sixth Avenue..?”

Seza rolled him onto his back with her foot, and adjusted her grip on the axe to carry it with both hands.

“Did they have Maria killed to get me to give her back? Tell me, Jane,” he entreated weakly. “I have to know…”

“My name is not Jane,” Seza finally said. Then she swung the axe over her head and brought it down onto Teller’s, landing the blade between his eyes and upper jaw.

She let go of the axe, where it remained embedded in him, and took another set of deep breaths to slow her heart rate and allow the adrenaline to filter out of her blood. She leaned back against one of the intact desks in the lobby area as she did and, looking down at herself, observed Teller’s blood all over her coat. She stood up and calmly headed to the restroom to clean herself.

She removed her coat to place it in the trash bin and washed the blood off her hands and face, scrubbing it out from underneath her fingernails. Then she inspected the janitorial closet for cleaning supplies, finding a Sodium Hypochlorite solution. She took a paper towel from the dispenser to grip the handle and another to open the bottle, then poured half of its remaining contents onto her coat in the trash receptacle.

She carried the open bottle into the lobby to empty the container onto the axe handle and Chris Teller’s remains, then discarded the bottle before leaving the building and heading to her car. She started the engine after she sat down, then took a moment to load her Makarov with another magazine from the center console, where she kept her Ka-Bar knife as well, then headed off in the direction of the house where Scarlett Marlow was being held. She learned her lesson after today—she would never again allow herself to be unarmed while on the job.

 ~~~~

Seza pulled her car up to the Calloways’ front door that night, Scarlett in the back seat. She unlocked the doors to let her out as she stopped the car and removed her handgun holster from her person. She stepped out of the car and rested the gun on the dashboard as she walked around to the passenger side, looking on as Scarlett threw her arms around her mother just outside the house. She leaned against the hood of the car and watched as her father and the dog rushed up to greet her as well. She couldn’t help but smile at the tearful reunion.

Mrs. Calloway looked up from her daughter at the woman who promised her safe return, and with tears in her eyes broke away from Scarlett to wrap Seza in a warm embrace to express her gratitude. Seza, taken aback at first, returned her hug.

“How can I ever repay you?” Mrs. Calloway asked her, letting go.

“You don’t need to repay me,” she said, resting her hands on Mrs. Calloway’s forearms.

“You gave our daughter back to us..! There has to be something we can do for you, anything.”

“It’s fine,” Seza reassured her. “Really. It’s enough to know she’s safe. And that those responsible can’t hurt her again.” She broke away from Mrs. Calloway. “Good night,” she bid them all. Then she returned to the driver’s seat of her car and started the engine, pulling the car out of the driveway to return to her safehouse. She recalled her own experiences when she was barely Scarlett’s age—the hard floor of the dark cellar, her bound wrists—and took solace in the fact that she was able to spare one innocent girl that fate.

She found herself revisiting those memories as she lay in bed that night, and couldn’t help but wonder how many other innocent girls and boys were out there sitting on cold cellar floors that night with their wrists shackled. She considered the number of families who weren’t as lucky as the Calloways—the Marlows—were to have their children delivered to them.

 ~~~~

The following afternoon, the proprietor of a bar in Downtown Jersey City a half-hour’s walk from the waterfront held a phone to his ear as he read the words crawling across the television screen in the corner of the room. They detailed how alleged crime boss Christopher Teller was found violently murdered in an office building in Saddle Brook. The news report continued by saying investigators found a discarded coat near the crime scene, but that it and the murder weapon were soaked with bleach to the point that no intact DNA samples could be recovered.

“Have you turned on the news today?” he said onto the receiver. He turned away from the screen to scan the nearly-empty room. “Either that or a personal vendetta. That man made a lot of dangerous people very angry, there’s no end to that list…” He watched Seza walk in through the front door, dressed in a gray pullover hoodie with dark form-fitting jeans and sneakers, and place herself at the far end of the bar. He acknowledged her with a nod. “Sorry, I have to go. We’ll talk later, Miss Khai.” He returned the phone to the cradle then turned to address Seza. “You’re early, Shelli.”

Seza looked up at him. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s been a rough past few days. I had to clear my head.”

“That family emergency you mentioned, yeah?” He took a glass out from behind the counter and placed it in front of her, and uncorked a bottle of 23-year Ron Zacapa. “Still your favorite, right?” He poured her a finger’s depth.

It wasn’t really her favorite, she just said it was because it reminded her of him. “Yep. You can take it out of my check.”

“Nonsense. This one is on me.”

She smiled warmly at him, taking the glass and holding it gently with both her hands. “Thanks, Horace.” Absentmindedly, she ran her fingers along the edges of the glass as she played the events of the last few days over and over in her head. She considered what could have happened to Scarlett if she hadn’t decided to take the job, and remembered that was the reality for thousands of others across the country and around the world. “My cousin,” she lied, “went missing the other day.”

“Oh, wow,” Horace lamented. He leaned on the bar across from her. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“We got her back, thank God. But guys like the ones who kidnapped her… how many of them are still out there? How many families aren’t so lucky? I don’t know, I just had a lot of time to think about that lately.”

“Well, then you might get a kick out of this—Chris Teller was found murdered this morning. Somebody went to work on him with an axe.”

She looked up at him, feigning surprise. “Chis Teller the alleged gangster?”

“Gangster. Come on, Shelli, it was hardly a secret what we was involved with… looks like he made one bad deal too many. And between you and me, the son of a bitch had it coming.”

“Huh…” Seza took from her glass and placed it back down on the countertop. “Still, for every Chris Teller that gets what he deserves, it seems like two more replace him.”

“I wouldn’t count on that… I hear people talk some nights. One time they mentioned someone calling himself Nomad, saying how he was cleaning up the underworld. I don’t know how true any of it is, but they were scared shitless of him.”

Seza subtly broke eye contact as she finished her drink, carefully considering what to say next that wouldn’t give her away. “Do you think Nomad is real? Could he have been the one to get Teller?”

“I guess we’ll find out together,” he smirked. “When the folks start talking again.”

“Yeah, I suppose we will.” Seza stood up to carry her glass to the sink behind the bar. She quickly washed, dried, and returned it to where the others were kept before heading to the back room to remove her hoodie and start her shift.

(Masterlist)

[veronicassadboi]

🖤 Jeronica Secret Santa ❤️

To @vxj-veronica-jones with love. Merry Christmas. Thanks for your continual love and support of the fandom. You’re a real MVP. Sorry, all I can offer is angst as that’s my #Thing. Summer mentions because it’s summer on my side of the world. Sorry if it’s too much angst for the festive season but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, right? Formatting is annoying because I’m posting this amidst travelling overseas for Christmas on my phone. I should face posted on AO3 instead of posting this long ass post that won’t work with a “read more” cut. Merry Christmas anywho ❤️

Be With Me

Warning: mentions of sex, gang slanging (lol), swearing, heart ache.

Summary: She pops up everywhere. In the taste of shakes at Pop's. The writing she left on his kitchen table that he hasn't been able to move. In the text messages he reads before he forces himself to sleep at least two hours at night. He's still learning how to perfect that, though. Because sometimes it's a messy forty-five minutes just before school. Or it's a solid sixteen hours and he's missed the whole fucking day. At the moment, there's no in between.

————————————|

Jughead lights up a cigarette. It just alleviates the urge pulsing through him but he takes them anyway; three deep drags in a row with rushing bloodstreams and noisy thoughts. Jughead turns up Tame Impala and lets the music drown him in noisy basslines and clashing cymbals - clashing thoughts. But his eraseture of his messy mind is a battle lost. He stubs out menthol cigarettes in the ashtray, watching it burn into itself, mystic wisps of smoke, but he reaches for another one. The urge he has for Veronica is pulsing faster now. As he flicks his lighter, he wonders how much her happiness would grow if she watched him light up his Serpents jacket the same way he burned this cigarette. Red hot flames, up in smoke….

What’s the price I pay for loving Veronica Lodge? He thinks.

Pure fucking torture is what I pay, the back of his mind reminds him.

Jughead’s craving for Veronica doesn’t feel much more than a gentle rustle in the breeze at the moment. It’s a welcome change to the raw throat burning he usually gets at four in the morning, at two in the afternoon; ten at night. He zones out of imagining Veronica’s sugary, honeyed calls and he feels lighter all of a sudden. In her zone. But he comes back down to earth, it hits him harder than it usually does; Jughead’s craving is sated because she’s here with him.

Though she’s with him, fears eats away when all he can think about is the skin scratching, blood thickening feeling he’ll get when she leaves.

Love is confidence. Confident is what he feels when Veronica is here with him. I’m undefeatable, I’m God-like right now.

She’s almost aerobatic – fucking artistic the way she flies through the air and it’s all because of him. She wraps her arms around his neck, dots sweet kisses. Skin tearing jaw bites that he can smell, cinnamon mixed with his favourite brand of menthol. He smiles against her as he tastes her skin, she tastes like she did at four in morning and during her break at lunch, the back wall of Pop’s knows the shape of her body almost as well as Jughead does. She tastes absolutely edible as her thighs creep up his sides, pulling herself up his body with her legs around his waist. “I missed you,” she tells him, scratching on his leather back.

Jughead feels his cheeks burn, his heart whistle; fingertips numbing all because of the girl around him. He hisses up courage, tasting her a little more. Saturating myself in her, he begs himself. “Tell me how much you love me,” He begs her. His fingers are pins and needles, his heart is tight in her grip.

Veronica  leans back as Jughead grips onto her ass, keeping her up with his mind trying to keep up too. “I want you to stay with me.”

He sniggers as his mouth fills with saliva; he’s salivating, - a man starved, hungry, feverish from starvation. His mouth feels dry now, not  keeping up. “What’s the price of loving me?” he ask her this time.

She raises an eyebrow. “That you can’t live without me.”

He groans against her; he fucks her against the wall.

When you love the way we love, who the fuck requires a heart? He asks himself.

Because it’s a pause in heart beats, it’s the lack of blood flow. He doesn’t exist anywhere else but in her.

He kisses her dirty; he kisses her until he can’t breathe.

They’re in the trailer. When they came in, the sun was shining so bright on the two on the floor. Now it’s just cold, dark and Jughead’s heart feels like a hoarder –  almost as if he’s keeping her all to himself and he won’t share her; he won’t let her loose. If I let go, she might not come back to me...

“I love you,” Veronica tells him. “More and more everyday.”

She’s glittery beneath the moonlight, dark hair turns midnight in the light. Skin turns tasty in the moon. She turns magical in here, he reminds himself. She’s supernatural right now. Every kiss on her lips tells the story of us, he knows, starvation, lust, love, dependence, poison, love, affection, pure, love, lost, love, needing, love, I can’t live without her. Love.

“Tell me how much you love me,” he asks.

“Come with me, we’ll go, Jug,” she promises. “New York.”

“Princess,” he prays.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I love you more than they do.”

“I love you so much, I go fucking crazy.”

“Go fucking crazy then,” she orders, “Do it, then you can come with me and we’ll start a new life.” “A new life,” he copies, “One where you love me happily.”

“I love you happily anyways,” she says with a sigh. “Even when it hurts.”

She’s purple painted toes digging into her blankets. She’s laying in satin kind of tired.

He feels cold without Southside on his shoulders. “Were you Southside?” she asks before even looking at Jughead standing at the trailer window.

“I was,” he says, catching in his throat.

“And?”

“And now I’m not.”

Veronica hums. “What time are you going back?” she says so thickly, Jughead can feel her words hitting him in the heart; sharp, harsh arrows. “Are you going back?” An arrow to the heart.

“No.”

She rolls over, her eyes are red bloodshot and her skin sun kissed in the dark. “So today you’ll pretend like you’re all mine?”

“Only if you pretend that you’re all mine, Princess.”

Veronica shakes the earth to give Jughead more than anything in the world. I am a man starved. I am greedy in loving her. I take all of her, nothing to spare.

She took all of him until there was nothing left to give her.

“Just be with me here,” she prays.

“I’ll be here.”

Jughead ignores the necklace that hangs around his Princess’s neck that his best friend bought her. Just like she ignores the smell of Betty’s vanilla on his own skin.

xxxxx

Jughead stares at the time on the alarm clock as it beeps to wake him up. He doesn't switch it off, he doesn't have the energy hit snooze. He thinks briefly on the time and he wonders what Veronica is doing at this exact moment. If his thoughts didn't betray him, then the smell of her in his sheets did. He woke up with her smell mixed with his smell and he knows he's fucking lying to himself when he tries to make out that he's unsure of how many days it's been since he last saw her fake smile. Thirteen. She pops up everywhere. In the taste of shakes at Pop's. The writing she left on his kitchen table that he hasn't been able to move. In the text messages he reads before he forces himself to sleep at least two hours at night. He's still learning how to perfect that, though. Because sometimes it's a messy forty-five minutes just before school. Or it's a solid sixteen hours and he's missed the whole fucking day. At the moment, there's no in between. She's the marrow in the bones of his fucked up days. Veronica Lodge is the marrow in his very bones. Veronica is him. Jughead punches a pillow as the alarm keeps going. He screams into the same one. He realises it smells like her, so he clings on a little tighter. And then he feels the ache in his jaw, the pulsing of blood in his split lip and then he remembers how he got here in the first place.

XXXXX

"You hate me, don't you?" Jughead asks his best friend. Archie Andrews wasn't a liar. And Jughead knows that Archie Andrews has a level of loyalty that the Southside wouldn't be able to rival. Archie Andrews also had a weird way of saying exactly what was on his mind even if maybe, Jughead thinks, he shouldn't. Jughead also wonders if he can count how many times Archie opens his mouth in an attempt to make up some lie, but, yet again, Archie Andrews is not a liar and it almost irritates Jughead that his best friend is torturing him in this way. "I don't hate you, Jug." Jughead sniggers, kicks his boots on the lino floor of the trailer and stops himself from rolling his eyes. "You hate me." "Betty still loves you she just..."

"Doesn't love what I've become."

Jughead can’t even come up with a string of truths. It wasn’t Betty. And it wasn’t love lost between him and her either. It was Veronica. Jughead continues to lie through his teeth, humouring his best friend. Trying not to think too loudly about his best friend’s girlfriend. Trying not to be too harsh about Betty.

Archie scrambles for words again. Jughead can tell. He's frantic and stumbling over his own tongue. He grabs Jughead by the collar and shakes him out, but Jughead can just feel boiling blood. "This stupid jacket is what we hate, but we love you, Juggie," Archie takes a steadying breath. "Betty loves you; I miss you, Jug. Veronica does too.” Jug wishes they were kids again. Way back when. When FP and Fred were best buds and they were back up in the treehouse. Or even not that long ago, when he was crashing on the Andrews floor and the biggest issue was Archie burning pizza. But they're not. Archie is a Northern Suburban Knight in Shining Armour and Jughead is a Southside Serpent earning new fangs while cycling with the training wheels still on. Hearing Veronica’s name made his arteries connected to his heart harden and stop pulsing, the blood was coagulating, stiffening and hardening. Archie's words only made him feel half the amount better, because 'I-love-you's' from Archie Andrews were dished out as often as 'hellos', Jughead doesn't think it as a dig at his best friend, he likes to think of it as Archie just has a big heart. But he sees his best friend glaring at the leather jacket on his shoulders and then he remembers how he got here in the first place. Jughead thinks quickly on everything that he has control over. He has freedom and the trailer is his. He can ride out at any time, there's no limit to where he can go. And then his chest feels tight, and his breathing is too shallow. He can't control his repetitive reading of Veronica’s last texts. Or the way he thinks the only way his heart is still beating is because Veronica Lodge is still on his mind. But the trailer is his, the bike is his, though not something he had initially wanted, Hotdog was his. And so were the bad thoughts, the mess of hair on his head, the dark rings under his eyes, the two hours sleep, the love he holds for Veronica, the cigarettes he all of a sudden acquired and the pills Sweetpea insists he'll like. They're all his. And then he remembers how he got here in the first place.

XXXXX

Toni has a body that is out of this world. Toni has a mouth with lips that look like they need biting. She has hair you can hold on to. Toni has words that make guys drop to their knees, Jughead knows, because Fangs told him. She gives him that taste of Southside without the pain. And when there is pain involved, Toni makes a good makeshift nurse. She's seen things before that he's only just learning about and she makes a good teacher. And if Betty was good at teaching him school work, then Toni is schooling him at life. He feels bile at the back of his throat when he thinks of Betty and Toni in the same go. But things are complicated and no amount of digging his snake pit further into Southside was going to change that. He couldn't be further from the North than he is right now. Even while sitting in the Red and Black with dust plumes glittering in afternoon sun, Toni is making a passionate speech about showing the true identity of Southside High to Riverdale. And as much as taking photos of the Football team and the Drama class that just so happens to have an uncountable amount of students with nose rings and belt buckles with studs on them, he can't help but think that Toni would have a better chance at portraying this place for what it was. A festering wound that is hard to cover up. "You've got some dark rings under your eyes, Forsythe," she says with a smirk. "You been up all night or something?" Jughead reads the bite of her lip and the wink of her right eye. He reads it dirty but he shrugs in reply. "Hmm," he says.

