#i get so much mileage out of that last photo and that's because it hurt my soul

[dumbasssportsboys]

[thegallinisystem]

65 Questions You Aren't Used To

One of my followers (*cough cough @almostasgayasstartrek ) challenged me to answer all of these questions, so buckle up.

1.      Do you ever doubt the existence of others than you?

Sometimes. Usually only when I’m having a dissociative issue.

2.      On a scale of 1-5, how afraid of the dark are you?

It depends on if I’ve recently watched a horror play through or not.

3.      The person you would never want to meet?

There are many. Pretty much anyone in politics.

4.      What is your favorite word?

Anything that’s easily rhymable.

5.      If you were a type of tree, what would you be?

Red maple, because the leaves are vibrant and I have sweetness inside

6.      When you looked in the mirror this morning what was the first thing you thought?

I don’t really look in the mirror unless I have to.

7.      What shirt are you wearing?

A blue shirt that has Chewbacca on it and says “Wookie of the Year”. Which is funny, because I don’t actually like Star Wars very much. But the shirt is comfy!

8.      What do you label yourself as?

Transgender, non-binary, queer, Ravenclaw, INFJ, compassionate, empath, neurodivergent

9.      Bright room or dark room?

Not too bright, but I prefer a lit room.

10.   What were you doing at midnight last night?

Believe it or not, sleeping. I know it’s hard to believe, especially for me.

11.   Favorite age you’ve been so far?

I would have to say 24. It was a good year.

12.   Who told you they loved you last?

My spouse.

13.   Your worst enemy?

Probably myself. I tend to sabotage myself a lot.

14.   What is your current desktop picture?

(insert desktop photo here)

15.   Do you like someone?

Yes actually. Sometimes it hurts being polyromantic, because even though I’m currently in a relationship, we’ve all talked about having romantic relationships with others. So there’s this person I like who I met a couple months ago, but I know they’re not ready or interested in a relationship and I don’t know if they ever will be. Man, it’s been a while since I’ve had to deal with unrequited love.

16.   The last song you listened to?

https://soundcloud.com/tophouserecordings/bass-farmers-unsettling-ft-nathan-brumley-original-mix

17.   You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up?

My father. Because then he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone and hopefully he’s got life insurance, which would help the rest of my family.

18.   Who would you really like to just punch in the face?

Mostly all of the politicians in power right now, save a couple of senators who aren’t incredibly evil.

19.   If anyone could be your slave for a day, who would it be and what would they have to do?

Jeff Bezos. Firstly, he’d transfer me and each of my friends $1 million. Then, he’d sign a legally binding contract changing how things work at Amazon so that employees actually get what they deserve. Then, he would pay to end world hunger and create housing for the homeless. He’d also pay for all of the people who are trying to transition to get the surgeries they need. I would find a way to do all of this in a legally binding way so that he couldn’t come back and try to sue once the day is over.

20.   What is your best physical attribute? (showing said attribute is optional)

It’s not great at the moment, but I take a lot of pride in my hair.

��21.   If you were the opposite sex for one day, what would you look like and what would you do?

There is a flaw with this question in that it assumes there are only two genders or sexes, and therefore there can be an opposite. The spectrum is wide and diverse biologically and narrowing it down to simply what genetalia you have on the outside is a disservice to that diversity.

22.   Do you have a secret talent? If yes, what is it?

I have the ability to bring a crowd wherever I go. People call me a trendsetter, but it’s happened so many times that it’s uncanny.

 23.   What is one unique thing you’re afraid of?

Having the people around me turn out to be like the abusive people in my past. It hasn’t actually happened since 2013, but I’ve had some close calls and they’ve been terrifying.

 24.   You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your disposal.

Well firstly, we’ll start with toasted gluten free bread because of my stomach. Then, we’ll do cracked pepper turkey with mayo and Dijon mustard. Toss in some spinach, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and pickles and you’ve got a great sandwich.

 25.   You just found $100! How are you going to spend it?

 Putting it in my top surgery fund, which you can find here!

26.   You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, but you have to leave immediately. Where are you going to go? Anywhere with a beach would be great by me.

 27.   An angel appears out of Heaven and offers you a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. “Be brand-specific” it says. Man! What are you gonna say about that? Even if you don’t drink booze there’s something you can figure out… so what’s it gonna be?

 Henri IV Dudognon Heritage Cognac because one bottle of the stuff is worth nearly $2 million and I could sell it and be set for life. (I don’t drink so actually having it for me wouldn’t do me any good)

 28.   You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place? 

Everyone gets equal rights. Period.

 29.   What is your favorite expletive?

Oh Nut!

30.   Your house is on fire, holy shit! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don’t worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what’s the one thing you’re going to save from that blazing inferno?

I would either grab my laptop or reginald (insert picture of reginald here). It’s a serious debate for me, because reginald is my prized possession. But my laptop has a whole bunch of stuff on it that I really don’t want to lose.

31.   You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

Trump getting elected.

32.   You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But check out this cool shit… you can move to anywhere else in the world!

That is the COOLEST reason for getting kicked out of the country. Honestly, if I had the money, I’d take my family and move to Europe where they have universal healthcare and know that human rights are for everyone.

33.   The Celestial Gates Of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn’t think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person/etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back?

I would totally hang out with Death from The Sandman, she’s amazing. I’m not sure I would bring anyone back, because bringing people back from the dead has a whole bunch of repercussions that I don’t think we really know how to deal with.

34.   What was your last dream about?

I don’t really remember my dreams that well.

35.   Are you a good chopstick user?

I’d say so. When I have the option of using chopsticks, 9 times out of 10 I will because I can feed myself with them. I’m not good enough that I’m confident I don’t make faux paus though.

 36.   Have you ever been admitted to the hospital?

Yes, I was admitted to a mental facility twice this past year.

37.   Have you ever built a snowman?

I built several as a kid! One in my backyard lasted for a good couple of weeks.

38.   What is the color of your socks?

Not currently wearing socks.

 39.   What type of music do you like?

Depends on my mood, but I’m almost always in the mood for some electronica.

 40.   Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets?

I think sunrises are prettier, but I don’t like being awake at the time of day that they usually happen.

41.   What is your favorite milkshake flavor?

Chocolate malt

42.   What football team do you support?

None? I don’t like football.

43.   Do you have any scars?

I’ve got several on my knees from when I was a kid and played outside all the time. I’ve also got a few on my arms from self harm.

44.   What do you want to be when you graduate?

I graduated 4 years ago, so this question is moot.

45.   If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

The severity of my mental illness.

46.   Are you reliable?

I don’t feel like I am. My poor physical and mental health means that I have to back out of things a lot and I hate it.

47.   If you could ask your future self one question, what would it be?

What helped you heal from the trauma of my past.

48.   Do you hold grudges?

Not usually.

49.   If you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature, what new animal would you create?

A dog that lives longer than 12 years in a healthy way. I know that the question is looking for something like a liger, but this is more fun.

 50.   What is the most unusual conversation you’ve ever had?

I’ve had a lot of unusual conversations, so it’ll be hard to pick.

 51.   Are you a good liar?

I can be, but not if it’s for a game. Usually only when I’m trying to hide my mental or emotional health, which I haven’t done for a couple months.

 52.   How long could you go without talking?

I have gone several days without talking.

 53.   What has been you worst haircut/style?

I went to a super cuts once and the hairdresser gave me the choppiest haircut ever and a bunch of the strands weren’t even the same length. It was horrible.

 54.   Have you ever baked your own cake?

I’ve actually done it a lot more lately because of my allergies.

 55.   Can you do any accents other than your own?

Not well.

 56.   What do you like on your toast?

Peanut butter.

 57.   What is the last thing you drew a picture of?

I was trying to express something in therapy so it was more of an abstract piece.

 58.   What would be you dream car?

Something with amazing gas mileage.

 59.   Do you sing in the shower? Or do anything unusual in the shower? Explain.

I sometimes do oil pulling, where I swish coconut oil around in my mouth.

 60.   Do you believe in aliens?

Oh boy do I. I wrote a ton of poems about aliens in high school.

 61.   Do you often read your horoscope?

No. I don’t really believe in horoscopes.

 62.   What is your favorite letter of the alphabet?

X! It’s my gender marker now!

 63.   Which is cooler: dinosaurs or dragons?

How about yes.

 64.   What do you think about babies?

I don’t really care for them and I’m definitely not having any of my own.

 65.   Freebie! Ask anything interesting you can think of.

If you qualified for a wish from the make a wish foundation, what would your wish be?

I’ve thought about this one a lot, actually. When I was younger, I probably would have done something with animals, like being able to take care of them or go behind the scenes or something. I didn’t care much about the money or the big grandiose wishes like what I have now. I think I was a simple child.

[nycrunning]

well, August is always a good month because of SUMMER STREETS, literally, I should be hired by the Summer Streets People because I feel like a community evangelizer. That is all I talk about to anyone all year long. You know it. Anyway, to recap: I like Summer Streets. A bit. If you just met me or this is the first time you read this blog, Summer Streets happens 3 weekends in August, on Saturdays: they close traffic on Park Avenue in the Upper East Side all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge, for 5 hours. It’s MAGIC.

If you missed it, shame on you (and, how are we friends???). If you never heard of it, pen it in for next year and don’t make vacation plans or don’t say yes to weddings. If you don’t live in NYC, get tickets now. 

So, Summer Streets was awesome, even though it RAINED ALL THREE SATURDAYS as you can see in the pictures (ugh) and we have to chop one run short because there was lightning, thunderstorm and flash flooding (but mostly because with all that water I couldn’t keep my contacts inside my eyes…!). It was still awesome. 

The day after the first Summer Streets, July something, a Sunday, I run the NYRR Manhattan Mile, a new race and a distance I’ve never run. So, automatic PR you say? Meh I don’t count those, but I WILL COUNT THE NEXT TIME I RUN THIS DISTANCE because I run it as slow AF. So, here we go: I have a bum knee. It’s not chondromalacia patellae, it’s not ITBS, I’ve ruled out a lot of things but it’s just weird because it hurts VERY randomly. AND, if I take time off, it hurts more. Go figure that one out. Good luck. Anyway, that day my knee was hurting so I struggled to finish. It was also like one hundred million degrees celsius/fahrenheit. 

Luckily I had Jackie, Michael and Brian to not only keep me company but throw power boosts at me during the last mile where they all decided to pick it up and I was just not into it. Aw, friends that throw stuff at you while you want to curl and cry are the BEST! ❤ I guess.

HA.

The next weekend was another combo of Summer Streets and a race. This time I attempted to do two races on Sunday and it didn’t work out AT ALL. I wanted to do the France Run, a 5 miler in Central Park at 8, and then scoot out to Williamsburg (in Brooklyn, for all my international readers! This Wsburg is in BK, not Colonial Pennsylvania, as I had to be told a few times in my first years in NYC coming from Philly!!!) (where was I?) then scoot out to Williamsburg to race the Brooklyn Mile. My heat was at 9:30 am. Possible?? Not really. What was I thinking? Not only David and I run France Run as slow as we possibly could without bursting into a walk spider-crawl, BUT we then proceeded to be extra stooopid fun after we finished and pretend talk in French and rename everything. We then also decided, while it rained, to taste and eat all the French things they had… chocolate, financiers, it was good… oooops, it’s 9:30! CRAP. And the truth is, I wasn’t in any shape to race a mile. My knee agreed (probably).

The last weekend of August (am I missing one???) it was a doubleheader. I did the Percy Sutton 5K in Harlem on Saturday and the Henry Isola 4 Mile XC in Van Cortlandt, Bronx, on Sunday. Who knew I could handle it? The knee was stoopid all week so I run to the 5K with Kettia and David SUPER slow, like 11 pace and was thinking to maybe cheer. I felt 100% pain-free so I decided to race. It was slow (23:06 It think, 7:24 pace) well, yes, I haven’t done anything hard in 2 months so I couldn’t expect much more but I felt good and that is all I cared about. Plus it was fun. We met lots of people, Frankie run me in, we had an hour-long stop on the run back… it was all shit and giggles, the way a race morning should be (to me, don’t judge!).

We run back. I ended up with like 10 miles… then… the next day, cause I felt ok… (who feels ok the day after a 5k?) I decided to run to the Bronx to run the Henry Isola 4 miler. It’s in the trails and it’s cross country. Ummmmmmm I was an XC virgin and had NO IDEA what I was doing. I didn’t even know why my age and gender was on my bib! Or how we all run on the grass and not the path…? it was all so weird. So, I’ve done trail races, like ultras, or like Bear Mountain 50K, or stuff like that. But this was SOOO DIFFERENT. Fast but also trails, crazy. Anyway, I run to the Bronx, got there at 8 am, race was starting at 9 and it was SO BURNING HOT already… I started feeling all the heatnessticity before we even started. It’s a smaller race than the typical NYRR race, like a LOT smaller. 40% of it were we out of the trails and in THE SUN. The last loop was hard and I won’t admit this to myself but there’s a chance I didn’t negative split this race. It was still great though (if can call walking up Cemetery Hill twice because your legs can’t run up, then yes it was great).