Toni knows secrets about him that no one else does. She keeps them locked up inside - Toni is the safest place he knows and one of the only places he trusts. “Veronica,” she says, slapping on a look of pity. She slinks behind his chair, pats his shoulder, ruffles his hair. "Don't worry, Juggie, if you love each other, you'll find your way back." Do marrow and blood every actually touch? He's not sure. He flickers briefly between thinking about how he and Veronica would find their way back and believing that they had never actually ever fucking lost each other. He flickers between words from Toni's lips and Veronica’s soul. He flickers between loving Veronica and then he remembers how he got here in the first place.

XXXXX

Veronica has been working at Pop’s alone. He can tell by the way her skin is slick and she’s an overbitten lower lip. He knows she’s tired, but she knows she works harder than anyone else. He knows the taste of her overbitten lips and the feel of her hair in his fists. Out of selfishness for his own battered feelings, he doesn't approach her. Or he might tell her how much he needs her. How he can't live without her. How he can’t fucking breathe. But he's at risk of looking like an idiot and his ego can't take another blow. Her shoulders slump, he watches her hand smooth over her face and then over her hair, she cranes her neck a little, leaning on the mop handle. He doesn't order, he walks out hungry. He kicks his bike before getting back on it. And then he remembers how he got here in the first place.

XXXXX

It's sick, because every punch from the Ghoulie sounds like Veronica’s name against his skin. He feels the Ghoulie’s knuckles sing against the right side of his jaw, his teeth grate against each other but he manages a swing too, weak with his left hand side. Princess, it ghosts. Somehow, the Ghoulie gets ahold of the scruff of his neck and he's trying to tackle Jughead down, but Jug is younger, faster, he spins out, spits blood on the floor and swings his right, stronger hand. Veronica, it sings against the Ghoulie’s nose. The Ghoulie laughs manically, "Yeah, you little Serpent’s tougher than you look, huh?" Jughead thinks ironically that the Ghoulie isn't right because if only he knew of the girl that has him crippled most of the time. But he shouldn't be thinking of her when he gets landed a blow to the temple. He's almost out cold when he hears Sweet Pea call his name. "Veronica?" Jughead asks the buzzing in his ears, it surely has to be her. But then he realises it's not because he remembers how he got here in the first place.

XXXXX

Jughead feels exposed and he tries to sit up quickly when he sees her, but he also wonders if maybe he shouldn't bother. He has to be dead to be seeing Veronica Lodge sitting on the end of his bed. Once upon a time it was sneaking through bedroom windows. Then crashing out on the overused sofa in the trailer. Then it was shouting, hateful words. Soft tender kisses in the rain. Wiping tears away in the booth at Pop's. Making himself physically fucking sick because love shouldn't be this hard, right? Veronica had promised him that their love was unshakeable, unmovable, limitless. She had promised Jughead that their love was as easy as breathing. At what point of their love did Veronica become a liar? He wonders.

When we chose to fall in love, he reminds himself. Nothing was harder than hushed secrets. Lying to the people they swore they loved. Now, she was so close that he could smell her perfume, but he could also make out the tracks and paths of her tears thanks to black mascara. And as much as Jughead wanted to look away, he was a man starved. He drinks her in, he soaks up her sun, he wants to feel pain in his palms when she's in his hands. But the way she drips disgust in him hurts him more than it hurts her. "Why are you doing this, Jughead?" she asks, a malicious tone in her voice. She shakes the room, she slams a fist down on the same pillow he does every night. "Don't do this Jughead," her tears fly. "This is crazy! It's dangerous." He thinks his love for her is the only dangerous thing around here. He reaches with a shaky, beat up hand and wipes her tears and she sinks into his hand, closing her eyes. "You know I’d do anything for you. And if that means keeping on the Southside to keep them from you in the Northside, then so be it." "Run away with me. Please," she begs. "I'm serious." She slides into the bed with him, shaking with cold even if it's warm outside. He wonders why she's so cold, why everything hurts. But then he remembers how they got here in the first place. He can't keep away from her. But then, he never could. He dreams of Springtime when he was a kid, riding bikes with Archie. And he misses that too. The old Archie. The one who wasn't so scared. The one that was funny. But Jughead remembers, they were all funny back then. He laughs lightly about Betty and how way back when, she used to be a pigtail kind of girl and not much has changed, only that she's now a single ponytail kind of girl.

He remembers when he wasn’t in love with the girl he shouldn’t be. When he wasn’t hurting his best friend and Betty. When things were simple. He prays for those days. But he couldn’t survive without Veronica, so the prayers are futile. Now he’s late nights in The Pembrooke where he’s kissed Veronica a million times after paying the price of Southside, he made it up to her with her thighs around his head and her nails in his hair. He laughed against the insides of her ankles and soft kisses on her wrist and for once, Southside was left on the floor next to her radio. Jughead lies in Veronica’s arms with her fingers still playing with a curl at the front of his face. "I want to go, V," he tells her honestly. "I want you and I to go, let's go, get out of here." It was crazy but Jughead knew it was doable. He had arranged everything, he had money, a car. He wanted to skip, get out of here. Veronica stops, tilts Jughead's head with her hands and gives him a serious look while frowning. "Are you serious?" "Do I look like I'm joking?" he challenges. She inhales sharply. "Leave all this mess behind?" He nods. He nods so hard, he feels like he looks stupid but he was serious and if he could, he would leave now. "You and me, Princess, what do you say?" She smiles. She kisses him a million times. He smiles against her collarbone and then he remembers how he got here in the first place.

XXXXX

It’s hot-sweat in the middle of summer kind of heat. It was sweat dripping from the tip of her nose. Veronica and Betty had been ice-cream-sweet all day. Veronica smacked her lips and looked up from shy eyes, whispered rumours and quiet laughs were painful. Her lips smack together with pleasure when she humours Betty; Summer heat carries summer secrets. Veronica keeps warm in the memories of last night.

It’s hot-sweat in the middle of summer kind of heat but Jughead was muted-twilight-tones with the sun setting on his skin. It was sticky tar pavements and sticky fingers against Veronica’s iPhone screen from summer sun when she messages her mom to tell her she’ll be late home but through the heat, Jughead still wore red Docs with long socks and sweat-sticky leather against his back. They stand outside his trailer with the overused door handle and the worn out paint that spoke volumes to her. Old. Muted. Worn. Sticky-summer-sun is setting on the worn out paint and made it seem a little colder than cold around here.

Jughead stands on a cigarette butt to put it out and nods at Veronica. “Tell me how much you love me,” he says. “Come on, Princess,” he says with a scuff of his boot.

“Nobody likes someone who’s so needy,” she replies, rolling her eyes.

He laughs quietly and reaches out to her shorts, hooking his lazy-long fingers in the belt hoop of denim shorts, pulling Veronica closer. Her hips bump his hips, her breath hitches in her throat as she feels him but his breath is breathing on her skin. Jughead’s mouth meets Veronica’s neck; his tongue dances on sweat-sticky, soft-aching skin. He kisses her. “Let’s see how needy I can get then.”

His words echo. His smile, though she can’t see it, is larger than ever. She can feel it; she feels his smile on her neck; on her skin. His hands? She can’t see them; she feels them, edging on the start of denim, popping her buttons,  second button,  third button, and the rest after that. She gives in with her eyes curious-kind-of-wide and her voice on his tongue.

“Where have you been?” she asks him.

“Gone,” he groans against her skin. “Preparing the world for you,” He keeps running his fingers on denim. Punishment reaches down and  starts doing denim up, never looking away from his leather jacket. But his fingers stop pulling and he steps back, running a hand over his face. “V...” he murmurs.

“Jughead,” she says strongly back. Loud in her mind. Smirk dancing on her lips. “Punishment,” she tells him.

He smirks to himself and shrugs his shoulders; exhaling loudly as he reads her erratic mind. “Tell me you’re not mad at me…”

“But then I would be lying,” she says putting her hands on  hips.

He pulls her by the hips again, bumping her to him again, making her weak all over again. “Tell me a lie.”

“Where have you been?” she asks him. He was supposed to be so much more than secret-whispers and smug-cocky smirks.

“Southside,” he says biting his lower lip and shoving his hands pocket deep.

His eyes flicker down to the dirt he’s standing on and his lips purse but she can read them and the words he’s trying to speak. “Stop going Southside,” she begs. Her hands finding his and pulling them up to her lips. “Just be here with me.”

Jughead sighs and his hands tighten in hers. He pulls Veronica’s hands to his lips this time, kissing them over and over. “I’m here,” he mumbles. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,” he repeats his prayer, on her knuckles, smoothing out fingers, running over her nails.

She feels them building in her chest first then it runs up into her mind; half-prayers and mumbled promises. “I can give you more than they can,” she promises. “I just want you to be here with me.”

He chuckles again and lets go of Veronica, pulling at belt loops again. “I’m always here,” he answers. “Always.” He was here but he’s not here. He was in her space but he wasn’t really here with her. “Tell me a lie,” he murmurs sugar-sweet. “Tell me a lie, tell me a lie,” he murmurs as he pulls her in; shoulders easing, anger still running electric through her. “Tell me you don’t hate the Serpents, tell me you’re okay… Tell me another lie.”

She pushes at his chest; shoving him away. Weak-handed, pissed-off-strong. “I hate that you don’t tell me everything.”

He sniggers at her. It’s all cocky-truths and rolled eyes. “That’s not a lie, Princess,” he says running his tongue over minty-fresh teeth. “That’s the worst kind of truth.”

“You’re right,” she whispers against his lips.

“We’ll be leaving, any day now, Princess.”

She’s lost in the taste of his tongue and his hands between her thighs.

XXXXX

The SS Camaro is in need of a paint job, but it's enough to do the trick. His heart races and the arteries barely open up but this time, not from pain. From pure, unfiltered excitement. Jughead is okay, but he's not at the same time. The sun shines through the window of the car and he knows it should be burning him, it's unnaturally hot today but he feels almost nothing at all. Crashing waves is what he feels in the tightness of his chest and freefalling right in the pit of his stomach. He's scared. He's worried. He'd give up his entire life just for this. Veronica is two minutes late but the way her hair swings with her brisk walk and her suitcase rolling behind her, he can see that those two minutes was part of his time well spent. She was here, and every step on the pavement as she walks to the car feels like they sprout dark petalled roses from the concrete and her smile is rooting itself in his veins. Just seeing her is completing him. He revs the engine, she opens up. They look at each other; Jughead lets Veronica peer directly into his soul and at one point, he feels her inside of him. She shuts the heavy door, it makes her flinch but she takes a deep breath, steadies herself, closes her eyes. Inhales. He turns on the indicator to signal out of the street but before he moves, he kisses her cheek. "I love you, Veronica." Veronica smiles like the sun in the middle of summer, burning him, charred skin. "I love you too, Jughead," she breathes. "Let's go." "Where to?" "Our new home," she laughs. "Anywhere!" Jughead remembers how he got here in the first place. Love.

—————————|

Lots of love,

@veronicassadboi

[renewsend526]

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ITunes is a free application for Mac and PC. It plays all your digital music and video. It syncs content to your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. And it's an entertainment superstore that stays open 24/7. Spotiload (former Spotify Vk Downloader) Spotiload (former Spotify Vk Downloader) is a free.

Updated Sep. 24, 2020

Does Apple Watch 6 support streaming Spotify music directly without an ‌iPhone‌ connection? Sorry, the answer is still no. But Spotify is now testing direct Apple Watch streaming for select users. However, there is still no news on storing a playlist locally for offline listening. - read more

Spotify officially released its Apple Watch app on Nov 13, 2018. With this new app, users can enjoy an improved experience with better control and the ability to seamlessly connect to your speakers or devices.

Spotify’s first Apple Watch version includes the ability to access and control your favorite Spotify music and podcasts from wrist, and control how music is played to compatible Spotify Connect devices. But one important feature is missing: you can't store Spotify music locally on your wrist for offline listening.

The lack of offline playback may disappoint you. It means you still can't go for a run with just Bluetooth headphones and leave iPhone at home. Spotify is promising that offline playback support is coming in the future, however, it's not achieved. Unfortunately, it's a similar story for Apple Watch LTE owners with a data contract who were hoping to stream Spotify music directly from their wrist for listening on a pair of connected Bluetooth headphones. Currently the ability to do this doesn't exist in the Spotify app and there's a good chance it never will, since Apple's API for watchOS 5 doesn't permit third-party apps to use direct cellular or Wi-Fi streaming.

Play Spotify on Apple Watch Offline without iPhone

If you want to play Spotify music on Apple Watch offline without iPhone, here is a solution.

You can sync music, podcasts, or audiobooks from your iPhone to your Apple Watch. Then you can play the content on your watch without your iPhone nearby, even if your watch is not connected to Wi-Fi or cellular.

How to sync Spotify music to Apple Watch? First, you need to download them to DRM-free mp3 format. https://renewsend526.tumblr.com/post/656719392956186624/get-your-song-on-spotify-playlists-for-free. Yes, Spotify songs you downloaded with premium account are DRM-protected and can't be synced to Apple Watch. To download Spotify music to mp3 with either free or premium account, all you need is Ondesoft Spotify Music Converter, which is available on Mac and Windows. It's an excellent Spotify music downloader and converter, which is able to strip DRM from Spotify music and convert Spotify to MP3, M4A, FLAC or WAV with 100% original quality.

Follow the detailed tutorial as below to learn how to download Spotify music to mp3 and sync to Apple Watch.

Part 1 Download Spotify music to MP3

Step 1: Add Spotify music you want to download

Download, install and run Ondesoft Spotify Converter. Please make sure you have installed Spotify app on your computer.

Option 1 Drag&drop songs, albums or playlists you want to download from Spotify app to the Ondesoft Spotify Converter interface.

Option 2: Click the Add Files button, copy and paste the Spotify song/album/playlist link to the bottom area, then click the Add button.

(Right click the song/album/playlist name and then choose Share - Copy Song/Album/Playlist Link)

Step 2 : Choose output formats

The default output format is mp3. You can also click the Options button to choose other output format(MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, OGG or AIFF), bitrate and samplerate.

Step 3: Start downloading and converting Spotify music

When finish the above settings, click the Convert button to start the conversion.

After the conversion, click below folder icon to locate the DRM-free Spotify songs.

Part 2 Add converted Spotify music to iTunes library

Add the converted Spotify songs to your iTunes library and then create a playlist for them. Turn on iCloud Music Library and your entire iTunes library will also appear on your iPhone.

Part 3 Sync Spotify music to your Apple Watch

Add the converted Spotify songs to your Apple Watch by syncing them. After you sync, you can play the Spotify music on your Apple Watch without your iPhone.

1. Set your Apple Watch on its charger and make sure that the device is charging. 2. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Bluetooth. Make sure that Bluetooth is turned on. 3. On your iPhone, open the Apple Watch app, then tap the My Watch tab. 4. Tap Music > Add Add Music. 5. Choose the music that you want to sync.

Part 4 Offline play Spotify music on Apple Watch

Once the converted Spotify playlist has synced to your Apple Watch and your headphones are paired with your watch, you can listen to the playlist on your Apple Watch without your iPhone.

1. On your Apple Watch, open the Music app. 2. Tap the Apple Watch icon to set it as the music source. 3. Tap Playlists. 4. At the top you’ll see, On My Apple Watch. Select the playlist, press play and your music will begin!

Check other free music apps for Apple Watch.

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If you like listening to music, you must be familiar with music streaming services. Spotify is the most popular one in the music streaming world. It’s a freemium service. Spotify free users are able to get the basic features - listening to more than 50 million songs online, while Spotify premium users are able to access advanced features - download Spotify songs for offline listening, for example. If you are one of the Spotify free users, you must be looking forward to finding a way to download music from Spotify without premium account.

This article offers you the best solution. Besides, you’ll learn more about Spotify and a useful Spotify music tool. Below we divide the whole article into four parts. In part one, we briefly introduce the advantages and disadvantages of Spotify. In part two, we compare Spotify premium and Spotify free concerning about the main differences. In part three, we introduce the well-known Spotify music tool – Sidify to you and in part four, we guide you to download music from Spotify free by Sidify step by step.

Part 1: Spotify – the King in the Music Streaming World

Part 2: Spotify Free vs. Premium

Part 3: Spotify Music Downloader – Sidify

Part 4: Tutorial: How to Download Music from Spotify Free by Sidify

Part 1: Spotify – the King in the Music Streaming World

The way people listen to music has changed, with a move away from digital music to music streaming services, which offers users a much larger music library with less fee. People now can listen to music anywhere and anytime with good network connection. Besides, most music streaming services also provide uses with the feature of downloading songs for offline listening by monthly/yearly subscription.

Being the king in the music streaming world, Spotify is no exception, but its offline listeining mode is restricted to premium users. Spotify free users must be in good network environment to enjoy Spotify songs.

There are all kinds of reasons for us to love Spotify, such as its user-friendly interface, offering vast music library, supporting various devices, low or even zero cost and etc. But when it comes to the drawbacks, the most disappointing one is that we are unable to save Spotify songs to local computer. How come? Move on and you'll find the answer.

What You Like and Dislike about Spotify (Pros and Cons)

Spotify is a freemium service that has won a great number of members over years. Though Spotify Free is ad-supported, it remains popular for those who'd like to enjoy music for free. Spotify is a good source to stream high quality audios but it's not a universal app.

Spotify Download For IOS And Android: Download Spotify Get Spotify Premium For Free With Unlimited Skips And No-Ads - 100% Wo. View company info. Download Spotify Android. Open up Spotify, Do Sign Up, and enjoy the Spotify Premium for free in your Android. Related:-Spotify iOS 14 Download. It’s that simple, you just need to follow the above steps, which are quite easy in order to download Spotify in Android. Download Spotify APK on Android:-Below are the Steps to Download Spotify Premium for Free on Android without Root. You have to follow them as it is to proceed. First of all, Delete the Real or Official Spotify App from your Android Device. Bring your music to mobile and tablet, too. Listening on your phone or tablet is free, easy, and fun. Download spotify++ android. Download the latest version of Spotify for Android. Take your music anywhere. If you haven't already heard of Spotify, listen up. It's the world's go-to music.

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Part 2: Spotify Free vs. Premium

Spotify’s free tier isn’t really free. It’s ad-supported. Companies are paying Spotify for the ads you listen to every few tracks. And to encourage people to upgrade, Spotify free users are limited in certain ways.

Spotify free users is able to access more than 50 million Spotify songs as the premium subscribers, but are denied of the access to high quality audio streams and play Spotify songs offline.

Can you follow playlists on spotify free. And although Spotify premium user can play Spotify songs offline, it doesn’t mean that the paid users can download them to local computer. Spotify songs are protected in a proprietary format, for which it's impossible to save them as local files. In other words, the offline feature is temporary. Once the subscription is cancelled, all the Spotify songs won’t be allowed to stream offline.

Spotify Free vs. Premium: Is it Worth Upgrading?

Compared to Spotify premium, the greatest advantage for Spotify free is zero-cost. As for the disadvantages, Spotify Free users are unable to enjoy ad-free music in high audio quality as premium users. In addition, Spotify free users would be even denied of access to Spotify under poor internet connection.

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Part 3: Spotify Music Downloader – Sidify

Spotify Music Free Download

To download music from Spotify, a Spotify music tool is a must. Sidify is the most popular brand for downloading Spotify songs. It’s able to help you export Spotify songs as MP3/AAC/WAV/FLAC files to your local computer so that you can download, backup and transfer Spotify music for better enjoying.

Sidify works for both Spotify free and premium users. The biggest difference lies in the output audio quality. The program keeps the original output audio quality. If you are a Spotify premium subscriber, the highest output quality you could get is 320kbps. For Spotify free users, it’s limited to up to 160kbps as the originals.

Among all the Sidify Music Converters, Sidify stands out for its speed, complete ID3 tags as well as the stability. In addition, it offers good after-sales service – free updates and free technical support. The program offers free trial version, which limits users to convert the first three minutes of each song. If the songs you’d like to convert is within three minutes, the program is totally free for you. After all, it’s free to try. Why not download it to test out?

Sidify Music Converter

Download Spotify songs as MP3, AAC, FLAC or WAV files.

Keep 100% original audio quality of Spotify.

Keep ID3 tags and metadata after conversion.

Free updates and technical support.

Part 4: Tutorial: How to Download Music from Spotify Free by Sidify

Sidify Music Converter is an easy-to-use program. It enables you to download songs from Spotify free to your local computer with three simple steps.

Step 1 Add Spotify songs to Sidify.

Click '+' button and you'll be prompted to drag and drop song or playlist from Spotify to the program. You can also copy and paste the link of Spotify song or playlist to Sidify.

Step 2 Customize Output Settings

Click 'Setting' on the upper right corner and you'll be directed to the Settings windows, where you can choose output format (MP3/AAC/WAV/FLAC), output quality (up to 320kbps) as well as the output path.

Here you can also customize how you'd like to name the output files (Track Number, Title, Artist, Album) and how you'd like to sort out the converted files (Artist, Album, Artist/Album, Album/Artist or None).

Step 3 Download Music from Spotify Free to Computer

Click 'Convert' button to start exporting Spotify music from Spotify Free to your local computer. After the downloading process is completed, you can click on 'Converted' to find the well-downloaded Spotify songs.

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Video Tutorial: How to Download Music from Spotify (Free) to Windows PC

Conclusion

Spotify is a freemium service. Spotify users can access more than 50 million Spotify songs but are denied of playing Spotify songs offline. Connect mac spotify to google home speaker. To download music from Spotify free, Sidify Music Converter is the best solution. It’s specially designed for exporting Spotify songs as MP3/AAC/WAV/FLAC files to your local computer. If you haven't installed the free trial version, try it now! If you've already tested it out and it meets your need, you can buy the full version to unlock the three-minute conversion limitation.

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[miggylol]

so my mom's a college professor and she always has a stack of stories of silly things students have done. like one student printed out a wikipedia article and read it aloud for an informational speech. what I'm getting at is.... do you have any stories like that, of students doing silly things thinking they won't get caught?

I cut this because it got kinda long!

I think the biggest thing comes from students actually trying the deadline-extension hacks they’ve read online, like when that post was going around about editing a Word document a bit so attempting to open it in the application would result in an error message due to file corruption. As the post went, the expectation would be that the professor would try to open it, see that there’s a file error, and go “Oh dear! My computer is not cooperating! I must reach out to this student so I can request a fresh version of the file!” The time in-between uploading the corrupted file and sending the working file would be an unofficial extension to actually finish the paper.

...Except I was familiar with that strategy, and if a Word document is corrupted, you can just open it in a basic text editor and scroll past the .doc formatting code at the top to see their content.

That meant the students who were very clearly trying to use this strategy got their grades the same as everyone else, without a follow-up email. I graded the half-completed subsections (full of notes like “add more here”) and lack of citations the same as I would have done for anyone. I made sure to give them very specific feedback when I uploaded grades, using direct quotes from their paper, so they were able to see that yes, I did open the file they’d tried to pull a fast one on me with.

(I gave you six weeks to finish the paper, guys. Anyway, that mostly died off after a couple of semesters of people trying the file corruption hack. Word must have gotten out.)

The other big thing that comes to mind was from this one particular slacker student who never came to class, skipped online activities, always had an excuse for why his assignments were late and deserved full credit anyway, etc. (He did not get full credit.) It was the Monday of the semester’s first exam and I had sat down with my morning coffee in front of my computer. Two hours before I’d be handing out the exams, slacker dude had sent an email that said that his internship was forcing him to work that day and oh man he was so sorry but he couldn’t come to the exam! But since it was for school, he knew he could follow up with me for a full-credit re-schedule. Anyway, he’d be in touch in a day or two. :)

I quietly sipped my coffee, clicked over to the page for the office that handles internships, and found the language that specifies that internships are conducted in service of a student’s education and no employer should hire a student expecting them to miss important school-related events, etc. I then copy-pasted that into my reply and said that wow, his employer was clearly in violation of the contract they’d signed to begin his internship. I would be happy to call and tell them that no, you can’t be called in since there’s an exam that can’t be rescheduled. Please email me back with the phone number of someone in charge.

Dude did not reply to my email, but did show up to take his exam. Guess he worked that scheduling issue out on his own. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[lil-blue-one]

Gajevy Week 2017 - First Date

Posting from my phone is almost enough to make me rage quit, I'm telling you now. UGH. However, I've got the chapter finished on time so I HAVE to post it! Still following along the thread of the other prompts! Hope you like, much loves!! Side note :things bracketed like this are "text messages" being sent.: They're supposed to be in italics, I'll fix formatting again tonight when I'm home. 💙 

Update: I’ve fixed the things.

 "Are you sure you don’t mind, Lu? I know they’re a handful.” Levy had worry etched across her face as she inched closer to the door of her house, tugged along by her husband. Lucy laughed quietly, waving her hands at her friends. “Levy-chan, they’re sleeping. I’ve been here at least once a week every week of the last five months. I know their routine, they know me, it’ll be fine!” Gajeel grunted in amusement, aware of just how much knowing the twins’ schedule meant. Which was to say, absolutely nothing. 

 But, it had been five months since the Redfox parents had been able to have a minute alone that wasn’t completely consumed by sleeping or inhaling food so fast they couldn’t taste it. Levy had finally told him she was ready to get out for an evening, and he’d leapt at the opportunity. He told his wife to plan anything at all, even if she just wanted to go to the bookstore, he didn’t fucking care. So she had planned. Set up a meal at a restaurant they loved, looked up events across town that they might like, and realistically declared that they would probably just eat and come home. 

 Then she had found a sitter. Juvia had her hands full with her own two children, and had been acting very tired lately. Gajeel was pretty sure she was knocked up again, but he could be wrong. Erza was away on a mission, and Mira was of course working at the guildhall with Lisanna. Lucy was a great option as she did, in fact, spend a great deal of time with the babies already. Plus, if all else failed, she could summon Aries or Virgo for a second set of hands in an emergency. 

 With a final groan Levy turned to her husband, dragging him out of their home before she could change her mind. “Come on, love. We’re going to be late if you let me keep stalling.” The tall man just chuckled, draping an arm over his tiny wife’s shoulders and forcing her to walk slower. “If we miss our reservation, we miss it, Shrimp. Ain’t no skin off my nose.” She sighed, losing some of the tension she had felt before they left, and leaned against her dragon. “Isn’t any…” 

 Gajeel snorted, looking down at her with a wide grin on his face. “Remember the first time ya corrected me?” Levy stifled a giggle, sliding her arm around his waist. “Honestly, I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning. Wasn’t it something about ‘wouldn’t tell nobody’ something?” He squeezed her shoulder lightly, knowing well how the sleep deprivation they were both suffering from stole the ability to think sometimes. “Somethin’ like that, yeah.” 

 They walked in silence another block, enjoying each other’s company and the peacefulness of the city at night. Gajeel looked down, noticing the tiny Script Mage’s steps slowing. After being together for so long, he no longer had to think about slowing down his own pace to enable her to stay even with him, but she was dragging even more than usual. “Shrimp, ya alrigh’?” He stopped completely, turning to study her face. He was concerned the walking was straining her energy levels too much. For herself, Levy was staring at her feet, almost as if she was embarrassed. “Lev, what is it?” 

 “I… I know we haven’t been gone very long… fifteen minutes to be exact, but what if something’s wrong?” She looked up at her mate with pleading eyes, anxiety tearing at her. His ruby eyes met hers, a smile dancing in their depths. “All yer careful thought an’ plannin’ an’ ya forgot to grab the notebook, didn’t ya?” She nodded, looking down again. The Dragon Slayer chuckled and reached his free hand around to his back pocket, pulling out the enchanted notebook that Levy had created so long ago to be able to communicate with her friends. He tapped her lightly on top of her head with it, causing her to squeal and snatch it from his hand when she saw what it was. 

 Levy hurried over to sit on a bench nearby, flipping the book to the page she had that was connected to Lucy’s own copy. Hey Lu-chan, how’s everything going? Picking up her pen, Levy chewed on the end for a moment, waiting anxiously for Lucy’s reply. After only a moment, she started bouncing a leg, looking from the notebook to Gajeel. “Shrimp, give it a bloody minute, would ya?” As he finished speaking Levy saw words appearing on the page. Lol, Levy-chan you JUST left. The babies are still sleeping, I’m reading that book you left out for me. Enjoy your date! 

 She huffed out a sigh, blushing as she started to feel silly, and handed the pen and notebook back to her husband. “I’m sorry, Gajeel.” He just shook his head with a grin on his face and held out his arm for her to tuck herself against his side again. He would never tell Levy, but Juvia had actually warned him that this might happen. 

 “Don’t be surprised if your night out is cut short, Gajeel-kun. Levy-chan won’t be able to help herself. Juvia only lasted for an hour the first time she left Mizu at home with Levy-chan. And it took Gray-sama six months to convince Juvia to leave both Mizu and Kawa alone with someone.” Gajeel had nodded, remembering the popsicle complaining about the lack of time alone with his wife after their daughter had been born. And so, he’d kept that thought in the back of his mind as Levy planned everything out for their first date since… he didn’t even know how long it had been. Some few weeks before the twins had arrived, he mused. 

 Finally, they arrived at the cafe Levy had set their reservation at. She tugged the notebook out of his pocket, ignoring the murmured joke about wandering hands from her husband as she stepped aside and opened it to write to Lucy again. I’m sure you’re going to be checking in again sometime soon so I’ll let you know that Yaje woke up, but he wasn’t even fussy. He’s been changed and I fed him a little and now we’re playing with that rattle Gajeel made for him. I wish I could send you a picture, it’s adorable. He’s curled his feet up and is holding the rattle with them, just kind of smacking it with those chubby little hands. And there’s Shutora, she just woke up giggling. Enjoy your dinner! Levy quickly dashed the tears off her cheeks as she handed the book back to Gajeel so he could see what their children were up to as well. 

 Thanks, Blondie. He wrote before tucking the book away, grinning down at the bluenette standing next to him. “We have some damn amazin’ kids, Lev.” She smiled back up at him, laying her head on his arm as they followed the waiter to their table. Gajeel pulled her chair around to the same side as his own. “Jus’ like our very first date, yeah?” 

 “I shouldn’t be surprised that you remember!” Levy responded with a sheepish grin. Their waiter came around and Gajeel ordered for both of them, Levy giggling and leaning into his side. “I know ya don’t wanna be out too long, Shrimp. I figgered ya wouldn’t mind me orderin’ our usual stuff t’save time.” The tiny Script Mage tugged his shirt, the big man grinning as he leaned he head closer to her so she could kiss him. “Thank you, Gajeel. For being so understanding about all of this.” 

 “Ya may not believe it, woman, but I miss ‘em too. My princess likes to hide her face in m’hair. An’ m’little man is so strong. Ya know he pulled Lil’s tail so hard the other day Lil actually slid backwards?” The couple devolved into laughter, sharing stories of their children’s antics as they ate. Neither of them seemed to mind that their time away from the babies was spent talking about them. “In the short time they been here, those mini Shrimps have made themselves our whole world, haven’t they, Lev?” She nodded, glancing furtively at the notebook on the table. Gajeel huffed, pretending to be upset, and slid the book to her, opening the cover to the right page. 

 Hope dinner was great! Babies are asleep again, so if you want to stay out longer it’s no problem! “Lu-chan really IS a spectacular friend.” Levy laughed as she closed the book. “Do you want to get a drink at the pub or something on the way home?” She looked up at her husband, smiling gently. Her babies were fine. They were safe. There was no need to rush home. Gajeel smiled back, leaning to kiss her on her forehead. “Nah, Shrimp. How about we hit the bookstore before it closes and get that book you were talkin’ to Bunny girl about ‘fore we left.” 

 There was a squeal that erupted from the tiny woman as she hugged him before jumping up from the table. “I promise I won’t stay there all night!” Gajeel paid for their food, laughing as he tucked the notebook and pen into his pocket and stood to follow the bouncing woman. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it, Shrimp.” He offered her his arm again, and they headed for the bookstore. It may not have been Gajeel’s favorite place to go, but it made his wife happy, and that in itself made him happy. “Take as long as ya need, Lev.”

[ciathyzareposts]

What’s Your Story – Mr. Sack

Answers: Mr. Sack Introduction and Captions: TBD

And today, we have somebody who sent in their What’s Your Story answers before commenting on the blog. It’s time to welcome the self-described “long time fan, first time caller,” Mr. Sack!

My home country is… USA! USA! USA! Heh, sorry. I’m not jingoistic, but I couldn’t resist.

My age is… 40, but I still feel 23…not physically, but mentally. I remember turning 23, graduating college, 5 years into legal adulthood, expecting to be a full-time adult and yet not knowing if I was ready for that privilege or responsibility. It seemed like I was faking it and everyone else had it together. Now that I’m 40, with a wife, two kids, and a job that isn’t exactly dead-end but isn’t exactly fulfilling, I realize everyone is pretty much faking it; I still feel young and irresponsible, but at least I’m better at faking it.