I think you can tell how HOT it was. Maybe by the sun situation, or my sweat situation, or maybe becase my hair is fried. I didn’t run back home. At all. I tried. But no.

DATA DOWNLOAD

Total Miles: 157, biggest mileage month so far this year. Just checked and my biggest month was 187 miles in October 2016. 

Races: Four. Two were miserable/slow. One was ok, one was awesome.

Ups: UM, HELLO, SUMMER STREETS. Did you forget already??? Also, that’s the most miles I run in a month this year. Catching up.

Downs: THIS STOOOOPID KNEE. Sorry, sorry, I still need love you knee, please don’t hurt me, anymore, prettyplease?

Balance: I wanna feel un-pain again and run hard, and do speedwork and I hate this crap. 

July

I barely remember July already and it was just now. My parents were still visiting so we kept touristing around and we had an amazing Fourth of July with all the official NYC fireworks on the East River. Epic. I did two races, with meh performances. The first one was the NYRR

hair working hard for the picture, post-Retro 4 Miler

 Retro 4 Miler, and I was really lame to not dress up, or back?  I seriously will wear any costume but just like happens every single Thanksgiving Halloween, I don’t care enough to remember more than 1 minute ahead of time. Every year I tell myself I am totally going to dress up next year and then I forget. Then every year, when the costumey event happens, I tell myself I am gonna set a reminder in the calendar for a month BEFORE Halloween/race/etc so I can plan ahead… but I am a snooze-hitter with things I don’t really want to bother with (NOT the alarm, you KNOW I wake up before the alarm even goes off!), and I use my go-to motto: if I didn’t bother doing it so far, no chance in hell this is gonna get done ever. Just like with the emails at the bottom of my inbox. If it’s been 2-3 days, there’s a high chance they won’t get opened/read/replied to… AAAANYWAY, I didn’t wear a costume for the Retro Run because I am lame. But people do, and it’s SUPER fun and I really really really always wish I did. mooooving on. Ah, so, the race. Wasn’t feeling it. I met with Courtney to do about 4 or 5 miles before and I kept wanting to go home. I was THIS close. Does that ever happen to you?

Then, I also did the NYRR R U N 5K in Central Park last week. Also wasn’t fast or anything special. It was a bit like hell hot so I decided to hold it in a bit. I managed to not kill myself. It was meh, but I love that course, it’s pretty fast with just one hill. Saw like a million people I knew, which was fun as always to catch up and chit chat and all those things with lots of chs in them. cha cha cha.

If anything else exciting, fun, amazing happened, I either don’t remember or it’s totally private or NSFW! HAAA, got you thinking!!!

DATA DOWNLOAD

exciting huh? I am behind on my mileage… been behind since,… January??? I am lazy or having too much fun, you decide.

Total Miles: 152, not bad, not bad… not amazing but the most this year. July is a good month to run!

Races: 2. LAME!!!! Last month I had 6… so… AH THAT’S WHY MY MILEAGE IS UP!!!

Ups: I heart running in the summer. LOVE IT. JULY NEEDS TO BE 325 DAYS PLEASE.

Downs: omg my hair in the weather. HELP. Send the firemen or the paramedics or Paolo Puttanesca asap.

Balance: I have no idea. ALL I CARE ABOUT RIGHT NOW IS SUMMER STREETS. SUMMER STREETS STARTS IN TWO DAYS. SUMMER STREETS IS THE BEST. SUMMER STREETS HERE I COME. SUMMER STREETS IS THE BEST. DID I TELL YOU I LOVE SUMMER STREETS?

can you tell I am melting?

June

was a great month. Let me break it down before I forget it all (photos and a super organized calendar really do help!). I often wondered if I should do these weekly… there is so much to say but then I forget. Anyway, JUNE was BUSY, My parents came to visit from Argentina, which is awesome, they come every other year, for about a month and it was amazing. We did everything, we went everywhere, I got myself them so tired every single day…. it was awesome and rough at the same time. We literally did it all in a month. We even went to Miami for a few days of untamable hair and sticky skin. I forgot how insanely hot Miami is in the summer. #protip, don’t effing go to Miami in the summer, ever. or really, at any other time but definitely NO in the summer.

Anyway, the month started with the Italy Run NYC, a 5-mile race in Central Park, sponsored by Ferrero where I proceeded to smear Nutella all over me post-race, best celebration possible, correct? Before you ask, there are no pictures of that because it’s a LIE. Race was good; my performance… meh (actually, I don’t remember anymore!).

Literally 3 days later, I did another race, the Summer Series 5K in Prospect Park. It’s on Wednesdays at 7 pm, which REALLY messes up my sleep AND my Thursday morning run with my Flyers friends, BUT…I kinda love showing up because:

I see lots of friends I don’t see every day in Central Park

I cherish (and also hate) racing in a different course than the ones I did one million times in CP (though it’s also harder)

Love the small race ambiance

Also, don’t remember much I think (given there is a picture of my holding a medal, duh) that I placed and I got a medal. Oh, and I totally remember I got something like 71% AG. YEAH, nbd.

And… 3 days right after this one, I had the 3rd race in 6 days… can you imagine how that one is gonna go???? So, Saturday morning was a Mini10K, which is a mega party, so I wasn’t going to miss it. BUT, I also wasn’t going to miss the other mega party Friday night… So come Saturday morning I was a MESS… my feet hurt (from the heels or dancing, who knows!) and I was sleeeeeeepy, SO SLEEEEEPY. I have no idea why, NOT ONLY I SHOWED UP TO THE RACE, BUT I also met Elizabeth (she is real, I promise) to do 4 miles before the race. MENTAL.

But, it was all worth it. I run it, EASY, with 3 friends, and it was a frigging BLAST. I regret nothing. #noregerts.

Told you it was FUN! Yeah, I was physically miserable but no one remembers that… smh. So then my parents arrived and we started the daily tour of all the food and all the things we don’t tell the tourists about. AND the World Cup. June was literally mental. Somehow I managed to get to Queens the next weekend, early, to run the Queens 10K. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make the trek because Argentina was playing at 9 am against Iceland and I’d miss the first half, but so happy I went… Not only I had tons of fun at the race, I SOMEHOW (…miraculously) managed to do OK. Noooo, not a PR or even close but I got up to 69% AG, I was just one minute off from my PR, which is from frigggggging 2013! Does that even count anymore? I say NO.

I am a sucker for high-fives!

Then, wait for this because the madness doesn’t stop there…. I did TWO races the next weekend!!!! YEAH, again, NBD! Crazy, right? I agree. It’s good that I am a biomechanics coach and I know what I am doing because otherwise my leggies would have fallen off by then… Saturday was the Pride Run and OMG I WAS NOT GONNA MISS THAT. I always race the Achilles Hope and Possibility race (which was going to the next day), so I decided to take the Pride Run easy and save my legs for Sunday. Only… I didn’t quite do that. I ended up with a lot of fun AND 12 miles… oooops. #mischiefmanaged (for you all PotterHeads!)

Jackie, Mary, Michael and I run the whole thing chatting from start to end. And the outfits were ON POINT.

Sunday I woke up to do a few miles before the Achilles Hope and Possibility race and I was wishing I had raced the day before… It was muggy, humid, gross and I was tired. You do what you can.

David and Patricia (and corrals B,C,D,E and F) smoked me but I was happy. My parents had come to spectate and it was AWESOME. They came both days. They LOVED IT. Those two races and really something. REALLY REALLY something.

The next weekend was a wash because I was out of town, and back just on July 1st to watch the husband race the NYC TRI, with the parents and my cheering crew along. TRIATHLETES ARE CRAZY, just saying. But he’s so cute, it evens out.

DATA DOWNLOAD

Total Miles: 139, eeeeeek. too much racing makes the mileage go puff!

Races: SIX. 6 races in month. That’s probably maybe a PR, at least this year… ha, I have 12 races this year, 6 in ONE MONTH. 

Ups: All the fun things I did with the parents…!!! The Nutella at the Italy Run was HEAVEN. The Mini10K was SO FUN. Queens was a MEGA REVELATION. Pride and Achilles get me teary every time…

Downs: Mileage was yuk and I am behind my yearly goal. Tapering before races and how sore I am sometimes after…

Balance: ALL AWESOME!!!! I can’t believe I did all those races with all the other stuff I had going on…!

May

May was a whirlwind!! So much happened, and so many races also! I remember I started the month with something we had planned since September last year: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child!

Call me a Potterhead, That was awesome! Twelve hours later, I was up early for the Newport 10K, just over the Hudson, one of my favourite 10Ks, because 1, it’s flat, 2, the finish line bagels (and I don’t really like bagels!). The race was a blast as usual: I’ve run it a few times and it always delivers! It’s usually hot but I love the vibe and the views!

Of course, as usual, there were many runs and stairs workouts sprinkled through the month:

And then there was the Japan Run. I remembered being tired from something but then, at the start, I met with Brian and Nick and Jackie, and we all decided to run together and pace Jackie. Those are my favorite types of races!

Way too much fun was had!! The next weekend, just so I wouldn’t fall off the wagon, I run the NYPD Memorial Run 5K. It was HOT and humid but I rallied and for the first time in months, I did OK. I measure my race performances by AG and I feel I do ok when I get close or over the 70% AG mark. Lately, I had been around 64% to 69%, and in this race I went back up to 70% wohoooo. Also, it was super fun to run on the West Side Highway. I really like how wide it is there.

Then, three days later, after a brutal stairs workout and speedwork, we raced the Prospect Park Summer Series 5K: no biggie. The course was slower (as there is a hill in Prospect Park) but I managed very similar results! Just like 10 or 20 seconds off. I find it so weird to race at night (well, 7 pm), that I find it quite amusing to try to figure out what to eat, how much, when, etc. Of course, then I slept like crap after because I was so wired!

That was a lot of racing…!

DATA DOWNLOAD:

  Total Miles: 147, coming back up, but it’s hard with those short races because I feel like I need a good taper before and then my legs are thrashed for a few days…

Races: FOUR, here we go. Racing season is upon us!

Ups: the NYPD and the Summer Series 5K were definitely a surprise! I wasn’t expecting to do so well (NOT IN PR SHAPE YET THOUGH, ok?) and even though I don’t feel as strong as I used to, feeling in control of the situation really helps! One more thing: Central Park blossoming is the BEST!

Downs: how tired my legs feel two days after any short race! YUK

Balance: VERY HAPPY

So, I need to race more. Even if I am not in fighting shape or without any kind of expectations, I really enjoy it. The fewer expectations I have, the more fun I have, and so I go out there controlled and just let the race happen. I’ve actually started measuring races and performance by the amount of time it takes me to get back home, aka “how much fun I have”. For example, the NYPD Memorial Run was at 9 am and I got home at 4 pm: THAT is a successful race in my eyes now. The truth is I am not always (or ever again!) be as fast as I used to be or as I would like to be or as I would expect to be, so what should I do? Stay home until I feel I am in shape? HECK NO. To me, races are not a test of my fitness or “what I get from the work I put in” but a chance to enjoy with the community of friends who like to get out and enjoy the park with one foot in front of another trying to stay healthy. Yes, I’ll push hard here and there, but if one day I don’t feel like it or I decide to stick with a friend, it’ll be no different: it just HAS to be fun. 

April

We started the month in Argentina, which was great because it was WARM and hey, it was vacations. Got to see the fam and a few touristy things of course, and yeah, a few runs with Juan. Oh and of course I ate my face away. Lots of asado and steaks but also a lot of nikkei, my favourite non-native cuisine while in Argentina (my favourite non-native in the US is Japanese and French, you always gotta know where to get what!). I got back, I did a 4 miler in Central Park, the Run as One… it was so long ago, I can barely remember, or maybe it’s because I’ve been racing a lot the last two months! Oh yeah, I remember I got really hot (I was overdressed) and started way too fast or something, here is one picture!

I obviously spent some time running around, exhibit A:

or working:

or with Juan, usually eating crap:

and/or usually with friends, running or not!!!

DATA DOWNLOAD:

Total Miles: 119. Ooops. That’s low. I really vacationed in Argentina… IT HAPPENS, OKAY?

Races: just one but it was more like a tempo, wasn’t expecting to go all out.

Ups: the fun runs!

Downs: didn’t get a lot done!

Balance: it was good -> lots of blossoming happening all over NYC made it amazingly beautiful!

March

March is always a good month because it is my birthday!!! HA. I started the month with a race, the NYRR Washington Heights Salsa, Blues and Shamrocks 5K (there is a post there), which wasn’t great time wise but it was fun. See proof here:

There was a lot of running, maybe not tons of miles, because it was still cold as hell Alaska? ok Alaska, but it got done. 

And the United NYC Half happened. I saw so many of you there. That was an intense week and I was REALLY just a bit jealous of everyone running the new course. I got to run parts of it last year and was on one of the Pro lead trucks on race day and it looked amazing!! and everyone looked SO happy at the finish line… Really jelly So happy for you all!!!

We then went to San Antonio for a few quiet days of pulled pork and warmer weather. For my bday. We ate a LOT.  We run a bunch too:

DATA DOWNLOAD:

Total Miles: 151, it’s starting to pick up

Races: one. and I was so not wanting to race!

Ups: I did a lot of really great runs

Downs: still not feeling my best.

Balance: not letting it get to me. Let’s hope the nicer weather brings better running!

Also, one more thing I forgot to report on this whole year. A few friends and I have been doing monthly challenges. January was squats, February was pushups, March was planks. We usually just grab one from popsugar.com. Basically it tells you how many to do every day and each day is a bit more. It’s interesting. Maybe you’d want to try it with a few friends? we all text each other to make sure we’re all doing them EVERY DAY… Protip: it works better with a reward at the end of the month!!!!!!!!!!

February

was weird. I happened so quick I barely noticed. Instead of ice-fest, we had a few meltdowns (all kinds of meltdowns!) and even one day in the 70s… OH OH what are people going to use now to discredit “””global warming“””? I feel so bad for those polar bears, and hey, we won’t be moving to Venice anytime soon. Glad I live in a 2nd floor too, but I digress… Anyway, my body decided also to have a meltdown and I had a couple of stooopid issues (my hormones have decided they need more attention than any Kardashian!) and even some very very easy runs where my heart rate was about 50 over the usual… anyway, I was signed up for the NYRR Al Gordon Brooklyn 4M, and I was literally too tired to get up. Of course, I ended up running 11 miles in Central Park instead but my pace was 10:00 and my heart rate was at 82%. Insane. You just can’t win them all, can you? About two weeks ago, I spent the husband and I spent two hours shopping for half marathons for me… I came up with not a lot. If you have any ideas, let me know. Also, my running is so up and down I’ve started questioning if I should try to take some weeks/months off so my body doesn’t feel pressured and maybe that would help?

ha, I was just kidding! I’d be super hyper and way too annoying after just two days and waaaaay unhappy. So, let me just slow down, do it when my body is ok with it, and just enjoy it with no pressure. Deal?

So, I had a few awesome runs, still.

  Plus it was Valentine’s Day and who thinks we’d let any reason to celebrate pass by? any excuse works!

Also, I got to spend some quality time at work (at NYRR) with some people you might know… Meb and Jenny. Do you even need last names? Don’t think so! Meb is now a Team for Kids Ambassador and Jenny is a Rising NYRR Ambassador and both were in town to run the Virtual For the Kids 5K race. If you haven’t check NYRR’s Virtual Races, you should.

  Anyway, it all went waaay too fast!

DATA DOWNLOAD

Total Miles: 124, emmm, got lazy a bit!

Races: big old zero for the year

Ups: weather got surprisingly “hot”. 40s and some 50s even.

Downs: not feeling my best.

Balance: i am getting a bit frustrated. cause, wtf.

January

was really cold. The first two weeks we set cold weather records. It was awful. Running was awful. I started the year working at the midnight run and it was really really cold. I wore everything and it was still crazy cold. But it’s a super fun race!

It was so cold that the races on the second weekend of January got canceled. I managed to run both Saturday and Sunday but it was insanely cold. Everyone kept asking me what I was training for, as most people assumed I had to get the miles in for some marathon or something. I am not really training for anything, just trying to not let the winter win. I can’t say I loved it, but I got out there.

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As you can see there was a couple of blizzards in there, snow, ice, and all the layers. Luckily we had planned a trip to Mexico for mid-January to escape the cold. The vacation part was uneventful but we had a few epic runs with Juan (the husband!).

First night in the hotel, a guy who worked there came up to talk to Juan as he was wearing his 2017 TCS New York City Marathon shirt, to ask him if he had run the marathon. Turned out that Armando, our new friend at the hotel, was a runner too and invited us to his team’s workout the next morning. So, at 6:30 am we went out to meet up the Red Runners, who were having a special run as one of their teammates had passed that week. There was a half an hour of a warm-up, everyone in a circle, probably around 130 people, and the coach had a microphone and big speakers. Before we headed out, we all got one white rose to carry for the memorial. We all run together to a gorgeous lighthouse I never would have seen, we got there with the sunrise, there were speeches, even a triathlete pastor, there were prayers, and we run back with the boombox in tow. Everyone was together. It was very moving. And everyone was so welcome to this stranger. It was very special.

  When I travel, to me, the best thing EVER is to hang with the locals. Nothing could have beat that run.

Juan and I did have a few osom runs. The day after the run with Red Runners, there was a race in town, which we didn’t sign up for because registration was miles and miles away but we run to the start and finish to cheer/spectate. Funnest part: Kukulcan road (the main drag) had no traffic for the race. Quite FUN!

  The next few days we did great. We did a tempo together and we run back to the lighthouse so Juan could see it. We managed to get the sunrise too.

  And like that, we were back and the month was over!

DATA DOWNLOAD!

Total Miles: 140

Races: not even one. But we spectated at one..!

Ups: the runs in Mexico!

Downs: running in the sub 10 temperatures (which is like minus 20 in Celsius). NOT FUN. WITH WIND!

Balance: can it be June now? I really miss racing a LOT.

August 2018 – the month that was well, August is always a good month because of SUMMER STREETS, literally, I should be hired by the Summer Streets People because I feel like a community evangelizer.

[gobigorgohome2016]

On Feeling Like a Runner Again

This week I had a welcome experience:  I realized I felt like a runner again.  

Sometimes when you are hurt, sad, or feeling unlike yourself you do not realize just how bad you felt until you have begun to feel better.  This week, I started noticing telltale signs:  8 - 10 mile runs felt effortless, nagging soreness in my foot was gone, I didn’t require a 3 hour nap and coffee after my most recent long run, and, most notably, I felt like I wasn’t doing enough. 

It seems funny to say that an otherwise negative thought is a sign that something good is happening.  But, in my 19 (!) years of competitive running I have learned to listen to my body, and what certain signals mean.  Running has always been the perfect outlet for my controlled perfectionism.  When I find something that I love, I want to go after it 100%.  But, with running, more isn’t always more.  At the same time, more is more to a certain degree.  It has taken me a while to realize, but feeling like I am out of shape or not doing as much as I should is a funny way of my body telling me I am ready to achieve more. 

Feeling out of shape isn’t the only reason I am feeling like a runner again.  I’m also enjoying running.  My routine has changed from me putting off my run until the last shred of daylight (and dreading it) to getting out the door before 10 AM.  I partly have my honeymoon to thank for that.  Being on CST in CA (Indy is EST), we were naturally awake at 6 AM.  It was easy to go for a run, stretch, foam roll, and shower all before the hotel was done serving breakfast.  I was able to carry over this routine when I returned, and have been loving it.  

In fact, I’ve found a lot of joy in breaking my to-do list into 3 categories:  things I can do in the two hours between waking up and going for my run, all of my running-related activities (I’m very pleased with myself for creating a consistent daily strength and yoga routine), and then anything else I need to do that day.  In the past it has been hard for me to compartmentalize my day, because if something had a deadline I struggled not to stress over it.  I’ve been amazed how the simple act of creating new categories for tasks has made that anxiety go away.  

How many Russian twists do you think I did before I took a photo I semi-liked?

Besides enjoyment, I feel like a runner again because I’m starting to look like my old running self.  Throughout the Fall every time I caught my reflection in a store front (or parked car, let’s be real) my legs looked heavy, I looked like I was plodding, and I wasn’t lifting my knees.  [Sidenote:  am I the only runner that has had to explain that I wasn’t slowing down to see what was inside a parked car, and that I’m only a super vain runner wanting to check out my form?]  Now, I can see (and feel.  hello, calves!) that I am running on my toes again.  I look light and springy, even!

Perhaps what is making me feel most like a runner is that I am making goals that excite me.  I go to bed thinking about what I want to achieve.  I wake up looking forward to putting in the work (and if I’m not looking forward to it, I at least recognize that being done will feel better than not getting out the door)  During the Fall I was scared I wasn’t going to even want to be a runner anymore.  Training wasn’t fun, making healthy choices wasn’t fun, and thinking about the goals I was probably going to miss definitely wasn’t helping.  Lately I’ve been catching myself daydreaming. 

My Spring racing season is shaping up nicely.  My 2018 mantra is #KnowYourWorth.  While I’m excited to explore what that means in both my personal and professional lives, I have a very definite idea for what it means in regards to my running.  When I think about knowing my worth, I picture a race that comes down to a photo finish between me and another competitor.  I see myself out-leaning her, because I am aware of the worth of everything I have put into my training and I don’t want to lose.  Knowing my worth means a defined shift from “la-la-I’m-just-happy-to-be-here-and-let-the-field-pull-me” to being aggressive and knowing what I came for.  My racing schedule reflects races with larger prize purses than I typically run because a) money = competition and competition brings out my best, and b) it’s time for me in my personal running evolution to approach races knowing the woman trying to pass me is worth $500.  

Here is what I have on my schedule:

February:  Polar Bear 5 mi and 5k in Indy

March:  Tobacco Road Half Marathon in NC

April:  waiting to hear back about a bucket list race

May:  Pittsburgh Marathon

I’m really excited to return to Pittsburgh, which is arguably where this journey started.  I have been reflecting on the past year, and while it feels like 2017 might have been a bust because my ultimate goal - getting the A standard and a top 10 finish at CIM - didn’t happen, it wasn’t.  

I don’t like to count how many miles I’ve run in a year (I don’t even have a watch that tracks that sort of thing!)  Instead I'll sum up the year by some of my favorite experiences.  In 2017 I:

-ran a snowy xc race and almost died driving through a mountain pass in a snowstorm in a rental Honda Accord without snow tires

-ran a 5k and 10k PR en route to a solid 15k finish in the strongest field I’ve ever raced

-ran a 10k PR a couple weeks later

-had my best USATF finish, placing 11th at the half marathon championships

-got engaged, then planned a wedding with 200 guests in 6 weeks w/ a $4000 budget (and was under!)

-got health insurance

-continued to grow my businesses

-took a long-overdue vacation

Sure, there were bad parts of 2017, too, but I’m choosing not to dwell on them.  All in all, everything bad that happened led to something better.  I was thinking on my run a couple days ago how cool it is (and also how proud of myself I am) that I recognized I needed a break and have come back feeling so strong.  I was wearing my she-roes bra at the time, so I took a photo of how I felt.  

I’m excited for 2018.  Right now I’m slowly building mileage.  This week will be around 60 mpw.  I am religiously doing my strides, I am building strength in the weight room, I have started doing yoga every day, and I’m finding it really easy to make good choices because I want to find the limits of my potential.  I’ve made big steps towards knowing my worth this year, and I’m really excited to make this mantra a focus in 2018, in all aspects of my life! 

[esandcasg]

Chapter Three – Patterns in the Snow

I sat on the solitary wooden chair outside my hut, watching the sun come up over the jungle trees. Time seemed to be running slowly. Inside, Adam was making porridge, wrongly convinced it would give him some sort of biking advantage. In front of me, standing ten feet away, was Ifan.

“Ifan Thorne,” I said. “I always knew someday you’d come walking back through my door. I never doubted that. Something made it inevitable. So, what are you doing here in Nepal?”

Ifan looked me up and down coolly. “Adam has presumably explained everything.”

I nodded, my teeth starting to grind. “I’ve learned to hate you in the last ten years.”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“I was a child. I thought we were just climbing a mountain. It was wrong and you knew it.”

“You knew what you were doing.”

I stood. “Now I do. This is my place. Get out.”

I turned and walked back into the hut, away from Ifan’s protestations that, as technically he hadn’t come into my place yet, he couldn’t get out; which rendered my statement nonsensical. I swung the door open, interrupting Adam as he was trying on some of my age-defying eye cream.

“Oh… I was just…”

Ignoring him, I went back into the bathroom, cursing the fact that the cheap extractor fan I’d installed the previous year hadn’t had time to ventilate the room yet. I placed my hands on the sink and stared at my reflection in the mirror. The time had taken a toll. Arguably, it wasn’t the years but the mileage; irrespective, I resembled a dried out husk of a man. My face was weather-beaten and pockmarked; lines etched deep trenches in my forehead. My hair, more salt than pepper now, unkempt and thinned by the unrelenting sun. Time had taken its toll; but thankfully not on the eyes.

I bowed my head, giving in to the inevitable. I had lost something on Kangleong. Maybe it was time to get it back.

I walked back out into the main room of my hut. Adam had by now gone outside, the appearance of wrinkles on his forehead presumably now visibly reduced via the magic of oxycutin-10. I switched the TV off and looked round the room, wondering if this would be for the last time. It was home, and I was happy here. But something was pulling me away, to complete something I’d began ten years previously.

I clambered into the back of the C-Max; Ifan drove us through the Korok Forest to Gerudo Town, the nearest large settlement. Ifan explained that this was where he and Adam had been staying whilst trying to track me down.