The first adventure game I played was… Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards…when I was 8 years old. My dad brought home his work computer for my little brother and me to play the casino games and exploring the virtual world (making sure we didn’t wander off into the dirty parts…not that we would even understand it). Years later when we got our own computer, I tracked down just about every available Sierra game both old and new. I ended up playing all the Leisure Suit Larry games before ever having a girlfriend. In a way, the games helped to shaped my attitude towards sex and masculinity (both are HILARIOUS), and taught me to respect women, to see them as people with their own needs and desires that should be fulfilled before I get what I want (and sometimes I don’t get what I want, but I make the best of it).

I’m surprised you can get past the title screen without finding some dirty parts!

My favourite adventure game is… really hard to pick. Growing up, I almost exclusively played Sierra games both out of ignorance for any other quality games from other companies and satisfaction from their catalogue. When I discovered LucasArts games, the whole world opened up and it amazes me I managed to do anything as a kid other than play these games. At one point, I would have said King’s Quest VI was my favorite, though it is my favorite of that series. Leisure Suit Larry 3 is the perfect balance between a real adventure game and Larry’s comedy trope of dating and societal mockery and the best of that series. For a time, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers could not be dethroned because of its dark story and incredible style. Space Quest V is criminally underrated among that series and I’m surprised it doesn’t get more love. Really, the golden age of adventure gaming, from King’s Quest I to Grim Fandango, those games are the games I remember so fondly.

As for my “gun to the head” answer, when I think of the game that I enjoyed from beginning to end, that was the perfect blend of hilarious sharp writing, visually pleasing, and just plain all around fun, it’s probably Sam & Max Hit the Road. I loved that game so much, it made me a fan of the Steve Purcell comics and visual style. While I enjoyed the Telltale series, the Lucasarts entry is just so good and I lament we never got to experience the cancelled sequel.

A lot of people with guns to their heads pick Sam & Max – I wonder why?

When I’m not playing games I like to… keep myself entertained. I watch movies and online videos like The Spoony Experiment, read books, comics, blogs, cereal boxes, anything that stimulates my mind. Boredom is my worst enemy. Having two young kids has helped me rediscover playing with toys.

I like my games in (a box, digital format)… young me would have said box with all the trimmings of manuals that seemed like they came straight from the game and devices that either served as copy protection or simply cosmetic dressing…but now that I’m older and space is limited, plus having games easily portable on my phone and my Nintendo Switch, I’ve no problem with digital format. In fact, having replayed classics like Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle on my iPad, not to mention so many new adventure games from Wadjet, Zojoi, and the new Leisure Suit Larry game, I want every single adventure game past, present, and future available on my digital platforms of choice.

Unavowed from Wadjet Eye Games – available now on most digital platforms!

The thing I miss about old games is… the risks of experimental games by big studios. Sierra and Lucasarts brought out some incredible pieces of work in their glory days before they went seriously corporate and eventually disbanded. Even other companies like Capcom were much better when we got games like Darkstalkers, ones that developed cult followings and had real character. With games having blockbuster-sized budgets and a need to recoup such high production costs, they tend to play it so safe and formulaic, especially with things that, for their time, would have been considered bold. Also, I miss the sense that I had so much time to play them all. Becoming an adult has really made me aware of time and responsibilities that must be fulfilled before I can do anything else, and that usually leaves me with little time for gaming.

The best thing about modern games is… the stigma of gaming being for nerds who don’t leave their parents’ basements is gone…for the most part. There are games for everyone, and despite what blogs on both sides of the political spectrum say, we can all unite over our love for them, regardless of genres and flaws. It baffles me that there are those who seem to want to dictate what gaming is, who believe games on phones are not “real games”, or that games from the past are terrible due to either gaming conventions of the time or the lack of inclusion and pandering to the “old guard”. Gaming shouldn’t be so divisive. Preferences in genres will be there, but it’s our differences in preferences that should bring us all together. Also, I love the indie gaming scene that allows for blockbuster games from the big studios and small, experimental pieces from everyone else.

The one TV show I never miss is… Mystery Science Theater 3000, no question. My all-time favorite television show. It pretty much shaped my sense of humor and outlook on life. While it’s never quite managed to evolve past being a cult show (albeit one that has a lot of big name fans and the idea of a bad film being “MST3K-worthy” is parlance I am glad to see), its influence is undeniable in this era of online cynicism and critique. Whether that’s good or bad is up to each person’s interpretation, but for me, the world can take itself way too seriously, and sometimes I just want to hear the riffs of a guy trapped in space with two sarcastic robots. I’ve said that, in the era of DVD commentary tracks, every film, regardless of quality, should have a mandatory MST3K track, complete with silhouettes (the Ghostbusters DVD had this, so it’s possible).

Unfortunately, the MST3K revival was recently cancelled after Season 2

If I could see any band live it would be… Gorillaz, just to see how they pull it off.

My favourite movie is… The World’s End. When I bought it on Blu-Ray, I probably watched it at least once a day for half a year, making it easily my most-watched movie. The dialogue is so sharp (no surprise if you’ve ever watched any other Edgar Wright production) and the fight scenes so impressive, and yet most people mark this as inferior to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, which baffles me; those two films set the bar very high, for sure, but The World’s End matched it. But again, that’s a gun to my head choice (though a much easier one to declare than my favorite game), I’ve grown up watching movies from all eras, and I’m always up for watching a good (or bad) movie with friends, no matter how many times I see it. In fact, the best way to experience a film I’ve already seen is with someone who hasn’t.

If this is the guy with a gun to your head, I think he was hoping for a different World’s End movie

One interesting thing about me is… I joined a local community theater just to be in a production of Avenue Q, and that pretty much opened up a whole new world of interest for me, allowing me to fulfill an acting bug I never knew I had.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/whats-your-story-mr-sack/

[xaydungtruonggia]

How To Guard Your Google Business Profile from Becoming a Running Joke

Posted by MiriamEllis

When customers walk into your place of business, phone you, or reach out to you via email or social media with a question that’s clearly a lead, you’d never, ever answer:

“Who knows?”

But it’s exactly this, and several related scenarios of absurdity, that have resulted from Google positioning itself as the dominant middle man between customers and local brands while failing to adequately communicate or enforce product policies.

Examples of Google Business Profiles gone bad are often comical, but it’s no laughing matter for your business to shed revenue for the sake of some jester’s joke. Then, spammers jump into the game, and that’s about as humorous as hitting your funny bone. And, sometimes, it’s even somebody on your own staff or a marketer you’ve hired who goofs.

Good local companies work so hard to develop exceptional customer service and a sterling reputation, and the Google Business Profile can brilliantly showcase both when carefully curated. But lack of vigilance over five key sections of this most visible online asset can cumulatively undermine offline goals.

Today, let’s look at some serious gaffes, get you set up to mitigate them, and put a watchdog mindset in your local place of business.

Naming nonsense

One of my favorite Local Tech Leads at Moz, Robert Reis, recently pointed out to me that Google’s sternest local guidelines actually reveal their greatest vulnerabilities. This is certainly true when it comes to Google not wanting brands to keyword stuff business names, because it so clearly appears to impact local pack rankings. Take a look at this all-too-common tomfoolery:

Credit: @DarrenShaw_

Then, there are other cases in which a business listing can be maliciously edited or hijacked by a competitor, an angry customer, or another third party. In this example, not only has the business name been edited, but the website URL has been pointed to ripoffreport.com:

Credit: @keyserholiday

What to do:

Customers may laugh, but certainly, they will not trust business names like these. If someone in your own company has been keyword stuffing, show them Google’s explicit guidelines regarding formatting names to match real-world business titles and edit the name to conform to the rules. Any other course risks losing customers and being reported by the public to Google for a violation.

If you suspect that a competitor’s high rankings are stemming, at least in part, from keyword stuffing, do a little research. Look at the name on their street signage in Google Street View. Take a photo in person if necessary. Look at the name on their website. Phone them to see how they answer the phone. Then, if you’re convinced that the guidelines are being broken, submit your evidence via the Business Redressal Complaint Form. There is no guarantee that Google will act on your report, but this is the main vehicle for seeking action.

If your listing has been hijacked and maliciously edited, I recommend starting by reporting the full details at the Google My Business Help Community. Ask the volunteers there to give you current steps for resolving the hijack. You can’t ever be totally safe from the possibility of hijacking, but do be sure you’ve claimed any GMB listing for your company. Some local SEOs also recommend making occasional null edits (hitting the submit button in your GMB dashboard without changing any of the listing data) as this activity might make your listing less prone to third-party edits.

Review roguery

I like to give business owners the benefit of the doubt for making a judgment call error when they review themselves. But it’s always embarrassing to see any company misusing reviews to sing their own praises, and particularly so when their family members point this out in public:

Credit: @ordacowski

More often, the business is the victim of review shenanigans. Google’s forum is continuously emitting distress signals from business owners who feel they’ve received one or more negative reviews from people they’ve never had a transaction with, as illustrated by this interchange:

And, the hard truth is that some entities have made a business model out of competitive sabotage via negative reviews. The problem has become large enough to make televised news.

What to do:

Falsifying reviews is illegal and has resulted in multi-million-dollar FTC fines in the United States. If you own or market local businesses, adhere to the Consumer Review Fairness Act and read the guidelines of any online platform on which you are receiving or writing reviews. Don’t review your own business or have past or present staff do so. Don’t review your competitors. Don’t incentivize reviews in any way, or post reviews on behalf of anyone else. Don’t hire any marketing firm or use any review management software that violates guidelines.

If your business becomes the subject of a review spam attack, screenshot and document all of the fake reviews, then flag them from inside of your Google My Business dashboard via the three little dots associated with each review. After three days, contact Google through their online chat option to follow up.

Google will make the ultimate decision on whether to remove the reviews and they are quite strict about what they view as negative vs. fake. If Google doesn’t remove the reviews, I would suggest two things. First, I would report the reviews to ReviewFraud and then, if the sentiment in the reviews is damaging enough, you might need to contact an attorney to see if further steps can be taken to prompt removal.

If you suspect a competitor is trying to boost their own rankings with review spam, document what you see and report it via the Google My Business Help Community.

Fatuous photos

“I cannot for the life of me believe that you would allow a normal user to upload photos to my business listing without my approval and you do not give THE OWNER OF THE PAGE the ability to delete them!” - from Google’s Forum.

The above quote typifies the frustration business owners feel regarding yet another element of their Google listing that is open to public contributions. Brands often think of these listings as belonging to them, when, in fact, they belong to Google. Images are considered to be a strong factor in CTR, so it’s particularly aggravating when user-uploaded photos either misrepresent or embarrass the business.

I’ve been shown cases in which people have mysteriously uploaded images that have nothing to do with a business. More often, though, I see photos like the following which highlight some aspect of the company that has disgusted or angered customers:

When something goes wrong with photos, like a bug on Google’s end, failure to size images correctly, or possibly the owner removing images that were previously there, this public warning symbol is definitely not a good look:

Google can also pull random images from website pages into your profile, resulting in your business being represented by something like … melted ice cream?

Credit: @tomwaddington8

Claire Carlisle recently documented Google’s penchant for pointing European users to Google Image Search instead of the photo section of listings. There is some reason to suspect this may happen in the US in the future, which could result in all kinds of strange optics popping up in association with brands.

What to do:

If an image accurately represents a lack of proper management at a location of your business, fix the issue or such imagery will continue to surface. You can then try flagging the photo, identifying yourself as the business owner, and explaining what you’ve done to correct the problem. However, unless the photo violates Google’s guidelines, it’s unlikely to be removed. Barring removal, be sure you are adding as many high-quality photos as possible to your listing to lessen the impact of a single image.

If the image violates Google’s guidelines, click on the name of the person who uploaded it and copy their profile URL. Then, report the user via the Google My Business Help Community, requesting that the profile be removed for failing to adhere to the guidelines.

If you see something like the warning symbol appearing instead of a photo you’ve tried to upload, check the above forum for reports of known bugs. You can always remove your own photos via the trash can symbol in your Google My Business dashboard.

Hours of inconvenience

“This is not a sustainable way to treat a business or customers.” - A reviewer experiencing unmanaged hours of operation

When customers feel that it’s your business playing a joke on them, they’re unlikely to return. This collage of 1-star reviews captures the collateral damage of neglecting to properly manage hours of operation on the web:

What to do:

A consistent theme in these damaging reviews is that customers are checking multiple places on the web to be sure an establishment is open on a given day. We’ve all come to depend on websites and business listings to provide this information, and it’s truly inconvenient when these assets mislead us. Few businesses can afford to let multiple customers down and no business can survive customers sensing they’ve been tricked!

The good news is that the fix for this is quite simple. Google’s tutorial for setting special hours if foolproof, and it will only take you a few minutes each year to ensure your profile displays correct information every day of the year. And, of course, update your website to reflect this data, too.

There are no dumb questions, but…

Sorry to say it, but there are actually some answers that are far from smart. I’ve saved for last the most extreme example of real-world businesses becoming the butt of online jokes.

Google Q&A is beginning to have all the earmarks of an experiment gone astray, and if you’re not actively managing this feature of the Google Business Profile, chances are good that your customers are experiencing a bizarre substitute for customer service.

Brace yourself for this collage:

What to do:

A quick study of the public responses to real consumer questions shows the state of total confusion surrounding this GBP feature. For example, one customer has mistaken it for a “discussion board” not associated with the business; this is incorrect. Others are proclaiming that they aren’t associated with the brand and don’t want to “lead people”, despite responding. Still, others are steering potential patrons away from the brand to a competitor (yikes!).

But, predominantly, we have wags replying to questions without having any information to share. “IDK” and “Why don’t you call them yourself?” typify this ridiculous behavior. Why would anyone waste time doing this, you might ask? We can put it down to two things: the old adage about idle hands and Google’s still-new program of perks for participation. Note how many of the individuals in our collage have achieved Local Guide status for giving out these useless answers. Raise your hands if you’re not impressed.

But now, put your hands back on your keyboard for a little work. Unlike the review medium in which guidelines forbid you being an initiator, Google Questions & Answers invites businesses to post and answer their own FAQs. All you have to do is spend a few minutes populating this area of the Google Business Profile with common questions and responses. Then monitor this feature on an ongoing basis so that customers are receiving a helpful, authoritative response to questions. Q&A is a lead-generating asset and conversions are totally within your control.

Adopting a local watchdog

All five cases of Google Business Profile hijinx share the requirement of vigilance for prevention and mitigation. Manually checking on multiple features week after week is a serious drain on local business owners’ limited time. Businesses with multiple locations are especially prone to becoming distracted from or worn out by the effort.

Putting a devoted watchdog between pranksters, spammers, and your vital Google listings is the smartest thing you can do to maintain them as an influential source of truth about your brand.

Adopt the new and improved Moz Local at your place of business and feel secure knowing:

If a third party edits your business name, our software will recognize the change and override it with the authoritative data you’ve provided.

Moz Local continuously alerts you to incoming Google reviews so that you can catch any emerging reputation problems quickly and respond to them.

You’ll be alerted every time a user-uploaded photo gets added to your Google listing. This is tracked in a continuous feed in your dashboard, and you can even set up email alerts if that’s easier for you. Either way, you’ll be the first to know if someone is uploading images that violate Google’s guidelines.

You aren’t disappointing customers anymore with inaccurate hours, because you can set them up well in advance in the Moz Local dashboard. We recommend setting special hours at least 7 days in advance of a known closure.

You’ll see all incoming Q&A queries in a continuous dashboard feed, facilitating fast, authoritative responses from your business instead of “IDK”s from random users.

Moz Local is the faithful companion you’re seeking to ensure you’re publishing trustworthy business data, taking maximum control of your online reputation, and maintaining a high level of spam awareness, all in an intuitive, organized dashboard.

Everybody likes a good joke, but your Google Business Profile isn’t the place for one! Ready to put a serious watchdog at your place of business? Learn more about the new Moz Local!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[gamebazu]

How To Guard Your Google Business Profile from Becoming a Running Joke

Posted by MiriamEllis

When customers walk into your place of business, phone you, or reach out to you via email or social media with a question that’s clearly a lead, you’d never, ever answer:

“Who knows?”

But it’s exactly this, and several related scenarios of absurdity, that have resulted from Google positioning itself as the dominant middle man between customers and local brands while failing to adequately communicate or enforce product policies.

Examples of Google Business Profiles gone bad are often comical, but it’s no laughing matter for your business to shed revenue for the sake of some jester’s joke. Then, spammers jump into the game, and that’s about as humorous as hitting your funny bone. And, sometimes, it’s even somebody on your own staff or a marketer you’ve hired who goofs.

Good local companies work so hard to develop exceptional customer service and a sterling reputation, and the Google Business Profile can brilliantly showcase both when carefully curated. But lack of vigilance over five key sections of this most visible online asset can cumulatively undermine offline goals.

Today, let’s look at some serious gaffes, get you set up to mitigate them, and put a watchdog mindset in your local place of business.