As Adam went off to check out of the hostel, Ifan and I found a bar. Gallantly, Ifan bought me a bottle of the second cheapest beer. For a while we drank in silence, save for the occasional fart.

“So,” I said, after half my bottle was finished. “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

Ifan looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly that.”

“You said Adam had told you everything.”

My hands circled the bottle impatiently.

“He told me some stuff, sure. Stuff about time travel, Henry Craven and going back to Kangleong. Now I want you to tell me what’s really going on.”

Ifan let out a hiss of breath. “What he told you was true.”

“From a certain point of view?”

“Look, let’s not start this again, you made that Star Wars reference in the epilogue of Vertical Summit.”

He was right. Damn him, I thought, taking another gulp of my beer.

“Look,” he began, making some attempt at conciliation, but the anger rose up again inside me. I couldn’t help it. Ten years had done nothing to help me accept what had happened.

“Do you have any idea how bad it was?” I interrupted. “I don’t think you do. I don’t think any of you have the first idea. I died here. I lost everything. Everything I was, everything I wanted to be. And then I got given it back.”

“What are you talking about?”

I shook my head. Maybe this was too obscure a reference; I wasn’t convinced either of Ifan or Adam had watched the DVD extras of Touching the Void.

“You owe me,” I said, finally. “I had to put your names on the memorial at base camp. Had to phone your parents. Had to sing a hymn at your funeral and make hors d’oeuvres for the wake. Vol au vents. You know I hate vol au vents. I found some caper berries that went really well with cream cheese, but no-one really went for them so I had to take them all back in my car. I thought they’d keep for a while at least but they lasted three days. Three days Ifan! I had to eat 150,000 vol au vents in three days.”

Ifan looked at me but said nothing.

“All this time carrying your secret. Why didn’t you just tell me from the start? I could have helped. Or I could have stayed at home. Or climbed something people would believe that I climbed. Yeah, that’s right. No-one believed I’d summited. There was no-one left alive to back me up. They thought I’d faked the photos. ‘No-one can climb Kangleong in winter’ they said. So what did they assume happened? That I went on an expedition where everyone else died and I miraculously survived without a scratch? No-one believed a word I’d said; even after I told the whole story.”

“I thought you told it well. The even chapters at least.”

“Thanks.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“The truth!” I almost shouted. “Bloody hell, Ifan, don’t you think I’m owed that? I kept your secret, even though it ruined me. I had to give up my entire life, come halfway round the world just to find some peace. And I found it. I actually found a peaceful life for myself. And then you two turn up and shatter it.”

“It’s not as easy as that.”

“You think anything has been easy for me?”

Ifan looked at me in the eyes and I knew he agreed; he owed me, him and Adam both.

“What we told you was true, back in the tunnel,” he began. “We were on Craven’s tail. He knew we were after him; he’d tried to kill us on that mountain. So we had to fake our deaths, had to make him think we were out of the equation. Then, only then, he might lower his guard and let us get close enough to bring him in.”

“You told me this.”

“We spent the next three years living in the Karakoram. Trying to blend in. We had most of our gear from base camp and plenty of energy gels, so we knew we could hunker in for long enough. In the meantime we were looking for the exact smuggling route Craven was using. It wasn’t enough to know it was somewhere in the Karakoram. We needed the exact trail. It took three cold years, but eventually we found it.”

“I thought you’d already found the trail? Isn’t that what the tunnels were for?”

Ifan shook his head. “You studied the Vietnam War, right? Think of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. A whole network of routes, and the US never knew which routes were being used. Sort of like that. They’d been building this network up for years. We don’t know how long the tunnels have been there, but they might even pre-date the smuggling. They certainly pre-date Craven. There are only two of us, so there was no way to patrol all the tunnels in order to find out which ones they were using.”

“Presumably there was some sort of pre-planned route? Or a system?”

“Exactly,” said Ifan. It took a long time to figure it out, but we did. We got very lucky. We knew we were getting nowhere. We couldn’t just wait in the tunnels because that would get back to Craven. We had to be patient and figure out the system. After three years of waiting, we started our observations. Two years later we had made barely any progress. Truth be told we were on the verge of giving up. Morale was pretty low; Adam and I were barely talking to each other, we’d got so sick of each other’s constant company. So I suggested we forget about things and climb a mountain. So we did. Gasherbrum IV.”

I let out a sharp hiss of breath. Gasherbrum IV was just under 8000m, so not technically in the group of the 13 highest mountains in the world, but its difficulty was legendary. No safe route on the mountain, a sheer west face. Originally known as K3, it was felt in some circles to be a harder mountain to climb than K2. Each route was exposed; you could be blasted by hurricane-force winds, hit by rockfall or swept off the route by avalanches. Seracs hung perilously on each way to the summit, barely clinging on to severely steep faces.

“Acclimatisation wasn’t a problem,” continued Ifan, “as we’d been living pretty much at 30,000ft for the three years previously, just under the death zone. So we figured we could just do a fast and light ascent of one of the ridges. We knew it would be tough.”

“Tough!” I exclaimed.

“Only problem was we knew nothing about the routes, or when was best to climb, and I found out that Adam hadn’t bothered to pay our broadband bill, so we couldn’t get wifi to google it. I suggested we head up an easier mountain, like Broad Peak, wait there with a telescope and plan our expedition.”

“Okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure where the hell this was going.

“So we made it up Broad Peak easy enough. Conditions weren’t brilliant – a lot of scratchy ice. Not a lot to dig into. A bit of a slog. But anyway, we got up to the top, set up our tent and just watched Gasherbrum IV for a month. As you know, there are a lot of avalanches there, supposedly. So we watched for their frequency, where they tended to fall, etc. We started to write our observations down. And then we noticed.”

“Noticed what?” I said, signalling the barman for more beer.

“There was a pattern. An undeniable pattern. It took us a while to realise. It was only when we were having a barbeque to mark our anniversary that I re-read the notebook and noticed the pattern. Avalanches down the south-east ridge specifically. At 8.45, every morning, there would be an avalanche. Some days just a solitary one. Other times two, or three. Rarely, four. But always at 8.45. And always on the south-east ridge.”

“Hold on,” I said, finishing off an onion ring from the sharing platter I’d ordered for myself. “Are you serious? Timed avalanches?” I picked up a mozzarella stick. “You realise how ridiculous that sounds?”

“Which is why we stayed on the summit for another month, just to be sure. I’ve still got the notebook. I can show you.”

“Well, what does that mean?”

“A signal.” Ifan took a folded piece of manuscript out of his jacket pocket and spread it out over the table, knocking over a couple of jalapeno poppers onto the floor. Observing the three second rule I crammed them hurriedly into my mouth, not willing to sacrifice them to the story.

I looked down at the table. The paper Ifan had unfolded was a map; a map of the Karakoram. I counted off the peaks – K2, Broad Peak, the Gasherbrums, Mason Mount, Denali and, of course, Kangleong. But there was something else on the map. Criss-crossing the mountains, someone had drawn a series of coloured lines in thick marker. Seeing the criss-cross made me jump.

“What am I looking at?” I asked, taking a bite of my plant-based burger.

“This is the network of tunnels. We think we found them all. Each different colour represents a different route.”

Although each coloured line ended in a different place on the western edge of the mountain range and started at different places at the northern boundary of the Karakoram, at points the lines converged before separating again. I could count six separate colours.

“Six routes,” said Ifan, as if he was reading my thoughts or the last sentence. “Six routes through the mountains.”

“So,” I said, “let me get this right. You’re saying that each number of avalanches corresponds to a different smuggling route?”

“Yep.”

“But you said there were a maximum of four avalanches.”

Ifan nodded. “We saw four three times. Most of the time it was one, two or three. But when we looked in the diary, Adam had recorded five avalanches on the south-east route once. Early on.”

“Okay, so that’s five. What about the sixth?”

Ifan leaned forward and pointed to the red line on the map. For the most part it ran a distance away from everything else.

“This one,” he said. “We think this is the sixth. We’re not even completely sure it exists. We drew the line on this map where we thought it goes but we’ve only found parts of it. We think sections of it are hidden. Behind seracs, inside crevasses, that kind of thing. But we found tunnels which didn’t seem to go anywhere. We think they’re part of this sixth route. A secret route.”

“What for?”

“Craven himself. You know the passetto di borgo in Rome? Provides an escape route for the Pope to the Castel Sant’angelo. Something like that. A route only Craven knew. A way for him to escape. That’s why there are no six avalanche signals. We think it’s for him only.”

“You think.”

Ifan grimaced. “We don’t know for sure. After we descended from Broad Peak we searched extensively for him. We found the tunnels, bit by bit, and built up this map. We knew where the passages intersected, we had a remote camera on Broad Peak watching Gasherbrum IV, so when the avalanches went off we knew where to go. Over the next two years we caught ninety-six smugglers. Found seventeen tonnes of plutonium. But nothing of Craven himself. You can see the routes all begin and end at separate places. So there was no way of knowing where he was holed up. Of course, the smugglers themselves wouldn’t tell us. They were too scared of him. Meanwhile he was happy for them to take all the flack.”

“A craven individual, you might say.”

Ifan looked at me silently.

“Hold on,” I said, “you said you were hiding out for three years. Then you said you were finding tunnels for two years. That’s five years.”

“We spent a while looking for you.”

“How long?”

“Six months.”

I paused. I’d only got GCSE maths but I’m fairly sure that didn’t account for the whole ten year gap between seeing them last and now.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.

Ifan looked down at the table. He slowly folded back up the map and placed it back inside his jacket. Then he took a deep lungful of air.

“Towards the end of the time we were rounding people up. We were on K2, just around the Black Pyramid, where one of the tunnels runs behind. It was a snowy day. Fairly typical bad weather for K2. Anyway, we decide to head up to the balcony, to see the famous bottleneck and the serac above it. Adam left before I did as I had to pop a few things in the boot of the car. When I got to the balcony there was no sign of him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’d gone. I could barely see his tracks in the snow. The whole balcony was a complete white-out. No sign of anything at all. I couldn’t even see as far as the bottleneck. He’d vanished.”

I didn’t understand.

“I stayed on that mountain for four years, looking for him. Looking for any sign of what had happened. Then, just as I was packing up at Camp II, he came wandering back down the mountain as if nothing had happened.”

I still didn’t understand.

“So what had happened?” I asked.

Ifan shook his head. “I don’t know. He seemed completely fine. Still had all his gear, still wearing the same clothes. But… there was something different. I didn’t realise until we were down at base camp. But then he started talking about you, about getting back to Kangleong and 2013. Stopping Craven. I didn’t understand it.”

“You mean…”

“Yeah. This whole time travel thing. The whole thing about being from the future. That’s what he’s been saying since he came down the mountain. I don’t understand it. But he’s convinced we have to get back to Kangleong. He’s convinced we need to stop Craven.”

“But what happened up there? What happened to him in those four years?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ifan, for heaven’s sake…”

“Jeez, Andrew!” Ifan was shouting now. “Read between the lines! I haven’t decided what happened! I’m leaving that for Adam to potentially use in a subsequent chapter!”

I fell quiet, unable to process everything. What had happened to Adam to leave him convinced he was from the future? Where had he been for those four years?

“So,” Ifan said softly, “I figured that the best thing to do would be to go along with it. Find you, then head back to Kangleong. See if I could understand along the way what was going on.”

“Okay,” I said. “So what’s the issue?”

Ifan looked up at me. The expression chilled me to the bone.

“Kangleong’s not there anymore.”

“What do you mean? Not there?”

“That’s what I’m telling you kid. It’s been totally blown away.”

“What? How?”

“The earthquake. You saw it on the TV. It’s reduced the mountain to rubble. There’s no way back. Whatever was hiding there, there’s no way to find it now.”

I looked over Ifan’s shoulder. Entering the bar, his 85 litre backpack over his shoulders, was Adam. He looked down at the bottles of beer.

“Where’s mine?” he said.

Ifan and I looked at each other in silence.

[highschoolharrier]

Blake Borden is a distance coach at Huntsville (AL), a program on the rise looking to qualify for NXN after a seventh place finish in the Southeast region last year.

High School Harrier: Your boys team finished a great seventh place at NXR SE last year. Were you expecting to finish higher, lower, or about that spot? 

Blake Borden: We were honestly aiming at top three, hoping for an at large NXN bid if close enough to second, if we finished third. A few of the guys had rough days with the weather that day. It had been a long regular season. They had exerted a lot of emotional energy to capture the state title, where the year before we were nipped by 4 points at state to finish runner-up. The last time HHS had finished in the top 2 before 2017 was the early 1980s. Overall, after reflecting a few weeks later, we were "Ok" with 7th as a team, considering how far off expectations nearly each guy was as an individual. 

HSH: Compared to last year, where do you see your program this fall?

BB: Much deeper top to bottom. We lost a great senior in Nick Ceci to graduation - he will be running for Alabama this year - but getting 6 of the projected top 7 back is tough to beat. We feel that each of those 6 will improve a lot this year because that pack is so close. They get to train with each other day in, day out, and will definitely push each other to improve. There is no real "top guy" which I feel is beneficial. There is also a group right on their heels from the "#7" to as high as "#15" who are hungry and each feel they have what it takes to be on the line at NXR & could finish in any of those spots on any given day. 

HSH: Alabama is a state that might often get overlooked in terms of distance running. What would you say to those skeptical of the quality of Alabama cross country?

BB: There are a lot of great runners in the state. I can't speak for anywhere else but in terms of the early part of our season - meet season that is, because the summer DUH - we compete in some pretty high temps and humidity, so times aren't always glamorous nor do they translate to how tough our runners are. For instance, at Jesse Owens last year in the first week of October the heat index was around 95. The top teams in our state this year in my opinion could hold up with most states in the southeast. 

HSH: Do you have any athletes you believe are ready to have a breakout season?

BB: Anybody wearing a Huntsville High singlet! 

HSH: How many assistant coaches do you have throughout the year?

BB: We have a small staff relative to our team size - a head coach: Stephen Baker who joined the staff last year; I am in my 4th year with the team and am the full time faculty member coach at the school, and we have one volunteer assistant. Some days we herd cats. 

HSH: How big is your school and how big is your team? 

BB: We are right around 1,800 students in the 7A classification (largest). We have 100 members on the team 7th-12th. 

HSH: Do you have any big regular season meets your team will be participating in this fall?

BB: We are hitting the Memphis Twilight meet in TN, Chickasaw Trails in Alabama on our state course, and Great American.  

HSH: What is your philosophical approach to coaching that shapes how you run your program?

BB: The culture of the team dictates the results of the team. High expectations across the board, but do not sacrifice fun. 

HSH: What is a sample week of training for your program during the cross country season?

BB: For non-meet weeks we use a 14 day "week" with at least one challenging true long run at the end of one of the weeks - typically on Saturday. There will be an aerobic heavy workout on the other Saturday if we don't do a 2nd long run, something like a continuous tempo or 2k reps. One hard hilly effort per 14 days. We use HIITs & strides/striders year round. Our HIITS vary from flat 150m sprints, to hilly 75-100m sprints. We do strength and hurdle work a few times a week as well. 

HSH: What type of mileage does your average top 7 runner do during their base phase?

BB: It is based on age as well as experience, not just their PR or ability level.  We also individualize per what works best for the athlete. For instance, a few of our experienced varsity level seniors will do between 60-65 a few times, while another senior of the same experience level works best with 50-55. It is a pretty common progression system. Top end is 40-45 for fresh, 45-55 for soph, 50-60 for juniors, 55-65 for seniors. Again, no one fits into every box perfectly, so it varies. 

HSH: Do you have a staple workout you like to do with your program?

BB: Long runs are probably the primary staple - with different variables inserted into them at different times. Last 3 miles progress to tempo, hit a tempo mile at 1/3 & 2/3, etc etc but we also have a 1.2 mile hill called Bankhead at a state park nearby we hit a few times a season. We have taken the Lumberjack from NAU and modified it as well as a variation of a workout from GVSU we call ROHO.  

HSH: What type of ancillary training does your team do?

BB: High/low hurdles, med ball circuits, individualized weight training to meet their individual needs - we do everything under the sun we can in this category. Constantly learning and researching new items to add. 

HSH: What do you think is the most important aspect of your training program?

BB: Consistent aerobic development + year round athletic development (strength/ancillary/HIITS) 

HSH: What was the most influential book or coach that helped get to where we've brought the program?

BB: Stanley Johnson at Lawrence Co. High in small town Alabama - he was my high school xc and basketball coach. Myles Scarano - he is younger than me (even though it doesn't look that way) but was a major reason our team is what it is and helped me learn a lot about training when I was getting back into the xc world. Coach Baker brought a lot of valuable experience to the team last year as well and helps keep me grounded when I get a little too passionate. 

HSH: What do you do to foster team camaraderie?

BB: We have team dinners before meets. We foster encouragement of all levels of teammates at meets - such as the varsity girls team cheering on the junior high boys, etc.. Encourage the leaders of the team to really get to know the new kids and host team gatherings outside of coach/team led activities. Pack up workout formats - learn to hurt together and support each other through the tough days. We just show the kids that we truly care about them and get to know them as coaches too. 

Photo is from Alabama HS Photo Twitter.

[emilysn2019-blog]

The IT Experience Chapter Two: the Derry Canal Days Festival is a free haunted house that will run August 15 to September 8, 2019, with free tickets that can be booked here. In this post, we preview this new interactive experience with a review & photos of IT Experience: Neibolt House, which we toured prior to the last IT movie two years ago.

As with IT Experience: Neibolt House, IT Experience Chapter Two – The Derry Canal Days Festival will be open daily from 2 pm until 11pm at Hollywood Blvd & Vine St. and will offer free advance ticketing with a standby queue for guests who don’t score tickets. Expect long lines for standby (as you can read below via our experience last time); we’d highly recommend trying to book reservations.

Per the IT Experience Chapter Two – The Derry Canal Days Festival official site, “your cherished memories of the old carnival days will be turned inside out during this 40-minute spine tingling experience. There will be over 10 immersive and terrifying interactive spaces, giving visitors a glimpse into the upcoming film.”

If this description is accurate, the duration of the IT Experience Chapter Two – The Derry Canal Days Festival is significantly longer than its predecessor, which lasted around 12-15 minutes, depending upon how quickly you walked through the IT house.

Aside from this description and the dates, not much else is know about the IT Experience Chapter Two – The Derry Canal Days Festival. We do have the promo poster below, and following that is our review of the original IT Experience from two years ago:

Normally, we wouldn’t cover something with such a short run, but we waited in line roughly two hours for this, so dammit, it’s getting a blog post. Note that after the jump, this IT Experience: Neibolt House Hollywood review is not spoiler-free, as there will be photos. If you want the short answer of whether you should do this, it’s yes.

The IT Experience: Neibolt House Hollywood is somewhat akin to a Halloween Horror Nights maze/house. The key distinction here is that the story isn’t a non-stop ‘flow’ of guests walking through a set path. Instead, small groups of seven guests (dubbed the “Losers Club”) are actively guided by Georgie, with prolonged stops in each room.

The reason for this approach is due to the more active nature of the storytelling here. Georgie interacts with effects that come to life in each room. Almost none of these effects are immediate or on an interval timer; they require Georgie to trigger, and then the show unfolds while guests are in a particular room, actively engaging with a particular scene.

This is really cool, and I definitely prefer this approach to the steady stream of guests that go through a Halloween Horror Nights maze. You get a chance to let things percolate, suspense builds, and the experience becomes more than just being about cheap scares and startling moments.

Not only does this make for a more suspenseful and satisfying experience as tension builds, but you also see more of the details in each room. It also takes more time to snake through the IT Experience, with an average tour duration likely to be around 12 minutes. (The hosts indicated it was 15 minutes, but our tour wasn’t quite that long.)

I would say that this makes it the ‘next generation’ of haunted houses, and that Universal should take note. However, there’s one glaring problem with this approach: capacity is abysmal. Seven guests enter the The IT Experience: Neibolt House every 5 minutes. That amounts to an hourly capacity of less than 100 guests per hour.

As mentioned, we were in line for roughly 2 hours. We had heard that the wait had been around 1-2 hours on weeknights, so we figured it we arrived at 12:30 p.m. on a Monday, we would wait under an hour. This belief was reinforced when we saw a short line in front of us. Unfortunately, due to capacity, that short line was still a two-hour wait.

When we exited the IT Experience: Neibolt House, the line was quite a bit longer than when we got into it. I’m guessing it was about three hours at that point. I cannot imagine what it will be on weekends or evenings, but then again, this is tourist season in Los Angeles, so maybe it’ll actually be shorter after Labor Day.

Circling back to the substance of the IT Experience: Neibolt House, there were a lot of cool details. I would say that, overall, the level of detail was about on par with an average (maybe even slightly below-average) Halloween Horror Nights house. In this regard, it probably hurts the IT Experience: Neibolt House a bit that you’re lingering in these rooms far longer than you’re in each HHN maze.

Where the IT Experience unquestionably trumps Universal’s mazes is in terms of special effects. There are animatronics, reasonably well-executed projections, and a lot happens on cue. Oh, and there are the aforementioned “holographic horrors.” (Something the world truly needs more of.)

Spoiler Alert: Hologram Tupac does not make an appearance, which is of course the biggest letdown of the entire thing. Now I don’t even care about this movie. What’s there in the IT Experience is pretty good, especially for something that only runs a month.

Where it falls short of Halloween Horror Nights is in terms of scares. There are only a handful of startling moments, and none were particularly effective on our tour.

This is a pretty big weakness of the IT Experience. In fact, some of the suspense that it builds ultimately just fizzles out. Those instances aside, the suspenseful execution here is pretty top-notch.

There are some great moments during the experience, and there is also a ton of excellent details and visual effects. As a geek for themed design, perhaps I put too much weight on this element of the IT Experience: Neibolt House. I also have to admit that I find the attempts at startling people as they walk through a haunted house somewhat lame and predictable, so this wasn’t a huge deal for me. To each their own, though.

From my perspective, a potentially bigger problem is that some of these details are going to be lost on literally everyone, since the movie is not out yet. There were things like magazines, toys, and other small touches that I assume feature in the plot of the film–or at least in the background.

I’m sort of used to this by now. Most of the films at Halloween Horror Nights I’ve never seen, so I’m usually oblivious to some of what’s going on and I need it explained to me by friends. I will say that I normally appreciate the houses for films I’ve actually seen (American Werewolf is my all-time favorite house), usually because I “get” some of these things, or the in-jokes that are scattered throughout the sets.

All things considered, I really enjoyed the IT Experience: Neibolt House and would highly recommend it if you’re a local, even with the long wait. In addition to the standby line, there are also tickets available–they’re “currently” sold out, but you can join the waitlist (we probably wouldn’t bank on that). If you’re visiting Southern California, I’m not sure the experience is “worth” several hours of valuable vacation time, but your mileage may vary on that. Be sure to pack sunscreen and a hat (the queue is all outdoors with very little shade), and your camera (photos are allowed!) for the IT Experience: Neibolt House. I’m hopeful that the IT Experience: Neibolt House Hollywood will have its run extended (at least through Halloween!), because this is too well-done to be only a month-long offering that ~1,000 people per day will have a chance to experience.

If you’re planning a trip, check out our Ultimate Guide to Los Angeles or our California category of posts. For even more things to do, The Best Things to Do in Los Angeles: 1001 Ideas is an exceptional resource, which is written by other locals. If you enjoyed this post, help spread the word by sharing it via social media. Thanks for reading!

Your Thoughts

Have you done the IT Experience: Neibolt House Hollywood? If so, what did you think of it? Too scary? Not scary enough? Worth the wait? Any additional tips to add that we didn’t cover? Any questions about the IT Experience? 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101 Things to Do in Southern California

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[elisekw4-blog]

Oregon!!!

I have officially made it to the next state on the PCT, Oregon! After four months and two days I walked across the California/Oregon boarder around 8 pm. I walked 32 miles that day and spent a good part of it reflecting on what California has taught me. I have seen so many different landscapes, met so many incredible people (both on and off the trail), pushed myself to limits I’ve never been pushed to before, and learned a hell of a lot about myself. California is HUGE. Competing my walk across it is hands down my best accomplishment. Thinking back to the desert and the beginning seems like so long ago. So many people I grew to know and love so much have come and gone, and for all of you who know who you are, I had you in my heart and on my mind as I walked into the next chapter of this journey. Just a mile before the boarder, it started to rain. This really felt monumental because it never REALLY rained on me in California. It misted and it snowed, but these were raindrops just like back home. The most bizarre thing happened. It stopped raining and cleared up just as we approached the boarder. My friend Splash and I signed the first register in Oregon, took our obligatory boarder photo, and sat in the dirt, across the state line and drank our warm beers that we packed out to celebrate. All of the emotions were flowing through me as I let it set in that I am now done with California. I made it to Oregon! I’ll tell you…California didn’t want us to forget her. The last day, climbing out of the valley was a hot, strenuous day. We climbed up and down all day in the smoky fog. I’m talking huge mountain climbs…nothing easy. It made it all the more worth it getting to that boarder! I kept saying to Splash, “we’re in Oregon!” for the rest of the night, and even throughout the next morning. Oregon is beautiful so far. The terrain is great! California really kicked my butt at times, but prepared me to be a climbing machine. Oregon is much flatter than California and is know for people breezing through it. We will see what it brings for me.