Naming nonsense

One of my favorite Local Tech Leads at Moz, Robert Reis, recently pointed out to me that Google’s sternest local guidelines actually reveal their greatest vulnerabilities. This is certainly true when it comes to Google not wanting brands to keyword stuff business names, because it so clearly appears to impact local pack rankings. Take a look at this all-too-common tomfoolery:

Credit: @DarrenShaw_

Then, there are other cases in which a business listing can be maliciously edited or hijacked by a competitor, an angry customer, or another third party. In this example, not only has the business name been edited, but the website URL has been pointed to ripoffreport.com:

Credit: @keyserholiday

What to do:

Customers may laugh, but certainly, they will not trust business names like these. If someone in your own company has been keyword stuffing, show them Google’s explicit guidelines regarding formatting names to match real-world business titles and edit the name to conform to the rules. Any other course risks losing customers and being reported by the public to Google for a violation.

If you suspect that a competitor’s high rankings are stemming, at least in part, from keyword stuffing, do a little research. Look at the name on their street signage in Google Street View. Take a photo in person if necessary. Look at the name on their website. Phone them to see how they answer the phone. Then, if you’re convinced that the guidelines are being broken, submit your evidence via the Business Redressal Complaint Form. There is no guarantee that Google will act on your report, but this is the main vehicle for seeking action.

If your listing has been hijacked and maliciously edited, I recommend starting by reporting the full details at the Google My Business Help Community. Ask the volunteers there to give you current steps for resolving the hijack. You can’t ever be totally safe from the possibility of hijacking, but do be sure you’ve claimed any GMB listing for your company. Some local SEOs also recommend making occasional null edits (hitting the submit button in your GMB dashboard without changing any of the listing data) as this activity might make your listing less prone to third-party edits.

Review roguery

I like to give business owners the benefit of the doubt for making a judgment call error when they review themselves. But it’s always embarrassing to see any company misusing reviews to sing their own praises, and particularly so when their family members point this out in public:

Credit: @ordacowski

More often, the business is the victim of review shenanigans. Google’s forum is continuously emitting distress signals from business owners who feel they’ve received one or more negative reviews from people they’ve never had a transaction with, as illustrated by this interchange:

And, the hard truth is that some entities have made a business model out of competitive sabotage via negative reviews. The problem has become large enough to make televised news.

What to do:

Falsifying reviews is illegal and has resulted in multi-million-dollar FTC fines in the United States. If you own or market local businesses, adhere to the Consumer Review Fairness Act and read the guidelines of any online platform on which you are receiving or writing reviews. Don’t review your own business or have past or present staff do so. Don’t review your competitors. Don’t incentivize reviews in any way, or post reviews on behalf of anyone else. Don’t hire any marketing firm or use any review management software that violates guidelines.

If your business becomes the subject of a review spam attack, screenshot and document all of the fake reviews, then flag them from inside of your Google My Business dashboard via the three little dots associated with each review. After three days, contact Google through their online chat option to follow up.

Google will make the ultimate decision on whether to remove the reviews and they are quite strict about what they view as negative vs. fake. If Google doesn’t remove the reviews, I would suggest two things. First, I would report the reviews to ReviewFraud and then, if the sentiment in the reviews is damaging enough, you might need to contact an attorney to see if further steps can be taken to prompt removal.

If you suspect a competitor is trying to boost their own rankings with review spam, document what you see and report it via the Google My Business Help Community.

Fatuous photos

“I cannot for the life of me believe that you would allow a normal user to upload photos to my business listing without my approval and you do not give THE OWNER OF THE PAGE the ability to delete them!” - from Google’s Forum.

The above quote typifies the frustration business owners feel regarding yet another element of their Google listing that is open to public contributions. Brands often think of these listings as belonging to them, when, in fact, they belong to Google. Images are considered to be a strong factor in CTR, so it’s particularly aggravating when user-uploaded photos either misrepresent or embarrass the business.

I’ve been shown cases in which people have mysteriously uploaded images that have nothing to do with a business. More often, though, I see photos like the following which highlight some aspect of the company that has disgusted or angered customers:

When something goes wrong with photos, like a bug on Google’s end, failure to size images correctly, or possibly the owner removing images that were previously there, this public warning symbol is definitely not a good look:

Google can also pull random images from website pages into your profile, resulting in your business being represented by something like … melted ice cream?

Credit: @tomwaddington8

Claire Carlisle recently documented Google’s penchant for pointing European users to Google Image Search instead of the photo section of listings. There is some reason to suspect this may happen in the US in the future, which could result in all kinds of strange optics popping up in association with brands.

What to do:

If an image accurately represents a lack of proper management at a location of your business, fix the issue or such imagery will continue to surface. You can then try flagging the photo, identifying yourself as the business owner, and explaining what you’ve done to correct the problem. However, unless the photo violates Google’s guidelines, it’s unlikely to be removed. Barring removal, be sure you are adding as many high-quality photos as possible to your listing to lessen the impact of a single image.

If the image violates Google’s guidelines, click on the name of the person who uploaded it and copy their profile URL. Then, report the user via the Google My Business Help Community, requesting that the profile be removed for failing to adhere to the guidelines.

If you see something like the warning symbol appearing instead of a photo you’ve tried to upload, check the above forum for reports of known bugs. You can always remove your own photos via the trash can symbol in your Google My Business dashboard.

Hours of inconvenience

“This is not a sustainable way to treat a business or customers.” - A reviewer experiencing unmanaged hours of operation

When customers feel that it’s your business playing a joke on them, they’re unlikely to return. This collage of 1-star reviews captures the collateral damage of neglecting to properly manage hours of operation on the web:

What to do:

A consistent theme in these damaging reviews is that customers are checking multiple places on the web to be sure an establishment is open on a given day. We’ve all come to depend on websites and business listings to provide this information, and it’s truly inconvenient when these assets mislead us. Few businesses can afford to let multiple customers down and no business can survive customers sensing they’ve been tricked!

The good news is that the fix for this is quite simple. Google’s tutorial for setting special hours if foolproof, and it will only take you a few minutes each year to ensure your profile displays correct information every day of the year. And, of course, update your website to reflect this data, too.

There are no dumb questions, but…

Sorry to say it, but there are actually some answers that are far from smart. I’ve saved for last the most extreme example of real-world businesses becoming the butt of online jokes.

Google Q&A is beginning to have all the earmarks of an experiment gone astray, and if you’re not actively managing this feature of the Google Business Profile, chances are good that your customers are experiencing a bizarre substitute for customer service.

Brace yourself for this collage:

What to do:

A quick study of the public responses to real consumer questions shows the state of total confusion surrounding this GBP feature. For example, one customer has mistaken it for a “discussion board” not associated with the business; this is incorrect. Others are proclaiming that they aren’t associated with the brand and don’t want to “lead people”, despite responding. Still, others are steering potential patrons away from the brand to a competitor (yikes!).

But, predominantly, we have wags replying to questions without having any information to share. “IDK” and “Why don’t you call them yourself?” typify this ridiculous behavior. Why would anyone waste time doing this, you might ask? We can put it down to two things: the old adage about idle hands and Google’s still-new program of perks for participation. Note how many of the individuals in our collage have achieved Local Guide status for giving out these useless answers. Raise your hands if you’re not impressed.

But now, put your hands back on your keyboard for a little work. Unlike the review medium in which guidelines forbid you being an initiator, Google Questions & Answers invites businesses to post and answer their own FAQs. All you have to do is spend a few minutes populating this area of the Google Business Profile with common questions and responses. Then monitor this feature on an ongoing basis so that customers are receiving a helpful, authoritative response to questions. Q&A is a lead-generating asset and conversions are totally within your control.

Adopting a local watchdog

All five cases of Google Business Profile hijinx share the requirement of vigilance for prevention and mitigation. Manually checking on multiple features week after week is a serious drain on local business owners’ limited time. Businesses with multiple locations are especially prone to becoming distracted from or worn out by the effort.

Putting a devoted watchdog between pranksters, spammers, and your vital Google listings is the smartest thing you can do to maintain them as an influential source of truth about your brand.

Adopt the new and improved Moz Local at your place of business and feel secure knowing:

If a third party edits your business name, our software will recognize the change and override it with the authoritative data you’ve provided.

Moz Local continuously alerts you to incoming Google reviews so that you can catch any emerging reputation problems quickly and respond to them.

You’ll be alerted every time a user-uploaded photo gets added to your Google listing. This is tracked in a continuous feed in your dashboard, and you can even set up email alerts if that’s easier for you. Either way, you’ll be the first to know if someone is uploading images that violate Google’s guidelines.

You aren’t disappointing customers anymore with inaccurate hours, because you can set them up well in advance in the Moz Local dashboard. We recommend setting special hours at least 7 days in advance of a known closure.

You’ll see all incoming Q&A queries in a continuous dashboard feed, facilitating fast, authoritative responses from your business instead of “IDK”s from random users.

Moz Local is the faithful companion you’re seeking to ensure you’re publishing trustworthy business data, taking maximum control of your online reputation, and maintaining a high level of spam awareness, all in an intuitive, organized dashboard.

Everybody likes a good joke, but your Google Business Profile isn’t the place for one! Ready to put a serious watchdog at your place of business? Learn more about the new Moz Local!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

http://bit.ly/2WO0RJy

[noithatotoaz]

How To Guard Your Google Business Profile from Becoming a Running Joke

Posted by MiriamEllis

When customers walk into your place of business, phone you, or reach out to you via email or social media with a question that’s clearly a lead, you’d never, ever answer:

“Who knows?”

But it’s exactly this, and several related scenarios of absurdity, that have resulted from Google positioning itself as the dominant middle man between customers and local brands while failing to adequately communicate or enforce product policies.

Examples of Google Business Profiles gone bad are often comical, but it’s no laughing matter for your business to shed revenue for the sake of some jester’s joke. Then, spammers jump into the game, and that’s about as humorous as hitting your funny bone. And, sometimes, it’s even somebody on your own staff or a marketer you’ve hired who goofs.

Good local companies work so hard to develop exceptional customer service and a sterling reputation, and the Google Business Profile can brilliantly showcase both when carefully curated. But lack of vigilance over five key sections of this most visible online asset can cumulatively undermine offline goals.

Today, let’s look at some serious gaffes, get you set up to mitigate them, and put a watchdog mindset in your local place of business.

Naming nonsense

One of my favorite Local Tech Leads at Moz, Robert Reis, recently pointed out to me that Google’s sternest local guidelines actually reveal their greatest vulnerabilities. This is certainly true when it comes to Google not wanting brands to keyword stuff business names, because it so clearly appears to impact local pack rankings. Take a look at this all-too-common tomfoolery:

Credit: @DarrenShaw_

Then, there are other cases in which a business listing can be maliciously edited or hijacked by a competitor, an angry customer, or another third party. In this example, not only has the business name been edited, but the website URL has been pointed to ripoffreport.com:

Credit: @keyserholiday

What to do:

Customers may laugh, but certainly, they will not trust business names like these. If someone in your own company has been keyword stuffing, show them Google’s explicit guidelines regarding formatting names to match real-world business titles and edit the name to conform to the rules. Any other course risks losing customers and being reported by the public to Google for a violation.

If you suspect that a competitor’s high rankings are stemming, at least in part, from keyword stuffing, do a little research. Look at the name on their street signage in Google Street View. Take a photo in person if necessary. Look at the name on their website. Phone them to see how they answer the phone. Then, if you’re convinced that the guidelines are being broken, submit your evidence via the Business Redressal Complaint Form. There is no guarantee that Google will act on your report, but this is the main vehicle for seeking action.

If your listing has been hijacked and maliciously edited, I recommend starting by reporting the full details at the Google My Business Help Community. Ask the volunteers there to give you current steps for resolving the hijack. You can’t ever be totally safe from the possibility of hijacking, but do be sure you’ve claimed any GMB listing for your company. Some local SEOs also recommend making occasional null edits (hitting the submit button in your GMB dashboard without changing any of the listing data) as this activity might make your listing less prone to third-party edits.

Review roguery

I like to give business owners the benefit of the doubt for making a judgment call error when they review themselves. But it’s always embarrassing to see any company misusing reviews to sing their own praises, and particularly so when their family members point this out in public:

Credit: @ordacowski

More often, the business is the victim of review shenanigans. Google’s forum is continuously emitting distress signals from business owners who feel they’ve received one or more negative reviews from people they’ve never had a transaction with, as illustrated by this interchange:

And, the hard truth is that some entities have made a business model out of competitive sabotage via negative reviews. The problem has become large enough to make televised news.

What to do:

Falsifying reviews is illegal and has resulted in multi-million-dollar FTC fines in the United States. If you own or market local businesses, adhere to the Consumer Review Fairness Act and read the guidelines of any online platform on which you are receiving or writing reviews. Don’t review your own business or have past or present staff do so. Don’t review your competitors. Don’t incentivize reviews in any way, or post reviews on behalf of anyone else. Don’t hire any marketing firm or use any review management software that violates guidelines.

If your business becomes the subject of a review spam attack, screenshot and document all of the fake reviews, then flag them from inside of your Google My Business dashboard via the three little dots associated with each review. After three days, contact Google through their online chat option to follow up.

Google will make the ultimate decision on whether to remove the reviews and they are quite strict about what they view as negative vs. fake. If Google doesn’t remove the reviews, I would suggest two things. First, I would report the reviews to ReviewFraud and then, if the sentiment in the reviews is damaging enough, you might need to contact an attorney to see if further steps can be taken to prompt removal.

If you suspect a competitor is trying to boost their own rankings with review spam, document what you see and report it via the Google My Business Help Community.

Fatuous photos

“I cannot for the life of me believe that you would allow a normal user to upload photos to my business listing without my approval and you do not give THE OWNER OF THE PAGE the ability to delete them!” - from Google’s Forum.

The above quote typifies the frustration business owners feel regarding yet another element of their Google listing that is open to public contributions. Brands often think of these listings as belonging to them, when, in fact, they belong to Google. Images are considered to be a strong factor in CTR, so it’s particularly aggravating when user-uploaded photos either misrepresent or embarrass the business.

I’ve been shown cases in which people have mysteriously uploaded images that have nothing to do with a business. More often, though, I see photos like the following which highlight some aspect of the company that has disgusted or angered customers:

When something goes wrong with photos, like a bug on Google’s end, failure to size images correctly, or possibly the owner removing images that were previously there, this public warning symbol is definitely not a good look:

Google can also pull random images from website pages into your profile, resulting in your business being represented by something like … melted ice cream?

Credit: @tomwaddington8

Claire Carlisle recently documented Google’s penchant for pointing European users to Google Image Search instead of the photo section of listings. There is some reason to suspect this may happen in the US in the future, which could result in all kinds of strange optics popping up in association with brands.

What to do:

If an image accurately represents a lack of proper management at a location of your business, fix the issue or such imagery will continue to surface. You can then try flagging the photo, identifying yourself as the business owner, and explaining what you’ve done to correct the problem. However, unless the photo violates Google’s guidelines, it’s unlikely to be removed. Barring removal, be sure you are adding as many high-quality photos as possible to your listing to lessen the impact of a single image.

If the image violates Google’s guidelines, click on the name of the person who uploaded it and copy their profile URL. Then, report the user via the Google My Business Help Community, requesting that the profile be removed for failing to adhere to the guidelines.

If you see something like the warning symbol appearing instead of a photo you’ve tried to upload, check the above forum for reports of known bugs. You can always remove your own photos via the trash can symbol in your Google My Business dashboard.

Hours of inconvenience

“This is not a sustainable way to treat a business or customers.” - A reviewer experiencing unmanaged hours of operation

When customers feel that it’s your business playing a joke on them, they’re unlikely to return. This collage of 1-star reviews captures the collateral damage of neglecting to properly manage hours of operation on the web:

What to do:

A consistent theme in these damaging reviews is that customers are checking multiple places on the web to be sure an establishment is open on a given day. We’ve all come to depend on websites and business listings to provide this information, and it’s truly inconvenient when these assets mislead us. Few businesses can afford to let multiple customers down and no business can survive customers sensing they’ve been tricked!

The good news is that the fix for this is quite simple. Google’s tutorial for setting special hours if foolproof, and it will only take you a few minutes each year to ensure your profile displays correct information every day of the year. And, of course, update your website to reflect this data, too.

There are no dumb questions, but…

Sorry to say it, but there are actually some answers that are far from smart. I’ve saved for last the most extreme example of real-world businesses becoming the butt of online jokes.

Google Q&A is beginning to have all the earmarks of an experiment gone astray, and if you’re not actively managing this feature of the Google Business Profile, chances are good that your customers are experiencing a bizarre substitute for customer service.

Brace yourself for this collage:

What to do:

A quick study of the public responses to real consumer questions shows the state of total confusion surrounding this GBP feature. For example, one customer has mistaken it for a “discussion board” not associated with the business; this is incorrect. Others are proclaiming that they aren’t associated with the brand and don’t want to “lead people”, despite responding. Still, others are steering potential patrons away from the brand to a competitor (yikes!).

But, predominantly, we have wags replying to questions without having any information to share. “IDK” and “Why don’t you call them yourself?” typify this ridiculous behavior. Why would anyone waste time doing this, you might ask? We can put it down to two things: the old adage about idle hands and Google’s still-new program of perks for participation. Note how many of the individuals in our collage have achieved Local Guide status for giving out these useless answers. Raise your hands if you’re not impressed.

But now, put your hands back on your keyboard for a little work. Unlike the review medium in which guidelines forbid you being an initiator, Google Questions & Answers invites businesses to post and answer their own FAQs. All you have to do is spend a few minutes populating this area of the Google Business Profile with common questions and responses. Then monitor this feature on an ongoing basis so that customers are receiving a helpful, authoritative response to questions. Q&A is a lead-generating asset and conversions are totally within your control.

Adopting a local watchdog

All five cases of Google Business Profile hijinx share the requirement of vigilance for prevention and mitigation. Manually checking on multiple features week after week is a serious drain on local business owners’ limited time. Businesses with multiple locations are especially prone to becoming distracted from or worn out by the effort.

Putting a devoted watchdog between pranksters, spammers, and your vital Google listings is the smartest thing you can do to maintain them as an influential source of truth about your brand.

Adopt the new and improved Moz Local at your place of business and feel secure knowing:

If a third party edits your business name, our software will recognize the change and override it with the authoritative data you’ve provided.

Moz Local continuously alerts you to incoming Google reviews so that you can catch any emerging reputation problems quickly and respond to them.

You’ll be alerted every time a user-uploaded photo gets added to your Google listing. This is tracked in a continuous feed in your dashboard, and you can even set up email alerts if that’s easier for you. Either way, you’ll be the first to know if someone is uploading images that violate Google’s guidelines.

You aren’t disappointing customers anymore with inaccurate hours, because you can set them up well in advance in the Moz Local dashboard. We recommend setting special hours at least 7 days in advance of a known closure.

You’ll see all incoming Q&A queries in a continuous dashboard feed, facilitating fast, authoritative responses from your business instead of “IDK”s from random users.

Moz Local is the faithful companion you’re seeking to ensure you’re publishing trustworthy business data, taking maximum control of your online reputation, and maintaining a high level of spam awareness, all in an intuitive, organized dashboard.

Everybody likes a good joke, but your Google Business Profile isn’t the place for one! Ready to put a serious watchdog at your place of business? Learn more about the new Moz Local!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[the-original-b]

Archangel: Rest

Format: Prose / fiction, one-shot

Word Count: c. 3,700

Summary: After the apparent end of her relationship with Krueger, Seza recalls its beginning.

Warning(s): brief violence, brief sexual content

Lower Manhattan, Thursday night

Seza entered her studio apartment safe house that night after the ordeal in Cambria Heights a few hours ago. She headed straight for the desk to retrieve the records contained in the envelope that led her and her now-deceased associates to the home in east Queens, and ran them through a paper shredder. Then she shut the device down and poured the contents of its receptacle into a plastic trash bag which she tied shut to bring to her front door later.

Seza moved to the corner kitchen and knelt down to free a section of the flooring and store her wakizashi underneath in the hidden compartment, where she kept her American, Turkish, French, and Brazilian passports under false names. She retrieved the documents, covered the sword back up, and went to her closet for a change of clothes.

Now donning a comfortable sweater, pair of jeans, and sneakers under a fur-trimmed duffel coat, she returned to the apartment door with a small travel bag and her passports. She paused on her way out to examine a framed photo of her and Krueger hanging by the doorway—in it they shared an embrace and a kiss by the water and setting sun.

“I am sorry for involving your family in my work,” she said as if he were there to hear her. “But I assure you they were never in any danger, nor will they ever be. When I said you were mine forever, I meant it. I will always protect you and the ones you love, Milo. I hope you understand that.”

Then Seza picked up the trash bag on the floor next to her and left the safe house.

The Amalfi Coast, circa 2009

Krueger inserted the key into the lock of the door, then turned the knob to open it and take the apartment space in. It offered the bare essentials—the kitchen area opened up to a balcony overlooking the square, and the bedroom on the other side of the floor featured a window overlooking the docks and sapphire waters. The broom-closet-sized washroom offered no such luxuries.

He didn’t mind the lack of amenities—after all he’d only be renting the space for a few days, at least until his target was dealt with. He set his bag on the floor in the living area near a futon while he familiarized himself with the apartment, then when he was satisfied, returned to the living space.

He found Seza leaning against the doorway scanning the room. “I thought it would be smaller,” she noted. She laid her duffel beside his and looked around the space. “More than enough room for two.”

“You can take the bedroom,” Krueger said.

“No, you still need to rest,” she advised. “You take it.”

“Marrakesh was a month ago,” he protested. “I’m fine.”

“Maybe so, but you have to give yourself more time. Six more weeks minimum.”

“I can’t sit out for six weeks, Seza, you know that.”

“I do.” She stepped up to him and tapped the healing wounds under the left side of his chest. “And while this may be whole again, what’s beneath it isn’t.”

“If you’re so convinced I have to heal, then why did you insist I join you on this assignment?”

“Because Amur Company still needs its leader.” Seza took Krueger’s duffel off the floor and started toward the bedroom with it. “And because I knew you would get bored in Queens without your wife and child to keep your attention,” she teased.

It didn’t hurt as much a year and a half later, but he still felt the phantom pain of their absence in his life. “Be that as it may, I won’t sit back while you and the others work.”

“Then you can work while you sit.” She paused to admire the view from the bedroom window before returning to him. “I’m going to the café in the square. Do you want to join me?”

“No, you go ahead,” Krueger said. “You have a way with people that I may never match.”

“Not if you don’t come out and practice…” Her eyes lingered on him for a moment before she went for the door and left him in the apartment to settle in.

 ~~

Krueger fired up his laptop that evening with Seza seated beside him in the living space of the apartment. He connected to the other four members of Amur Company via Skype.

“Seza and Archangel,” he checked in.

“Brock,” he introduced himself.

“Alicia.”

“Jackson.”

“Oi, Wyatt here,” he said. “How’re the ribs, boss?”

“Healing,” Krueger replied. “It’ll take more than that to put me down.”

“You might not want to be so loud,” Brock jested. “The next one’ll stab you four times instead of three.”

“Brock..!” Alicia chided.

“We were all thinking it, Alicia.”

“I can’t be the only one who thinks it’s his pride that needs to heal.”

“We can address my healing pride later, Wyatt,” Krueger interposed. “We still have work to do.”

“Intelligence I gathered in the field this afternoon confirmed Ugo and Diana Pergola are here,” Seza said. “If our client is to be believed, they’ll meet with the heads of four other enterprises in thirty-six hours to broker peace and cooperation between them. They’re due to deliver some kind of shipment to the group as a show of good faith.”

“Our client saw this as an opportunity they couldn’t pass up,” Krueger continued. “Without the heads, their respective organizations will crumble and deteriorate, crippling them.”

“What are they into that’s so bad, exactly?” Jackson inquired.

“Human trafficking, gun running, drug trading… probably other things the client doesn’t know about.”

“Not that it matters at the end of the day,” Wyatt commented, “but I guess if it helps you sleep a little better…”

“So what’s the play?” Alicia asked. “We can’t turn a couples destination like the Amalfi Coast into some kind of war zone.”

“I agree,” Seza said. “Which is why we’re going to take them all on the Pergolas’ yacht.”

“So we’ll need to prepare accordingly,” Krueger said. “Jackson, I want you on surveillance—tap into the Pergolas’ phones and forward us any relevant intel. Alicia, you’re on logistics with Wyatt. I want to know what that shipment is, where it’s coming from, and how it’s getting into town. Brock, you’re on equipment procurement. Seza and I will maintain field reconnaissance and keep you all updated on local developments.”

“Copy.”

“Understood.”

“Solid copy.”

“Right on.”

“We reconvene tomorrow,” Krueger said. “Remember, we can’t risk giving ourselves away to them, so the six of us can’t be seen together until after it’s done. Dismissed.” He shut the laptop and stood up from the futon, leaving Seza behind.

She shuddered a little bit as his warmth left her side, and after watching him move to the balcony to overlook the square, she got up to join him.

He felt her settle beside him, her elbow touching his. “Despite everything, I do find something magical about this place,” he admitted.

“Of course you do,” Seza replied. “I chose it for you. It was better for you to get the rest you needed in a place like this.”

Krueger shot her a look. “Still looking out for me?”

“Somebody has to,” she said with a smirk. “We both know you’re too busy looking after everyone else to take care of yourself.” She gestured the healing knife wounds in his side. “You may have died if I hadn’t been there.”

“I rather doubt that,” Krueger said to her. “Engage in combat fully determined to die and you will live; wish to survive battle and you will surely meet death.”

“So now you’re a philosopher too?”

“It’s an old samurai saying,” he said, looking away from her and back at the people sharing their meals seated at outdoor tables below. “It’s the one thing I’ve held onto since leaving Kommando Spezialkräfte—the only constant in life for people like you and I. The ones we love will come and go, and the work is only there for as long as we’re able to do it. But that truth, is eternal.”

In all of the four years she knew him as Archangel, he was never so open with her. She saw that, despite his history, his deeds, and resolute acceptance of his inevitable death, he was still just a man with his own fears, doubts, and insecurities. He tried his best to keep them from her, but she could see them now clearer than ever.

That internal struggle—that constant inner fight between opposing schools of thought—was something she knew all too well. As much as she admired him, as much as she loved him, she hated to see him go through any of it. “That’s too bleak a way for somebody like you to live, Archangel,” she finally said. “You deserve to be happy.”

“Somebody like me?” He arched his brow and turned to face her again.

Seza briefly averted his gaze before looking him in the eyes again. “Somebody kind.” She took a step away from him on the balcony, brushing his exposed forearm with her fingertips before going back into the space. “Will you join me in town this time?”

Krueger looked back at her. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” he conceded.

 ~~

They slept in separate rooms that night, as previously discussed, and shared breakfast the following morning in the apartment’s kitchen. Krueger made an effort to stop his eyes from lingering on Seza’s exposed skin for too long—between the tank top she put on over the cotton shorts she slept in the night before, she didn’t make it easy for him.

They conferred with the other four members of Amur Company later that morning, and exchanged their findings with each other before finalizing their plan to deal with the Pergolas in twenty-four hours. Alicia and Wyatt traced a few crates of contraband to a yacht which Jackson confirmed belonged to the Pergolas, and Brock was able to procure a pair of binoculars, GPS tracker, a ka-bar knife, a Glock-17 with suppressor, and twenty pounds of C4, as well as a rebreather and dive equipment.

Krueger secured the explosives, handgun, tracker, and knife that afternoon; Seza picked up the dive equipment and binoculars later that evening, and met with Krueger at the docks.

He leaned on the banister dressed in dark pants and a white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He squinted against the light of the setting sun as he looked at one vessel in particular. “That’s our target there,” he said. “Fortuna Oltraggiosa.”

Seza laughed to herself at the irony in the yacht’s name. Like him she wore a white shirt and dark pants, but threw on a bright yellow cardigan to hide the stripes tattooed on her arm and shoulder.

“Something funny?”

“Outrageous Fortune,” she explained. “Considering what’s about to happen to them…”

Krueger chuckled as well. “I shouldn’t be surprised you speak Italian as well.”

“I get by,” she said, feigning modesty. She nestled herself a little closer to Krueger; if he minded her proximity to him, he didn’t show it. “Tomorrow will be my first time setting foot on a yacht,” she noted. “It’s too bad I won’t be able to enjoy it.”

“There isn’t much to enjoy,” Krueger commented. “Unless you surround yourself with others who buy into the pretentiousness.”

“Not your crowd?”

“Not even remotely, no.”

“Was it your wife’s?”

Krueger shot her a look. “Why does that matter?”

“I’m just trying to make sense of it,” she said. “When you and I first met I gathered she and you were happily married. She understood you.”

Krueger looked away from her. “I thought she did,” he confirmed. “But it turns out her tolerance for my dancing with death took more of a toll on our marriage than I believed at first. I suppose she was tired of worrying she’d have to explain to our daughter why her father wouldn’t come home anymore.”

Seza got closer to him, again he didn’t protest. “That seems to be exactly what ended up happening anyway,” she noted. “Do you still love her?”

“Very much,” he said. “And I love my daughter as well.” He laced his fingers together. “That’s why I let them go. To protect them.”

Seza looked away from Krueger for a little. “You can love somebody,” she began, “but you can still make new memories too.”

Krueger shut his eyes and slowly nodded, agreeing with her. “Sure,” he said. “But who’s to say that person I let in stays? Who’s to say those new memories last?” He felt that was a good enough reason to not explore the feelings he’d developed for her, despite her invitation. “Nothing lasts forever.”

“Not if you don’t make it last forever,” she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder.

Their attention was stolen by an older couple. The husband tapped Seza’s shoulder and informed her how much his wife was happy to see the two of them together sharing this moment by the water, the way they used to when they were young.

Seza thanked them both in Italian, smiling warmly. As they turned to leave, she had an idea. She trotted to catch up to them and get their attention again, and Krueger watched her converse naturally with the older married couple. They shared warm smiles and laughter, and eventually Seza handed them a digital camera from her cardigan pocket before striding back up to Krueger.

“What was that about?” he asked her.

“We remind them of when they were younger,” she explained. “He told me they used to spend their evenings by the water like this when they were dating.” She smirked wryly at him and put her wrists up around the base of his neck. “I… also told them we were engaged, and asked them to take some photos for us.”

“And why would you tell them that?” Krueger inquired, resting his hands on her hips.

“It’s part of hiding in plain sight, Milo.” She turned toward the older couple to smile at them with Krueger as the couple took their photo. “Not that you seem to mind,” she noted.

“Maintaining the illusion,” he asserted as he wrapped his arms around her and held her closer.

“If that’s what you want to call it,” she jested. Then she planted a kiss square on his mouth which she held long enough for their photographer to capture on film several times. She turned back to the older couple to address them, thanking them for taking their picture before facing Krueger again, still in his arms. “If I didn’t know better I would guess you enjoyed that.”

Krueger didn’t deny it—the way she fit in his arms, her firmness and softness pressing against him—was perfect, despite his initial shock at her kissing him. They seemed made for each other.

Seza brought their mouths together again for a deeper kiss that pulled them closer together. Her one hand came away from around his neck to his chest where it rested, as his hand rode up her back under her cardigan.

Krueger let his forehead touch hers as he exhaled and gathered his senses again before opening his eyes to look her in hers. “That was a mistake,” he finally admitted.

“I don’t think you believe that,” she said.

“I don’t want to believe it,” he conceded, “but it was.” He gently pushed her away, distancing himself from her magnetic pull on him. “We can’t do this.”

“Milo—”

“Seza,” he said, both his hands on her shoulders. “Please… I don’t want to risk losing you too.” Wistfully we walked past her, letting his hands fall away as he made his way back to the apartment.

 ~~

Krueger laid awake that night in the moonlit bedroom playing the evening over and over in his head to rationalize his feelings for Seza. The more he tried to find reasons to convince himself how bad an idea it was to get closer to her, all he could come up with was an unfounded fear that he would somehow lose her. Weighed against everything he felt for her it seemed enough at first, but he was beginning to question that decision.

His door creaked open, and he reached under his pillow for the Glock 17. He pointed it at the door, but lowered it when he saw Seza standing there in his doorway, dressed in her camisole top and boyshorts with a longing look in her eyes.

Krueger couldn’t ignore her slender athletic frame this time; his eyes moved up and down all five feet and seven inches of her, pausing at the form she took under the thin fabric with which she covered so little of herself.

Seza came around to Krueger’s bed and slipped under the covers beside him. Her warmth radiated through the cotton garments, and her scent and silkiness of her bare skin next to Krueger’s demolished what was left of his constitution to not let her in closer than he had. Her hand rose up to his cheek as he looked over to her, and she placed a tender kiss upon his lips which deepened as their embrace tightened.

Soon, she was on top of him with nothing left between them; just her youth, honesty, and wetness. She assisted him inside her, and began rocking her hips in concert with his. The walls Krueger put up around himself fell away completely as he became lost in her, reveling in their mutual lust and love.

They repeated their actions a second and third time that night, each time more slowly and deliberately than the last. She lay in his arms after they finished.

“Whatever happens next,” Seza whispered to him, “whatever changes in our lives after tonight, I promise you will never lose me. I am yours, and you are mine. Forever.”