When I arrived in Ashland, I reunited with Diaper Boy. He had arrived a few days before me since increasing his mileage and he decided to wait on me. It was good for us to do our own thing for a bit and for me it was especially good to prove to myself that I'm strong and capable all on my own. But as the saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder. It just wasn't the same. This little partnership we have developed over the past six weeks is a good one. We missed each others company and have decided to hike together again. We spent some time in the Ashland library when I first arrived, researching the forest fires that are just ahead of us. As we were walking down the stairs, leaving the library, a gentleman asked where we were headed on our journey (we get this question frequently as we have a 'special' look about us with our dirty/tattered selves with our packs). We told him Canada, and that we were hiking the PCT. He offered for us to come stay in his backyard and use his shower and laundry. I had been in Ashland for less than an hour and a stranger had already opened up their home to us. Our new friend and host, Barret ended up being an actor and was staring in one of the plays at the Shakespeare festival. He invited us to see his production of Julius Caesar the very next day! What a treat while in Ashland. I had another unexpected treat during my stay. I was able to meet up with some good friends from home, the Ducketts. It was so good to see familiar faces from home and get to catch up! They are a very special family to me and I'm so glad that they happened to be visiting Ashland at the same time that I was passing through! We have decided to take a couple of zero days (days where zero miles are hiked). With the fires changing everyone's plans, my feet hurting, and the sheer fact that I haven't taken a zero day since Yosemite, we are giving ourselves a respite. DB has some family in Eugene, where we have hitched to and are staying with for the next few days. On our way hitching to Eugene, we stopped in Medford at the REI. I needed to replace some gear which had broken and we both got new shoes. I'm happy to rest my feet. They have been pretty painful since I've been doing 30 mile days on the regular. I really hope this rest gives them what they need, in order to keep doing big days. Here's to a mini vacation from the trail. Already looking forward to getting back out there ;) Much love, -Munchies

[brinazzle]

4

As Nadeem’s coach, I had the luxury of interviewing his colleagues and direct reports and hearing the unvarnished truth about his behavior. I was accumulating valuable feedback that Nadeem wasn’t in a position to get. A little prodding is required at the start of each interview, because people are essentially decent and kind. They don’t want to hurt a colleague’s feelings, or appear catty. Sometimes they’re afraid of retribution, despite the cloak of anonymity I provide. But eventually people realize that this process is in everyone’s best interest, so they tell the truth. The interviewees almost always focus on my client’s good or bad behavior that they have experienced personally. Interviewees rarely mention the environment in which that behavior occurs. I have to press for that information. When does he act like this? With whom? Why? Eventually I get useful answers. The interviewees begin describing my client behaving badly in situational terms such as when he’s “under pressure” or “racing a deadline” or “juggling too many balls.” Slowly it dawns on them how profoundly the environment affects behavior. * That’s what happened with Nadeem’s feedback. His colleagues described Nadeem’s defensiveness in meetings. But it took insistent questioning before they associated it exclusively with Simon’s presence in the room. Feedback—both the act of giving it and taking it—is our first step in becoming smarter, more mindful about the connection between our environment and our behavior. Feedback teaches us to see our environment as a triggering mechanism. In some cases, the feedback itself is the trigger.Consider, for example, all the feedback we get when we’re behind the wheel of a car, how we ignore some of it, and why only some of it actually triggers desirable behavior. Say you’re driving down a country road at the posted speed limit of 55 mph, approaching a village. You know this because a half mile outside the village a sign says, SP EE D ZONE AHEAD 30 MPH. The sign is just a warning, not a command to slow down, so you maintain your speed. Thirty seconds later, you reach the village, where the sign says, SP EE D LIMIT 30 MPH. You may comply, but if you’re like most drivers you’ll maintain your speed (or slow down slightly) because you’ve been driving on autopilot in a 55-mph environment and it’s easier to continue doing what you’re doing than to stop doing it. Only if you see a manned police car monitoring motorists’ speeds will you comply with the mandated 30 mph—because a police officer handing out speeding tickets represents an unwanted consequence to you. Every community in the developed world has to deal with speeding drivers putting citizens at risk. For years drivers in my neighborhood north of San Diego ignored the speed signs that told them to slow down as they transitioned from the 65 mph on the San Diego Freeway to 45 mph on the main commercial thoroughfares and 30 mph in school zones and residential neighborhoods. Nothing worked to decrease speeding, not even a greater police ticketing presence, until town officials installed radar speed displays (RSDs)—a speed limit sign posted above a digital readout measuring “Your Speed.” You’ve probably seen them on your town’s streets near a school or as you approach a tollbooth. If the RSD says you’re speeding, you’ve probably stepped on the brake immediately. As sensor technology becomes cheaper, RSDs are being more widely used so the data about their effectiveness is deeper and more reliable. Speed limit compliance increases 30 to 60 percent with RSDs—and the effect lasts with drivers for several miles beyond the RSD. Radar speed displays—also called driver feedback systems—work because they harness a well-established concept in behavior theory called a feedback loop. The RSDs measure a driver’s action (that is, speeding) and relay the information to the driver in real time, inducing the driver to react. It’s a loop of action, information, reaction. When the reaction is measured, a new loop begins, and so on and so on. Given the immediate change in a driver’s behavior after just one glance at an RSD, it’s easy to imagine the immense utility of feedback loops in changing people’s behavior. A feedback loop comprises four stages: evidence, relevance, consequence, and action. Once you recognize this, it’s easy to see why the radar speed displays’ exploitation of the loop works so well. Drivers get data about their speed in real time (evidence). The information gets their attention because it’s coupled with the posted speed limit, indicating whether they’re obeying or breaking the law (relevance). Aware that they’re speeding, drivers fear getting a ticket or hurting someone (consequence). So they slow down (action). I’m basically initiating a feedback loop at the start of any one-on-one coaching assignment. My first stage with Nadeem, for example, was presenting him with the evidence—the interviews that I had compiled and shared with him. The stories about his behavior were emotionally resonant for Nadeem because they were coming from people he respected. They had unequivocal relevance. The loop’s third stage, consequence, was patently obvious: if Nadeem didn’t change his behavior around Simon, he was not behaving as the team member he wanted to be, and potentially damaging his career. It wasn’t a difficult choice. Once the evidence, relevance, and consequence were firmly lodged in Nadeem’s mind, he had sufficient clarity to close the loop with action. He would ignore Simon’s provocateuring ways. He would resist sparring with Simon. He would win Simon over and, in turn, reclaim his colleague’s respect and his own reputation. Each time he displayed restraint with Simon, he got a little better, a little more confident that he was on the right track and making a better impression on his colleagues. And the loop could run again, a prior action leading to a new action nudging Nadeem ever closer to his goal. This is how feedback ultimately triggers desirable behavior. Once we deconstruct feedback into its four stages of evidence, relevance, consequence, and action, the world never looks the same again. Suddenly we understand that our good behavior is not random. It’s logical. It follows a pattern. It makes sense. It’s within our control. It’s something we can repeat. It’s why some obese people finally—and instantly—take charge of their eating habits when they’re told that they have diabetes and will die or go blind or lose a limb if they don’t make a serious lifestyle change. Death, blindness, and amputation are consequences we understand and can’t brush aside. I don’t want to get lost in theory over feedback loops. They’re complex and can be applied to almost anything. Photosynthesis is a feedback loop between the sun and plants. Owners of hybrid cars (like me in my Ford C-Max) are in a feedback loop when they obsessively check their dashboard’s gas consumption display and adjust their driving to maximize gas mileage (they’re called “hypermilers”). The Cold War arms race, with East and West escalating weaponry to match each other, may be the most expensive feedback loop in history. For our purposes, let’s focus on the feedback loop created by our environment and our behavior. As a trigger, our environment has the potential to resemble a feedback loop. After all, our environment is constantly providing new information that has meaning and consequence for us and alters our behavior. But the resemblance ends there. Where a well-designed feedback loop triggers desirable behavior, our environment often triggers bad behavior, and it does so against our will and better judgment and without our awareness. We don’t know we’ve changed. Which brings up the obvious question (well, obvious to me): What if we could control our environment so it triggered our most desired behavior—like an elegantly designed feedback loop? Instead of blocking us from our goals, this environment propels us. Instead of dulling us to our surroundings, it sharpens us. Instead of shutting down who we are, it opens us. To achieve that, we first have to clarify the term trigger:
A behavioral trigger is any stimulus that impacts our behavior.


Within that broad definition there are several distinctions that improve our understanding of how triggers influence our behavior. 












































1. A behavioral trigger can be direct or indirect. Direct triggers are stimuli that immediately and obviously impact behavior, with no intermediate steps between the triggering event and your response. You see a happy baby and smile. A child chases a basketball into the street in front of your car and you instantly hit the brakes. Indirect triggers take a more circuitous route before influencing behavior. You see a family photo that initiates a series of thoughts that compel you to pick up the phone and call your sister. 




















































2. A trigger can be internal or external. External triggers come from the environment, bombarding our five senses as well as our minds. Internal triggers come from thoughts or feelings that are not connected with any outside stimulus. Many people meditate to dampen the internal trigger they refer to as an “inner voice.” Likewise, the idea that inexplicably pops into your head when you’re alone musing on a problem is an internal trigger inspiring you to take action. Its origin may be a mystery, but if it stimulates behavior, it’s as valid as any external prompt. 



















































3. A trigger can be conscious or unconscious. Conscious triggers require awareness. You know why your finger recoils when you touch the hot plate. Unconscious triggers shape your behavior beyond your awareness. For example, no matter how much people talk about the weather they’re usually oblivious about its triggering influence on their moods. Respondents to the question “How happy are you?” claimed to be happier on a perfect weather day than respondents to the same question on a nasty weather day. Yet when asked, most respondents denied the weather had any impact on their scores. The weather was an unconscious trigger that changed their scores but was outside their awareness. 


















































4. A trigger can be anticipated or unexpected. We see anticipated triggers coming a mile away. For example, at the beginning of the Super Bowl, we hear the national anthem and expect raucous cheering as it ends. The song triggers a predictable response. (It works the other way, too. We know that our demeaning language will trigger other people’s anger so we avoid it.) Unanticipated triggers take us by surprise, and as a result stimulate unfamiliar behavior. My friend Phil did not see his fall down the stairs coming, but the fall triggered a powerful desire to change. 



















































5. A trigger can be encouraging or discouraging. Encouraging triggers push us to maintain or expand what we are doing. They are reinforcing. The sight of a finish line for an exhausted marathon runner encourages him to keep running, even speed up. So does the appearance of a rival runner at his side about to pass him. Discouraging triggers push us to stop or reduce what we are doing. If we’re talking in a theater, an annoyed “Ssshhh” from an audience member triggers an awareness that we’re disturbing people—and we stop talking. 



















