Krueger held her closer to himself. “Forever,” he echoed.

 ~~~~

Seza entered the water with the rebreather early the next morning to fit the Pergolas’ yacht with the GPS transmitter, then waited submerged while Ugo and Diana stepped on to start the boat and head out into open waters to meet with their prospective business partners. She remained fixed to the hull of the vessel as it moved out to sea, and when it finally came to a stop, she waited a few minutes more before unhooking herself from the hull and swimming to the back of the boat.

There, she disengaged the rebreather and unsheathed the ka-bar from her calf as she crept around the yacht, ready to put it to use if needed. From behind a corner she spotted Ugo and Diana on the deck entertaining their four guests as they talked business.

She came to realize that, aside from her, the only other six people on the boat were right in front of her. She put the knife away and retreated deeper into the yacht with a canvass satchel in tow. When she made it to a lounge area at what she believed was the center of the boat, she knelt down behind the bar and took four five-pound blocks of C4 out from the bag to prime them for detonation.

When they were ready she stood back up to leave, but paused when her eye caught an unopened bottle of 23-year Ron Zacapa. She picked the bottle up off the shelf to study it, looked up in the direction where the Pergolas would be, then back to the bottle. She placed it in her satchel along with a pack of six crystal tumblers in a padded gift box, and returned to the back of the boat.

When she made it outside, she retrieved a mirror from one of the pouches in her dive suit and moved it to shine a glare in the direction she knew he would be to signal him.

Krueger, having tracked the yacht to open water with the help of the transmitter, watched her through the binoculars and raised a mirror of his own to signal Seza back. He brought the speedboat to life and hit the throttle to move toward her.

Seza returned to the water to meet him halfway, and when she made it to Krueger in the speedboat, he triggered the detonator.

They saw the smoke cloud before they heard—and felt—the explosion from their distance.

“I think they’re dead,” Seza commented.

“Let’s make sure,” Krueger said.

He pushed the throttle on the boat forward and brought it to the wreckage of the yacht, he slowed the boat down as he took the Glock from Seza, keeping his other hand on the throttle as he scanned the floating debris for the bodies.

Krueger put a round into each of the five bodies floating face-down on the surface, and two rounds into one last one. When he was satisfied he turned the boat around and headed back to the mainland.

“It’s Archangel,” he radioed his team waiting for them ashore. “Inform the client that Ugo and Diana Pergola are dead, along with the four others.”

“Solid copy,” Wyatt replied. “That mean it’s on to the next one? ‘Cause I reckon there’s a lot left to do and see in this place.”

Seza got Krueger’s attention to show him the rum bottle and six glasses she lifted from the yacht. “It looked expensive,” she explained. “Seemed a shame to waste it.”

Krueger smirked, raising he radio to his mouth again. “No, Wyatt,” he said. “Let’s take the rest of the week off. I think we’ve earned it.” He turned back to Seza. “That’s quite a catch,” he said, noting the rum bottle.

“I’ve never heard of it,” she said.

“It may just be the best rum I’ve ever had.”

“Is that so?” Seza uncorked the bottle and took two of the glasses from the box. “Well, we don’t have to hurry back to the others,” she noted, pouring a finger’s depth into each of the glasses. “Do we?”

Krueger looked over his shoulder at Seza, and brought the speedboat to a stop. “No,” he said, taking the glass she offered him. “I suppose we don’t.” He wrapped his free hand around her waist and pulled her in to kiss her.

(Masterlist)

[localwebmgmt]

How To Guard Your Google Business Profile from Becoming a Running Joke

Posted by MiriamEllis

When customers walk into your place of business, phone you, or reach out to you via email or social media with a question that’s clearly a lead, you’d never, ever answer:

“Who knows?”

But it’s exactly this, and several related scenarios of absurdity, that have resulted from Google positioning itself as the dominant middle man between customers and local brands while failing to adequately communicate or enforce product policies.

Examples of Google Business Profiles gone bad are often comical, but it’s no laughing matter for your business to shed revenue for the sake of some jester’s joke. Then, spammers jump into the game, and that’s about as humorous as hitting your funny bone. And, sometimes, it’s even somebody on your own staff or a marketer you’ve hired who goofs.

Good local companies work so hard to develop exceptional customer service and a sterling reputation, and the Google Business Profile can brilliantly showcase both when carefully curated. But lack of vigilance over five key sections of this most visible online asset can cumulatively undermine offline goals.

Today, let’s look at some serious gaffes, get you set up to mitigate them, and put a watchdog mindset in your local place of business.

Naming nonsense

One of my favorite Local Tech Leads at Moz, Robert Reis, recently pointed out to me that Google’s sternest local guidelines actually reveal their greatest vulnerabilities. This is certainly true when it comes to Google not wanting brands to keyword stuff business names, because it so clearly appears to impact local pack rankings. Take a look at this all-too-common tomfoolery:

Credit: @DarrenShaw_

Then, there are other cases in which a business listing can be maliciously edited or hijacked by a competitor, an angry customer, or another third party. In this example, not only has the business name been edited, but the website URL has been pointed to ripoffreport.com:

Credit: @keyserholiday

What to do:

Customers may laugh, but certainly, they will not trust business names like these. If someone in your own company has been keyword stuffing, show them Google’s explicit guidelines regarding formatting names to match real-world business titles and edit the name to conform to the rules. Any other course risks losing customers and being reported by the public to Google for a violation.

If you suspect that a competitor’s high rankings are stemming, at least in part, from keyword stuffing, do a little research. Look at the name on their street signage in Google Street View. Take a photo in person if necessary. Look at the name on their website. Phone them to see how they answer the phone. Then, if you’re convinced that the guidelines are being broken, submit your evidence via the Business Redressal Complaint Form. There is no guarantee that Google will act on your report, but this is the main vehicle for seeking action.

If your listing has been hijacked and maliciously edited, I recommend starting by reporting the full details at the Google My Business Help Community. Ask the volunteers there to give you current steps for resolving the hijack. You can’t ever be totally safe from the possibility of hijacking, but do be sure you’ve claimed any GMB listing for your company. Some local SEOs also recommend making occasional null edits (hitting the submit button in your GMB dashboard without changing any of the listing data) as this activity might make your listing less prone to third-party edits.

Review roguery

I like to give business owners the benefit of the doubt for making a judgment call error when they review themselves. But it’s always embarrassing to see any company misusing reviews to sing their own praises, and particularly so when their family members point this out in public:

Credit: @ordacowski

More often, the business is the victim of review shenanigans. Google’s forum is continuously emitting distress signals from business owners who feel they’ve received one or more negative reviews from people they’ve never had a transaction with, as illustrated by this interchange:

And, the hard truth is that some entities have made a business model out of competitive sabotage via negative reviews. The problem has become large enough to make televised news.

What to do:

Falsifying reviews is illegal and has resulted in multi-million-dollar FTC fines in the United States. If you own or market local businesses, adhere to the Consumer Review Fairness Act and read the guidelines of any online platform on which you are receiving or writing reviews. Don’t review your own business or have past or present staff do so. Don’t review your competitors. Don’t incentivize reviews in any way, or post reviews on behalf of anyone else. Don’t hire any marketing firm or use any review management software that violates guidelines.

If your business becomes the subject of a review spam attack, screenshot and document all of the fake reviews, then flag them from inside of your Google My Business dashboard via the three little dots associated with each review. After three days, contact Google through their online chat option to follow up.

Google will make the ultimate decision on whether to remove the reviews and they are quite strict about what they view as negative vs. fake. If Google doesn’t remove the reviews, I would suggest two things. First, I would report the reviews to ReviewFraud and then, if the sentiment in the reviews is damaging enough, you might need to contact an attorney to see if further steps can be taken to prompt removal.

If you suspect a competitor is trying to boost their own rankings with review spam, document what you see and report it via the Google My Business Help Community.

Fatuous photos

“I cannot for the life of me believe that you would allow a normal user to upload photos to my business listing without my approval and you do not give THE OWNER OF THE PAGE the ability to delete them!” - from Google’s Forum.

The above quote typifies the frustration business owners feel regarding yet another element of their Google listing that is open to public contributions. Brands often think of these listings as belonging to them, when, in fact, they belong to Google. Images are considered to be a strong factor in CTR, so it’s particularly aggravating when user-uploaded photos either misrepresent or embarrass the business.

I’ve been shown cases in which people have mysteriously uploaded images that have nothing to do with a business. More often, though, I see photos like the following which highlight some aspect of the company that has disgusted or angered customers:

When something goes wrong with photos, like a bug on Google’s end, failure to size images correctly, or possibly the owner removing images that were previously there, this public warning symbol is definitely not a good look:

Google can also pull random images from website pages into your profile, resulting in your business being represented by something like … melted ice cream?

Credit: @tomwaddington8

Claire Carlisle recently documented Google’s penchant for pointing European users to Google Image Search instead of the photo section of listings. There is some reason to suspect this may happen in the US in the future, which could result in all kinds of strange optics popping up in association with brands.

What to do:

If an image accurately represents a lack of proper management at a location of your business, fix the issue or such imagery will continue to surface. You can then try flagging the photo, identifying yourself as the business owner, and explaining what you’ve done to correct the problem. However, unless the photo violates Google’s guidelines, it’s unlikely to be removed. Barring removal, be sure you are adding as many high-quality photos as possible to your listing to lessen the impact of a single image.

If the image violates Google’s guidelines, click on the name of the person who uploaded it and copy their profile URL. Then, report the user via the Google My Business Help Community, requesting that the profile be removed for failing to adhere to the guidelines.

If you see something like the warning symbol appearing instead of a photo you’ve tried to upload, check the above forum for reports of known bugs. You can always remove your own photos via the trash can symbol in your Google My Business dashboard.

Hours of inconvenience

“This is not a sustainable way to treat a business or customers.” - A reviewer experiencing unmanaged hours of operation

When customers feel that it’s your business playing a joke on them, they’re unlikely to return. This collage of 1-star reviews captures the collateral damage of neglecting to properly manage hours of operation on the web:

What to do:

A consistent theme in these damaging reviews is that customers are checking multiple places on the web to be sure an establishment is open on a given day. We’ve all come to depend on websites and business listings to provide this information, and it’s truly inconvenient when these assets mislead us. Few businesses can afford to let multiple customers down and no business can survive customers sensing they’ve been tricked!

The good news is that the fix for this is quite simple. Google’s tutorial for setting special hours if foolproof, and it will only take you a few minutes each year to ensure your profile displays correct information every day of the year. And, of course, update your website to reflect this data, too.

There are no dumb questions, but…

Sorry to say it, but there are actually some answers that are far from smart. I’ve saved for last the most extreme example of real-world businesses becoming the butt of online jokes.

Google Q&A is beginning to have all the earmarks of an experiment gone astray, and if you’re not actively managing this feature of the Google Business Profile, chances are good that your customers are experiencing a bizarre substitute for customer service.

Brace yourself for this collage:

What to do:

A quick study of the public responses to real consumer questions shows the state of total confusion surrounding this GBP feature. For example, one customer has mistaken it for a “discussion board” not associated with the business; this is incorrect. Others are proclaiming that they aren’t associated with the brand and don’t want to “lead people”, despite responding. Still, others are steering potential patrons away from the brand to a competitor (yikes!).

But, predominantly, we have wags replying to questions without having any information to share. “IDK” and “Why don’t you call them yourself?” typify this ridiculous behavior. Why would anyone waste time doing this, you might ask? We can put it down to two things: the old adage about idle hands and Google’s still-new program of perks for participation. Note how many of the individuals in our collage have achieved Local Guide status for giving out these useless answers. Raise your hands if you’re not impressed.

But now, put your hands back on your keyboard for a little work. Unlike the review medium in which guidelines forbid you being an initiator, Google Questions & Answers invites businesses to post and answer their own FAQs. All you have to do is spend a few minutes populating this area of the Google Business Profile with common questions and responses. Then monitor this feature on an ongoing basis so that customers are receiving a helpful, authoritative response to questions. Q&A is a lead-generating asset and conversions are totally within your control.

Adopting a local watchdog

All five cases of Google Business Profile hijinx share the requirement of vigilance for prevention and mitigation. Manually checking on multiple features week after week is a serious drain on local business owners’ limited time. Businesses with multiple locations are especially prone to becoming distracted from or worn out by the effort.

Putting a devoted watchdog between pranksters, spammers, and your vital Google listings is the smartest thing you can do to maintain them as an influential source of truth about your brand.

Adopt the new and improved Moz Local at your place of business and feel secure knowing:

If a third party edits your business name, our software will recognize the change and override it with the authoritative data you’ve provided.

Moz Local continuously alerts you to incoming Google reviews so that you can catch any emerging reputation problems quickly and respond to them.

You’ll be alerted every time a user-uploaded photo gets added to your Google listing. This is tracked in a continuous feed in your dashboard, and you can even set up email alerts if that’s easier for you. Either way, you’ll be the first to know if someone is uploading images that violate Google’s guidelines.

You aren’t disappointing customers anymore with inaccurate hours, because you can set them up well in advance in the Moz Local dashboard. We recommend setting special hours at least 7 days in advance of a known closure.

You’ll see all incoming Q&A queries in a continuous dashboard feed, facilitating fast, authoritative responses from your business instead of “IDK”s from random users.

Moz Local is the faithful companion you’re seeking to ensure you’re publishing trustworthy business data, taking maximum control of your online reputation, and maintaining a high level of spam awareness, all in an intuitive, organized dashboard.

Everybody likes a good joke, but your Google Business Profile isn’t the place for one! Ready to put a serious watchdog at your place of business? Learn more about the new Moz Local!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[kjt-lawyers]

How To Guard Your Google Business Profile from Becoming a Running Joke

Posted by MiriamEllis

When customers walk into your place of business, phone you, or reach out to you via email or social media with a question that’s clearly a lead, you’d never, ever answer:

“Who knows?”

But it’s exactly this, and several related scenarios of absurdity, that have resulted from Google positioning itself as the dominant middle man between customers and local brands while failing to adequately communicate or enforce product policies.

Examples of Google Business Profiles gone bad are often comical, but it’s no laughing matter for your business to shed revenue for the sake of some jester’s joke. Then, spammers jump into the game, and that’s about as humorous as hitting your funny bone. And, sometimes, it’s even somebody on your own staff or a marketer you’ve hired who goofs.

Good local companies work so hard to develop exceptional customer service and a sterling reputation, and the Google Business Profile can brilliantly showcase both when carefully curated. But lack of vigilance over five key sections of this most visible online asset can cumulatively undermine offline goals.

Today, let’s look at some serious gaffes, get you set up to mitigate them, and put a watchdog mindset in your local place of business.

Naming nonsense

One of my favorite Local Tech Leads at Moz, Robert Reis, recently pointed out to me that Google’s sternest local guidelines actually reveal their greatest vulnerabilities. This is certainly true when it comes to Google not wanting brands to keyword stuff business names, because it so clearly appears to impact local pack rankings. Take a look at this all-too-common tomfoolery:

Credit: @DarrenShaw_

Then, there are other cases in which a business listing can be maliciously edited or hijacked by a competitor, an angry customer, or another third party. In this example, not only has the business name been edited, but the website URL has been pointed to ripoffreport.com:

Credit: @keyserholiday

What to do:

Customers may laugh, but certainly, they will not trust business names like these. If someone in your own company has been keyword stuffing, show them Google’s explicit guidelines regarding formatting names to match real-world business titles and edit the name to conform to the rules. Any other course risks losing customers and being reported by the public to Google for a violation.

If you suspect that a competitor’s high rankings are stemming, at least in part, from keyword stuffing, do a little research. Look at the name on their street signage in Google Street View. Take a photo in person if necessary. Look at the name on their website. Phone them to see how they answer the phone. Then, if you’re convinced that the guidelines are being broken, submit your evidence via the Business Redressal Complaint Form. There is no guarantee that Google will act on your report, but this is the main vehicle for seeking action.

If your listing has been hijacked and maliciously edited, I recommend starting by reporting the full details at the Google My Business Help Community. Ask the volunteers there to give you current steps for resolving the hijack. You can’t ever be totally safe from the possibility of hijacking, but do be sure you’ve claimed any GMB listing for your company. Some local SEOs also recommend making occasional null edits (hitting the submit button in your GMB dashboard without changing any of the listing data) as this activity might make your listing less prone to third-party edits.

Review roguery

I like to give business owners the benefit of the doubt for making a judgment call error when they review themselves. But it’s always embarrassing to see any company misusing reviews to sing their own praises, and particularly so when their family members point this out in public:

Credit: @ordacowski

More often, the business is the victim of review shenanigans. Google’s forum is continuously emitting distress signals from business owners who feel they’ve received one or more negative reviews from people they’ve never had a transaction with, as illustrated by this interchange:

And, the hard truth is that some entities have made a business model out of competitive sabotage via negative reviews. The problem has become large enough to make televised news.

What to do:

Falsifying reviews is illegal and has resulted in multi-million-dollar FTC fines in the United States. If you own or market local businesses, adhere to the Consumer Review Fairness Act and read the guidelines of any online platform on which you are receiving or writing reviews. Don’t review your own business or have past or present staff do so. Don’t review your competitors. Don’t incentivize reviews in any way, or post reviews on behalf of anyone else. Don’t hire any marketing firm or use any review management software that violates guidelines.

If your business becomes the subject of a review spam attack, screenshot and document all of the fake reviews, then flag them from inside of your Google My Business dashboard via the three little dots associated with each review. After three days, contact Google through their online chat option to follow up.

Google will make the ultimate decision on whether to remove the reviews and they are quite strict about what they view as negative vs. fake. If Google doesn’t remove the reviews, I would suggest two things. First, I would report the reviews to ReviewFraud and then, if the sentiment in the reviews is damaging enough, you might need to contact an attorney to see if further steps can be taken to prompt removal.

If you suspect a competitor is trying to boost their own rankings with review spam, document what you see and report it via the Google My Business Help Community.

Fatuous photos

“I cannot for the life of me believe that you would allow a normal user to upload photos to my business listing without my approval and you do not give THE OWNER OF THE PAGE the ability to delete them!” - from Google’s Forum.

The above quote typifies the frustration business owners feel regarding yet another element of their Google listing that is open to public contributions. Brands often think of these listings as belonging to them, when, in fact, they belong to Google. Images are considered to be a strong factor in CTR, so it’s particularly aggravating when user-uploaded photos either misrepresent or embarrass the business.

I’ve been shown cases in which people have mysteriously uploaded images that have nothing to do with a business. More often, though, I see photos like the following which highlight some aspect of the company that has disgusted or angered customers:

When something goes wrong with photos, like a bug on Google’s end, failure to size images correctly, or possibly the owner removing images that were previously there, this public warning symbol is definitely not a good look:

Google can also pull random images from website pages into your profile, resulting in your business being represented by something like … melted ice cream?

Credit: @tomwaddington8

Claire Carlisle recently documented Google’s penchant for pointing European users to Google Image Search instead of the photo section of listings. There is some reason to suspect this may happen in the US in the future, which could result in all kinds of strange optics popping up in association with brands.

What to do:

If an image accurately represents a lack of proper management at a location of your business, fix the issue or such imagery will continue to surface. You can then try flagging the photo, identifying yourself as the business owner, and explaining what you’ve done to correct the problem. However, unless the photo violates Google’s guidelines, it’s unlikely to be removed. Barring removal, be sure you are adding as many high-quality photos as possible to your listing to lessen the impact of a single image.

If the image violates Google’s guidelines, click on the name of the person who uploaded it and copy their profile URL. Then, report the user via the Google My Business Help Community, requesting that the profile be removed for failing to adhere to the guidelines.

If you see something like the warning symbol appearing instead of a photo you’ve tried to upload, check the above forum for reports of known bugs. You can always remove your own photos via the trash can symbol in your Google My Business dashboard.

Hours of inconvenience

“This is not a sustainable way to treat a business or customers.” - A reviewer experiencing unmanaged hours of operation

When customers feel that it’s your business playing a joke on them, they’re unlikely to return. This collage of 1-star reviews captures the collateral damage of neglecting to properly manage hours of operation on the web:

What to do:

A consistent theme in these damaging reviews is that customers are checking multiple places on the web to be sure an establishment is open on a given day. We’ve all come to depend on websites and business listings to provide this information, and it’s truly inconvenient when these assets mislead us. Few businesses can afford to let multiple customers down and no business can survive customers sensing they’ve been tricked!

The good news is that the fix for this is quite simple. Google’s tutorial for setting special hours if foolproof, and it will only take you a few minutes each year to ensure your profile displays correct information every day of the year. And, of course, update your website to reflect this data, too.

There are no dumb questions, but…

Sorry to say it, but there are actually some answers that are far from smart. I’ve saved for last the most extreme example of real-world businesses becoming the butt of online jokes.

Google Q&A is beginning to have all the earmarks of an experiment gone astray, and if you’re not actively managing this feature of the Google Business Profile, chances are good that your customers are experiencing a bizarre substitute for customer service.

Brace yourself for this collage:

What to do:

A quick study of the public responses to real consumer questions shows the state of total confusion surrounding this GBP feature. For example, one customer has mistaken it for a “discussion board” not associated with the business; this is incorrect. Others are proclaiming that they aren’t associated with the brand and don’t want to “lead people”, despite responding. Still, others are steering potential patrons away from the brand to a competitor (yikes!).

But, predominantly, we have wags replying to questions without having any information to share. “IDK” and “Why don’t you call them yourself?” typify this ridiculous behavior. Why would anyone waste time doing this, you might ask? We can put it down to two things: the old adage about idle hands and Google’s still-new program of perks for participation. Note how many of the individuals in our collage have achieved Local Guide status for giving out these useless answers. Raise your hands if you’re not impressed.

But now, put your hands back on your keyboard for a little work. Unlike the review medium in which guidelines forbid you being an initiator, Google Questions & Answers invites businesses to post and answer their own FAQs. All you have to do is spend a few minutes populating this area of the Google Business Profile with common questions and responses. Then monitor this feature on an ongoing basis so that customers are receiving a helpful, authoritative response to questions. Q&A is a lead-generating asset and conversions are totally within your control.

Adopting a local watchdog

All five cases of Google Business Profile hijinx share the requirement of vigilance for prevention and mitigation. Manually checking on multiple features week after week is a serious drain on local business owners’ limited time. Businesses with multiple locations are especially prone to becoming distracted from or worn out by the effort.

Putting a devoted watchdog between pranksters, spammers, and your vital Google listings is the smartest thing you can do to maintain them as an influential source of truth about your brand.

Adopt the new and improved Moz Local at your place of business and feel secure knowing:

If a third party edits your business name, our software will recognize the change and override it with the authoritative data you’ve provided.

Moz Local continuously alerts you to incoming Google reviews so that you can catch any emerging reputation problems quickly and respond to them.

You’ll be alerted every time a user-uploaded photo gets added to your Google listing. This is tracked in a continuous feed in your dashboard, and you can even set up email alerts if that’s easier for you. Either way, you’ll be the first to know if someone is uploading images that violate Google’s guidelines.

You aren’t disappointing customers anymore with inaccurate hours, because you can set them up well in advance in the Moz Local dashboard. We recommend setting special hours at least 7 days in advance of a known closure.

You’ll see all incoming Q&A queries in a continuous dashboard feed, facilitating fast, authoritative responses from your business instead of “IDK”s from random users.

Moz Local is the faithful companion you’re seeking to ensure you’re publishing trustworthy business data, taking maximum control of your online reputation, and maintaining a high level of spam awareness, all in an intuitive, organized dashboard.

Everybody likes a good joke, but your Google Business Profile isn’t the place for one! Ready to put a serious watchdog at your place of business? Learn more about the new Moz Local!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[paulineberry]

How To Guard Your Google Business Profile from Becoming a Running Joke

Posted by MiriamEllis

When customers walk into your place of business, phone you, or reach out to you via email or social media with a question that’s clearly a lead, you’d never, ever answer:

“Who knows?”

But it’s exactly this, and several related scenarios of absurdity, that have resulted from Google positioning itself as the dominant middle man between customers and local brands while failing to adequately communicate or enforce product policies.

Examples of Google Business Profiles gone bad are often comical, but it’s no laughing matter for your business to shed revenue for the sake of some jester’s joke. Then, spammers jump into the game, and that’s about as humorous as hitting your funny bone. And, sometimes, it’s even somebody on your own staff or a marketer you’ve hired who goofs.

Good local companies work so hard to develop exceptional customer service and a sterling reputation, and the Google Business Profile can brilliantly showcase both when carefully curated. But lack of vigilance over five key sections of this most visible online asset can cumulatively undermine offline goals.

Today, let’s look at some serious gaffes, get you set up to mitigate them, and put a watchdog mindset in your local place of business.

Naming nonsense

One of my favorite Local Tech Leads at Moz, Robert Reis, recently pointed out to me that Google’s sternest local guidelines actually reveal their greatest vulnerabilities. This is certainly true when it comes to Google not wanting brands to keyword stuff business names, because it so clearly appears to impact local pack rankings. Take a look at this all-too-common tomfoolery:

Credit: @DarrenShaw_

Then, there are other cases in which a business listing can be maliciously edited or hijacked by a competitor, an angry customer, or another third party. In this example, not only has the business name been edited, but the website URL has been pointed to ripoffreport.com:

Credit: @keyserholiday

What to do:

Customers may laugh, but certainly, they will not trust business names like these. If someone in your own company has been keyword stuffing, show them Google’s explicit guidelines regarding formatting names to match real-world business titles and edit the name to conform to the rules. Any other course risks losing customers and being reported by the public to Google for a violation.

If you suspect that a competitor’s high rankings are stemming, at least in part, from keyword stuffing, do a little research. Look at the name on their street signage in Google Street View. Take a photo in person if necessary. Look at the name on their website. Phone them to see how they answer the phone. Then, if you’re convinced that the guidelines are being broken, submit your evidence via the Business Redressal Complaint Form. There is no guarantee that Google will act on your report, but this is the main vehicle for seeking action.

If your listing has been hijacked and maliciously edited, I recommend starting by reporting the full details at the Google My Business Help Community. Ask the volunteers there to give you current steps for resolving the hijack. You can’t ever be totally safe from the possibility of hijacking, but do be sure you’ve claimed any GMB listing for your company. Some local SEOs also recommend making occasional null edits (hitting the submit button in your GMB dashboard without changing any of the listing data) as this activity might make your listing less prone to third-party edits.

Review roguery

I like to give business owners the benefit of the doubt for making a judgment call error when they review themselves. But it’s always embarrassing to see any company misusing reviews to sing their own praises, and particularly so when their family members point this out in public:

Credit: @ordacowski

More often, the business is the victim of review shenanigans. Google’s forum is continuously emitting distress signals from business owners who feel they’ve received one or more negative reviews from people they’ve never had a transaction with, as illustrated by this interchange:

And, the hard truth is that some entities have made a business model out of competitive sabotage via negative reviews. The problem has become large enough to make televised news.

What to do:

Falsifying reviews is illegal and has resulted in multi-million-dollar FTC fines in the United States. If you own or market local businesses, adhere to the Consumer Review Fairness Act and read the guidelines of any online platform on which you are receiving or writing reviews. Don’t review your own business or have past or present staff do so. Don’t review your competitors. Don’t incentivize reviews in any way, or post reviews on behalf of anyone else. Don’t hire any marketing firm or use any review management software that violates guidelines.

If your business becomes the subject of a review spam attack, screenshot and document all of the fake reviews, then flag them from inside of your Google My Business dashboard via the three little dots associated with each review. After three days, contact Google through their online chat option to follow up.

Google will make the ultimate decision on whether to remove the reviews and they are quite strict about what they view as negative vs. fake. If Google doesn’t remove the reviews, I would suggest two things. First, I would report the reviews to ReviewFraud and then, if the sentiment in the reviews is damaging enough, you might need to contact an attorney to see if further steps can be taken to prompt removal.

If you suspect a competitor is trying to boost their own rankings with review spam, document what you see and report it via the Google My Business Help Community.

Fatuous photos

“I cannot for the life of me believe that you would allow a normal user to upload photos to my business listing without my approval and you do not give THE OWNER OF THE PAGE the ability to delete them!” - from Google’s Forum.

The above quote typifies the frustration business owners feel regarding yet another element of their Google listing that is open to public contributions. Brands often think of these listings as belonging to them, when, in fact, they belong to Google. Images are considered to be a strong factor in CTR, so it’s particularly aggravating when user-uploaded photos either misrepresent or embarrass the business.

I’ve been shown cases in which people have mysteriously uploaded images that have nothing to do with a business. More often, though, I see photos like the following which highlight some aspect of the company that has disgusted or angered customers:

When something goes wrong with photos, like a bug on Google’s end, failure to size images correctly, or possibly the owner removing images that were previously there, this public warning symbol is definitely not a good look:

Google can also pull random images from website pages into your profile, resulting in your business being represented by something like … melted ice cream?

Credit: @tomwaddington8

Claire Carlisle recently documented Google’s penchant for pointing European users to Google Image Search instead of the photo section of listings. There is some reason to suspect this may happen in the US in the future, which could result in all kinds of strange optics popping up in association with brands.

What to do:

If an image accurately represents a lack of proper management at a location of your business, fix the issue or such imagery will continue to surface. You can then try flagging the photo, identifying yourself as the business owner, and explaining what you’ve done to correct the problem. However, unless the photo violates Google’s guidelines, it’s unlikely to be removed. Barring removal, be sure you are adding as many high-quality photos as possible to your listing to lessen the impact of a single image.

If the image violates Google’s guidelines, click on the name of the person who uploaded it and copy their profile URL. Then, report the user via the Google My Business Help Community, requesting that the profile be removed for failing to adhere to the guidelines.

If you see something like the warning symbol appearing instead of a photo you’ve tried to upload, check the above forum for reports of known bugs. You can always remove your own photos via the trash can symbol in your Google My Business dashboard.

Hours of inconvenience

“This is not a sustainable way to treat a business or customers.” - A reviewer experiencing unmanaged hours of operation

When customers feel that it’s your business playing a joke on them, they’re unlikely to return. This collage of 1-star reviews captures the collateral damage of neglecting to properly manage hours of operation on the web:

What to do:

A consistent theme in these damaging reviews is that customers are checking multiple places on the web to be sure an establishment is open on a given day. We’ve all come to depend on websites and business listings to provide this information, and it’s truly inconvenient when these assets mislead us. Few businesses can afford to let multiple customers down and no business can survive customers sensing they’ve been tricked!

The good news is that the fix for this is quite simple. Google’s tutorial for setting special hours if foolproof, and it will only take you a few minutes each year to ensure your profile displays correct information every day of the year. And, of course, update your website to reflect this data, too.

There are no dumb questions, but…

Sorry to say it, but there are actually some answers that are far from smart. I’ve saved for last the most extreme example of real-world businesses becoming the butt of online jokes.

Google Q&A is beginning to have all the earmarks of an experiment gone astray, and if you’re not actively managing this feature of the Google Business Profile, chances are good that your customers are experiencing a bizarre substitute for customer service.

Brace yourself for this collage:

What to do:

A quick study of the public responses to real consumer questions shows the state of total confusion surrounding this GBP feature. For example, one customer has mistaken it for a “discussion board” not associated with the business; this is incorrect. Others are proclaiming that they aren’t associated with the brand and don’t want to “lead people”, despite responding. Still, others are steering potential patrons away from the brand to a competitor (yikes!).

But, predominantly, we have wags replying to questions without having any information to share. “IDK” and “Why don’t you call them yourself?” typify this ridiculous behavior. Why would anyone waste time doing this, you might ask? We can put it down to two things: the old adage about idle hands and Google’s still-new program of perks for participation. Note how many of the individuals in our collage have achieved Local Guide status for giving out these useless answers. Raise your hands if you’re not impressed.

But now, put your hands back on your keyboard for a little work. Unlike the review medium in which guidelines forbid you being an initiator, Google Questions & Answers invites businesses to post and answer their own FAQs. All you have to do is spend a few minutes populating this area of the Google Business Profile with common questions and responses. Then monitor this feature on an ongoing basis so that customers are receiving a helpful, authoritative response to questions. Q&A is a lead-generating asset and conversions are totally within your control.

Adopting a local watchdog

All five cases of Google Business Profile hijinx share the requirement of vigilance for prevention and mitigation. Manually checking on multiple features week after week is a serious drain on local business owners’ limited time. Businesses with multiple locations are especially prone to becoming distracted from or worn out by the effort.

Putting a devoted watchdog between pranksters, spammers, and your vital Google listings is the smartest thing you can do to maintain them as an influential source of truth about your brand.

Adopt the new and improved Moz Local at your place of business and feel secure knowing:

If a third party edits your business name, our software will recognize the change and override it with the authoritative data you’ve provided.

Moz Local continuously alerts you to incoming Google reviews so that you can catch any emerging reputation problems quickly and respond to them.

You’ll be alerted every time a user-uploaded photo gets added to your Google listing. This is tracked in a continuous feed in your dashboard, and you can even set up email alerts if that’s easier for you. Either way, you’ll be the first to know if someone is uploading images that violate Google’s guidelines.

You aren’t disappointing customers anymore with inaccurate hours, because you can set them up well in advance in the Moz Local dashboard. We recommend setting special hours at least 7 days in advance of a known closure.

You’ll see all incoming Q&A queries in a continuous dashboard feed, facilitating fast, authoritative responses from your business instead of “IDK”s from random users.

Moz Local is the faithful companion you’re seeking to ensure you’re publishing trustworthy business data, taking maximum control of your online reputation, and maintaining a high level of spam awareness, all in an intuitive, organized dashboard.

Everybody likes a good joke, but your Google Business Profile isn’t the place for one! Ready to put a serious watchdog at your place of business? Learn more about the new Moz Local!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!