6. A trigger can be productive or counterproductive. This is the most important distinction. Productive triggers push us toward becoming the person we want to be. Counterproductive triggers pull us away. Triggers are not inherently “good” or “bad.” What matters is our response to them. For example, well-meaning and supportive parents can trigger a positive self-image for one child yet be viewed as “smothering” by another child. Parents of two or more children know this all too well. Equal levels of devotion and caring can trigger gratitude in one child and rebellion in another. Same parents. Same triggers. Different responses. To fully appreciate the reason for this, it’s helpful to take a closer look at these last two dimensions of triggers encouraging or discouraging, productive or counterproductive. They express the timeless tension between what we want and what we need. We want short-term gratification while we need long-term benefit. And we never get a break from choosing one or the other. It’s the defining conflict of adult behavioral change. And we write the definitions. We define what makes a trigger encouraging. One man’s treat is another man’s poison. The sudden appearance of a bowl of Rocky Road ice cream may trigger hunger in us and disgust in our lactose-intolerant dinner companion. Likewise, we define what makes a trigger productive. We all claim to want financial security; it’s a universal goal. But when we get our year-end bonus, some of us bank the money while others gamble it away over a weekend. Same trigger, same goal, different response. We can illustrate this conflict in the following matrix where encouraging triggers lead us toward what we want and productive triggers lead us toward what we need. If only our encouraging triggers and productive triggers were the same. It can happen. It’s the ideal situation. Unfortunately, what we want often lures us away from what we need. Let’s take a closer look.  We Want It and Need It: The upper right quadrant is where we’d prefer to be all the time. It is the realm where encouraging triggers intersect with productive triggers, where the short-term gratification we want is congruent with the long-term achievement we need. Praise, recognition, admiration, and monetary rewards are common triggers here. They make us try harder right now and they also reinforce continuing behavior that drives us toward our goals. We want them now and need them later. We Want It but Don’t Need It: The paradoxical effect of an encouraging trigger that is counterproductive comes to a head most tellingly in the upper left quadrant. This is where we encounter pleasurable situations that can tempt or distract us from achieving our goals. If you’ve ever binge-watched a season or two of a TV show on Netflix when you should be studying, or finishing an assignment, or going to sleep, you know how an appealing distraction can trigger a self-defeating choice. You’ve sacrificed your goals for short-term gratification. If you’ve ever taken a supervisor’s compliment or a client’s reassurances as an excuse to ease up a little bit, you know how positive reinforcement can set you back rather than propel you ahead. We Need It but Don’t Want It: The lower right quadrant is a thorny grab bag of discouraging triggers that we don’t want but that we know we need. Rules (or any highly structured environment) are discouraging because they limit us; they exist to erase specific behaviors from our repertoire. But we need them because obeying rules makes us do the right thing. Rules push us in the right direction even when our first impulse is to go the other way. Fear—of shame, punishment, reprisal, regret, disrespect, ostracism—is a hugely discouraging trigger, often appearing after we fail to follow a rule. If you’ve ever been dressed down in public by a high-ranking manager, you know it’s something you don’t want to repeat—which makes it a powerful motivator to stay true to your long-term goals. Even quirky discipline can be found here. When I fine my clients twenty dollars for cynicism and sarcasm, I’m introducing a discouraging trigger (it’s loss aversion, the concept that we hate losing one dollar more than we enjoy gaining two) that also aims to trigger productive behavior (that is, make people nicer).Pain, of course, is the ultimate discouraging trigger: we immediately stop a behavior that hurts. We Don’t Need or Want It: The lower left quadrant, where our triggers are both discouraging and counterproductive, is not a good place to be. It includes all the dead-end situations that make us miserable—and we can’t see any way out of them. It could be a toxic workplace or a violent neighborhood, the kinds of environment that trigger unhealthy behavior steering us away from our goals. There’s not much mystery to why these ugly environments trigger fatigue, stress, apathy, hopelessness, isolation, and anger. The only puzzle is why we choose to stay here instead of fleeing at high speed. I’m not rigid or doctrinaire about these quadrants. Our experience is too rich and fluid to be contained in a theoretical box. Some triggers overlap or mutate, depending on how we respond, and move us from a bad place to a good one. Consider the triggering impact of peer pressure. An academically ambitious teen may be mocked and ostracized by his slacker classmates for studying hard and wanting to go to college. If he allows the peer pressure to discourage him from his goals, he’ll find himself in the unenviable lower left quadrant. On the other hand, if he resists the peer pressure and endures the ostracism, the isolation may focus him and steel his resolve. It gives him the discipline he needs. It may not be pleasant in the short term but it’s all the push he needs to shift to the lower right quadrant. Same trigger and goals, different responses and outcomes. I find the grid useful as an analytical tool with my clients. It enables them to take inventory of the triggers in their lives, which, if nothing else, increases their awareness about their environment. More important, it reveals whether they’re operating in a productive quadrant. The right side of the matrix is where successful people want to be, moving forward on their behavioral goals. Now it’s your turn. Try this modest exercise. Pick a behavioral goal you’re still pursuing. We all have a few, from getting in shape to being a more patient parent to being more assertive around pushy people. List the people and situations that influence the quality of your performance. Don’t list all the triggers in your day; that’s overkill given the hundreds, perhaps thousands of sensory and cerebral stimuli we encounter. Stick to the trigger or two that relate to one specific goal. Then define it. Is it encouraging or discouraging, productive or counterproductive? Then chart the triggers to see if you’re on the right side. If you’re falling short of your goal, this simple exercise will tell you why. You’re getting too much of what you want, not enough of what you need. You might learn that your best friend at work, the kind who drops by your desk several times a day and wants to join up regularly after work, is the trigger that distracts you from going home in time to see your kids. (You need to “fire” that friend for a while.) You might learn that you regularly miss your early morning workout because you waste your wake-up hours on Facebook or checking emails. You need the former, want the latter obviously. (You need to rethink whether morning is your optimal time to work out.) My hope for this exercise is that it 1) makes us smarter about specific triggers and 2) helps us connect them directly to our behavioral successes and failures. I do it myself. For example, like half the men I know, I’d be happier if I were ten pounds lighter. I’ve believed this for thirty years. Yet in all that time I’ve done nothing about those last ten pounds. Why have I failed to become the person I want to be? The grid provides an answer. I’m not exposed to any encouraging triggers pushing me toward the goal. I only worry out loud about the weight with my wife, Lyda. But when I do so, she showers me with positive reinforcement. “You look fine,” she says. Encouraging words, but not the kind driving me in the right direction. She’s not lying to make me feel better. I’m not overweight, never have been. My suit size and waistline haven’t changed in decades. She’s reassuring me that my weight is “good enough.” So I tell myself, “She’s right. Why am I beating myself up over ten pounds no one notices?” As a result, I do nothing. I settle for the status quo. I also don’t have any discouraging triggers pushing me toward the goal. No one’s shaming me or threatening to punish me about those last ten pounds. I haven’t set up any systems of rules or fines to nudge me toward this goal. I simply don’t exist on the right side of the matrix. And the right side is the only place to be for achieving behavioral change. As insights go, locating myself on the wrong side of the matrix is a small and humbling lesson, reminding me that a trigger is a problem only if my response to it creates a problem. To lose the ten pounds, it’s up to me to escape the upper left quadrant where I prefer what I want to what I need. It’s my choice, my responsibility. It doesn’t solve the puzzle of achieving behavioral change, but it’s a start in the right direction. This may be the greatest payoff of identifying and defining our triggers—as the occasional but necessary reminder that, no matter how extreme the circumstances, when it comes to our behavior, we always have a choice. 
* Of course, the interviewees rarely make the logical leap and apply the insight to themselves. At least not after one interview that is not about them.

[bigwheelblading]

59-year-old Frank Lorenz of Germany won the Big Wheel Blading 2018 Inline Skating Distance Challenge skating 13,368.43 km (8,306.76 miles). He originally comes from Cologone Germany but now lives in the small village of Dormagen-Ueckerath between Cologne and Duesseldorf.

What year did you start skating? How did you get into skating?

I skate with inline skates since 1989, before that I skated with ice hockey skates since 1970

How long have you been distance skating?

Since 2014, when I first skated the “Rhine on skates” event clocking in over 135 km (83 miles).

What made you want to start skating distance?

I wanted to increase my personal fitness and it’s a great experience to skate with other skaters longer distances.

Are there any distance skaters out there who inspire you?

The top five skaters from the Big Wheel Blading 2018 Inline Skating Distance Challenge motivated me every day, especially Faust Núñez, who has driven me to new heights in the last four weeks of the Challenge.

For how many years have you been tracking your kilometers? How has your approach, goals and skating changed?

I’ve been tracking my kilometers for 5 to 6 years, but at first only very irregularly. In the first years I skated at irregular intervals 10 km per day, then I skated for many years at irregular intervals 20 km per day. In 2014 I skated my first 135 km tour, since then I regularly skate 20 to 40 km per day. 2018 was my best year ever, I was motivated by the challenge and increased my daily kilometers more and more, depending on the weather from 20 km up to 80/90 km per day

How had your approach to distance skating matured since you began?

Every year I skate more and more and I participate in more and more skating events and skate camps.

How did you find the time to skate so many kilometers in 2018?

I have been exempted from work by my employer (Early retirement).

What was your daily skate regiment like?

I usually started skating in the morning after breakfast. I would skate 40-50 km (24-31 miles) in 3-4 hours. In addition, I skated three nights a week with my skate community between 20-30 km (12-18miles) per night and on the the weekend we would skate 40-80 km (24-49 miles) day tours.

What was your original mileage goal when the year started and did you achieve it?

My original goal was to skate 8,000 km (4,970 miles) and to make it into the top 10 of this years challenge. So yes, I have exceeded my goal by a few kilometers.

What were the most challenging moments for you this year?

The last week of the challenge. I still had a good lead, but the second-placed Faust Núñez skated more than 100 km (62 miles) per day for three days and more than 200 km (124 miles) on two days. This made my comfortable lead quickly get smaller and put a lot of pressure on me.

Did you suffer any injuries?

Fortunately not in 2018, but in 2017 I had a bad fall and tore a muscle in my thigh.

Were there any months you skated less then others?

In January and February I skated less because it rained a lot.

How many days this year did you NOT skate?

Approximately 45.

How do you handle cold weather skating? What gear do you wear when the temperature dips?

The winter in my area is fortunately not so cold, max 0 degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit). Then I wear long frostbreaker pants, with training pants over hem, a frostbreaker sweatshirt and over it my community shirt, knee pads, elbow pads, gloves, headscarf and helmets.

New skates!

New skates!

What moments were your proudest achievements in your skating in 2018?

At the moment that I realized that I could win the challenge.

Spending so much time skating this year, did it affect your lifestyle?

If you skate so many hours a day, you have little time for other activities. My wife supports my skating, but it was a burden on her since she was often home alone or had to accompany me to skating events.

What food do you eat before, during and after skating? What do you use to hydrate when skating?

I do not eat anything special during or after skating. I skate mostly mornings I always have a good breakfast first. I drink half a liter of iso-drink every 20 km.

What are the social skates like where you live? Are you involved them?

We have a great skate community in Duesseldorf (www.dusfor.de), We skate 3 times a week in the evening and in addition we do many weekend tours. Nine evenings a year we have the Skate Night Duesseldorf in which up to 5,000 skaters participate. I am a supporter at the Skate Night.

Did you have days you wanted to give up from exhaustion?

No, I skate only so much that I do not reach my limits. Of course, there are days when your ankles hurt, then I would take a day off.

Did you have to mentally prepare yourself for skating everyday?

No, at some point it is a habit that you skate every day.

When you first started skating did you ever imagine you would be skating thousands of kilometers in a year?

No, when I started I had many other hobbies and had to work so I did not have that much time.

Have you skated any marathons?

No I have not. I’ve never been interested in speed skating. However, this year I may skate the Berlin Marathon on the DUSFOR Motivation Team and support their skaters who do not make it to the finish time.

What is your favorite route to skate?

Here where I live there is a route called monastery tour. This is a track which has different combinations between 30 to 70 kilometers (18-42 miles). We skate this route every Wednesday evening in the summer and then have a drink break in the beer garden of Knechtsteden Monastery. The most beautiful tour here in Germany is always once a year in August, it’s called “Rhine on Skates”. This is a 135 km tour through the beautiful Rhine valley.

What advice would you give someone who is attempting to skate 10,000+ kilometers in 2019

Skating that much distance takes a lot of time. Time that many do not have when they still have to work. But anyone who tries it must listen to their own body, and must be aware of when to take a break. You do not have to prove anything to anyone, everything you do should be done for yourself.

What skates, frames, bearings and wheels did you use during 2018?

The Powerslide TAU skate, Powerslide Katana Rocker Trinity 231mm Frame, Powerslide Twincam ILQ 9 PRO SCRS bearings, 3x100mm Wheels mostly Powerslide Infinity Plus 100mm/88a for dry and warm weather and Powerslide Infinity Plus 100mm/84a or Hyper Hyperformance +Grip 100mm/85a for cold and wet weather.

How many sets of wheels and bearings did you go through in 2018.

I went through two sets of bearings which had to be exchanged gradually if they were damaged by moisture and dirt and five to six sets of wheels. I don’t remember exactly how many because I often changed my wheels depending on the weather or what kind of skating I was doing. When I skated distance I used 100mm wheels but for urban skating I would switch to 90mm wheels.

What are you skating goals going into 2019?

2018 was perfect for me. My personal fitness, beautiful weather without much rain and lots of free time. Those were the reasons why I could win the challenge. I do not think I can repeat that in 2019 again. I hope I can claim a place in the top 10 this year, I think 8000 km is a good goal.

Frank and his prizes for winning the 2018 Inline SKate Challenge!

Frank with his challenge prizes!

Thanks Powerslide and Sonic Sports!

Credits

Photos by Elvira Schubert

The Sponsors

Thank you Powerslide and Sonic Sports for sponsoring the 2018 Inline Skating Distance Challenge.

Join the 2019 Challenge!

To find out more information about how to join the 2019 Inline Skate Challenge and the 2019 Big Wheel Challenge on Endomondo click here.

links

Rhine on Skates

DUSFOR

Skate Night Duesseldorf

Frank Lorenz Discusses Skating 13,368km to Win the 2018 Inline Skate Challenge 59-year-old Frank Lorenz of Germany won the Big Wheel Blading 2018 Inline Skating Distance Challenge skating 13,368.43 km (8,306.76 miles).

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey

Posted by Whitespark

It has been another year (and a half) since the last publication of the Local Search Ranking Factors, and local search continues to see significant growth and change. The biggest shift this year is happening in Google My Business signals, but we’re also seeing an increase in the importance of reviews and continued decreases in the importance of citations.

Check out the full survey!

Huge growth in Google My Business

Google has been adding features to GMB at an accelerated rate. They see the revenue potential in local, and now that they have properly divorced Google My Business from Google+, they have a clear runway to develop (and monetize) local. Here are just some of the major GMB features that have been released since the publication of the 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors:

Google Posts available to all GMB users

Google Q&A

Website builder

Services

Messaging

Videos

Videos in Google Posts

These features are creating shifts in the importance of factors that are driving local search today. This year has seen the most explosive growth in GMB specific factors in the history of the survey. GMB signals now make up 25% the local pack/finder pie chart.

GMB-specific features like Google Posts, Google Q&A, and image/video uploads are frequently mentioned as ranking drivers in the commentary. Many businesses are not yet investing in these aspects of local search, so these features are currently a competitive advantage. You should get on these before everyone is doing it.

Here’s your to do list:

Start using Google posts NOW. At least once per week, but preferably a few times per week. Are you already pushing out posts to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter? Just use the same, lightly edited, content on Google Posts. Also, use calls to action in your posts to drive direct conversions.

Seed the Google Q&A with your own questions and answers. Feed that hyper-relevant, semantically rich content to Google. Relevance FTW.

Regularly upload photos and videos. (Did you know that you can upload videos to GMB now?)

Make sure your profile is 100% complete. If there is an empty field in GMB, fill it. If you haven’t logged into your GMB account in a while, you might be surprised to see all the new data points you can add to your listing.

Why spend your time on these activities? Besides the potential relevance boost you’ll get from the additional content, you’re also sending valuable engagement signals. Regularly logging into your listing and providing content shows Google that you’re an active and engaged business owner that cares about your listing, and the local search experts are speculating that this is also providing ranking benefits. There’s another engagement angle here too: user engagement. Provide more content for users to engage with and they’ll spend more time on your listing clicking around and sending those helpful behavioral signals to Google.

Reviews on the rise

Review signals have also seen continued growth in importance over last year.

Review signals were 10.8% in 2015, so over the past 3 years, we’ve seen a 43% increase in the importance of review signals:

Many practitioners talked about the benefits they’re seeing from investing in reviews. I found David Mihm’s comments on reviews particularly noteworthy. When asked “What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?”, he responded with:

“In the search results I look at regularly, I continue to see reviews playing a larger and larger role. Much as citations became table stakes over the last couple of years, reviews now appear to be on their way to becoming table stakes as well. In mid-to-large metro areas, even industries where ranking in the 3-pack used to be possible with a handful of reviews or no reviews, now feature businesses with dozens of reviews at a minimum — and many within the last few months, which speaks to the importance of a steady stream of feedback.

Whether the increased ranking is due to review volume, keywords in review content, or the increased clickthrough rate those gold stars yield, I doubt we'll ever know for sure. I just know that for most businesses, it's the area of local SEO I'd invest the most time and effort into getting right -- and done well, should also have a much more important flywheel effect of helping you build a better business, as the guys at GatherUp have been talking about for years.”

Getting keywords in your reviews is a factor that has also risen. In the 2017 survey, this factor ranked #26 in the local pack/finder factors. It is now coming in at #14.

I know this is the Local Search Ranking Factors, and we’re talking about what drives rankings, but you know what’s better than rankings? Conversions. Yes, reviews will boost your rankings, but reviews are so much more valuable than that because a ton of positive reviews will get people to pick up the phone and call your business, and really, that’s the goal. So, if you’re not making the most of reviews yet, get on it!

A quick to do list for reviews would be:

Work on getting more Google reviews (obviously). Ask every customer.

Encourage keywords in the reviews by asking customers to mention the specific service or product in their review.

Respond to every review. (Did you know that Google now notifies the reviewer when the owner responds?)

Don’t only focus on reviews. Actively solicit direct customer feedback as well so you can mark it up in schema/JSON and get stars in the search results.

Once you’re killing it on Google, diversify and get reviews on the other important review sites for your industry (but also continue to send customers to Google).

For a more in-depth discussion of review strategy, please see the blog post version of my 2018 MozCon presentation, “How to Convert Local Searchers Into Customers with Reviews.”

Meh, links

To quote Gyi Tsakalakis: “Meh, links.” All other things being equal, links continue to be a key differentiator in local search. It makes sense. Once you have a complete and active GMB listing, your citations squared away, a steady stream of reviews coming in, and solid content on your website, the next step is links. The trouble is, links are hard, but that’s also what makes them such a valuable competitive differentiator. They ARE hard, so when you get quality links they can really help to move the needle.

When asked, “What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?” Gyi responded with:

“Meh, links. In other words, topically and locally relevant links continue to work particularly well. Not only do these links tend to improve visibility in both local packs and traditional results, they're also particularly effective for improving targeted traffic, leads, and customers. Find ways to earn links on the sites your local audience uses. These typically include local news, community, and blog sites.”

Citations?

Let’s make something clear: citations are still very valuable and very important.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s look at what’s been happening with citations over the past few surveys:

I think this decline is related to two things:

As local search gets more complex, additional signals are being factored into the algorithm and this dilutes the value that citations used to provide. There are just more things to optimize for in local search these days.

As local search gains more widespread adoption, more businesses are getting their citations consistent and built out, and so citations become less of a competitive difference maker than they were in the past.

Yes, we are seeing citations dropping in significance year after year, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need them. Quite the opposite, really. If you don’t get them, you’re going to have a bad time. Google looks to your citations to help understand how prominent your business is. A well established and popular business should be present on the most important business directories in their industry, and if it’s not, that can be a signal of lower prominence to Google.

The good news is that citations are one of the easiest items to check off your local search to do list. There are dozens of services and tools out there to help you get your business listed and accurate for only a few hundred dollars. Here’s what I recommend:

Ensure your business is listed, accurate, complete, and duplicate-free on the top 10-15 most important sites in your industry (including the primary data aggregators and industry/city-specific sites).

Build citations (but don’t worry about duplicates and inconsistencies) on the next top 30 to 50 sites.

Google has gotten much smarter about citation consistency than they were in the past. People worry about it much more than they need to. An incorrect or duplicate listing on an insignificant business listing site is not going to negatively impact your ability to rank.

You could keep building more citations beyond the top 50, and it won’t hurt, but the law of diminishing returns applies here. As you get deeper into the available pool of citation sites, the quality of these sites decreases, and the impact they have on your local search decreases with it. That said, I have heard from dozens of agencies that swear that “maxing out” all available citation opportunities seems to have a positive impact on their local search, so your mileage may vary. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The future of local search

One of my favorite questions in the commentary section is “Comments about where you see Google is headed in the future?” The answers here, from some of the best minds in local search, are illuminating. The three common themes I pulled from the responses are:

Google will continue providing features and content so that they can provide the answers to most queries right in the search results and send less clicks to websites. Expect to see your traffic from local results to your website decline, but don’t fret. You want those calls, messages, and driving directions more than you want website traffic anyway.

Google will increase their focus on behavioral signals for rankings. What better way is there to assess the real-world popularity of a business than by using signals sent by people in the real world. We can speculate that Google is using some of the following signals right now, and will continue to emphasize and evolve behavioral ranking methods:

Searches for your brand name.

Clicks to call your business.

Requests for driving directions.

Engagement with your listing.

Engagement with your website.

Credit card transactions.

Actual human foot traffic in brick-and-mortar businesses.

Google will continue monetizing local in new ways. Local Services Ads are rolling out to more and more industries and cities, ads are appearing right in local panels, and you can book appointments right from local packs. Google isn’t investing so many resources into local out of the goodness of their hearts. They want to build the ultimate resource for instant information on local services and products, and they want to use their dominant market position to take a cut of the sales.

And that does it for my summary of the survey results. A huge thank you to each of the brilliant contributors for giving their time and sharing their knowledge. Our understanding of local search is what it is because of your excellent work and contributions to our industry.

There is much more to read and learn in the actual resource itself, especially in all the comments from the contributors, so go dig into it:

Click here for the full results!

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!

[tainghekhongdaycomvn]

Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey

Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey

Posted by Whitespark

It has been another year (and a half) since the last publication of the Local Search Ranking Factors, and local search continues to see significant growth and change. The biggest shift this year is happening in Google My Business signals, but we’re also seeing an increase in the importance of reviews and continued decreases in the importance of citations.

Check out the full survey!

Huge growth in Google My Business

Google has been adding features to GMB at an accelerated rate. They see the revenue potential in local, and now that they have properly divorced Google My Business from Google+, they have a clear runway to develop (and monetize) local. Here are just some of the major GMB features that have been released since the publication of the 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors:

Google Posts available to all GMB users

Google Q&A

Website builder

Services

Messaging

Videos

Videos in Google Posts

These features are creating shifts in the importance of factors that are driving local search today. This year has seen the most explosive growth in GMB specific factors in the history of the survey. GMB signals now make up 25% the local pack/finder pie chart.

GMB-specific features like Google Posts, Google Q&A, and image/video uploads are frequently mentioned as ranking drivers in the commentary. Many businesses are not yet investing in these aspects of local search, so these features are currently a competitive advantage. You should get on these before everyone is doing it.

Here’s your to do list:

Start using Google posts NOW. At least once per week, but preferably a few times per week. Are you already pushing out posts to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter? Just use the same, lightly edited, content on Google Posts. Also, use calls to action in your posts to drive direct conversions.

Seed the Google Q&A with your own questions and answers. Feed that hyper-relevant, semantically rich content to Google. Relevance FTW.

Regularly upload photos and videos. (Did you know that you can upload videos to GMB now?)

Make sure your profile is 100% complete. If there is an empty field in GMB, fill it. If you haven’t logged into your GMB account in a while, you might be surprised to see all the new data points you can add to your listing.

Why spend your time on these activities? Besides the potential relevance boost you’ll get from the additional content, you’re also sending valuable engagement signals. Regularly logging into your listing and providing content shows Google that you’re an active and engaged business owner that cares about your listing, and the local search experts are speculating that this is also providing ranking benefits. There’s another engagement angle here too: user engagement. Provide more content for users to engage with and they’ll spend more time on your listing clicking around and sending those helpful behavioral signals to Google.

Reviews on the rise

Review signals have also seen continued growth in importance over last year.

Review signals were 10.8% in 2015, so over the past 3 years, we’ve seen a 43% increase in the importance of review signals:

Many practitioners talked about the benefits they’re seeing from investing in reviews. I found David Mihm’s comments on reviews particularly noteworthy. When asked “What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?”, he responded with:

“In the search results I look at regularly, I continue to see reviews playing a larger and larger role. Much as citations became table stakes over the last couple of years, reviews now appear to be on their way to becoming table stakes as well. In mid-to-large metro areas, even industries where ranking in the 3-pack used to be possible with a handful of reviews or no reviews, now feature businesses with dozens of reviews at a minimum — and many within the last few months, which speaks to the importance of a steady stream of feedback.

Whether the increased ranking is due to review volume, keywords in review content, or the increased clickthrough rate those gold stars yield, I doubt we'll ever know for sure. I just know that for most businesses, it's the area of local SEO I'd invest the most time and effort into getting right -- and done well, should also have a much more important flywheel effect of helping you build a better business, as the guys at GatherUp have been talking about for years.”

Getting keywords in your reviews is a factor that has also risen. In the 2017 survey, this factor ranked #26 in the local pack/finder factors. It is now coming in at #14.

I know this is the Local Search Ranking Factors, and we’re talking about what drives rankings, but you know what’s better than rankings? Conversions. Yes, reviews will boost your rankings, but reviews are so much more valuable than that because a ton of positive reviews will get people to pick up the phone and call your business, and really, that’s the goal. So, if you’re not making the most of reviews yet, get on it!

A quick to do list for reviews would be:

Work on getting more Google reviews (obviously). Ask every customer.

Encourage keywords in the reviews by asking customers to mention the specific service or product in their review.

Respond to every review. (Did you know that Google now notifies the reviewer when the owner responds?)

Don’t only focus on reviews. Actively solicit direct customer feedback as well so you can mark it up in schema/JSON and get stars in the search results.

Once you’re killing it on Google, diversify and get reviews on the other important review sites for your industry (but also continue to send customers to Google).

For a more in-depth discussion of review strategy, please see the blog post version of my 2018 MozCon presentation, “How to Convert Local Searchers Into Customers with Reviews.”

Meh, links

To quote Gyi Tsakalakis: “Meh, links.” All other things being equal, links continue to be a key differentiator in local search. It makes sense. Once you have a complete and active GMB listing, your citations squared away, a steady stream of reviews coming in, and solid content on your website, the next step is links. The trouble is, links are hard, but that’s also what makes them such a valuable competitive differentiator. They ARE hard, so when you get quality links they can really help to move the needle.

When asked, “What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?” Gyi responded with:

“Meh, links. In other words, topically and locally relevant links continue to work particularly well. Not only do these links tend to improve visibility in both local packs and traditional results, they're also particularly effective for improving targeted traffic, leads, and customers. Find ways to earn links on the sites your local audience uses. These typically include local news, community, and blog sites.”

Citations?

Let’s make something clear: citations are still very valuable and very important.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s look at what’s been happening with citations over the past few surveys:

I think this decline is related to two things:

As local search gets more complex, additional signals are being factored into the algorithm and this dilutes the value that citations used to provide. There are just more things to optimize for in local search these days.

As local search gains more widespread adoption, more businesses are getting their citations consistent and built out, and so citations become less of a competitive difference maker than they were in the past.

Yes, we are seeing citations dropping in significance year after year, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need them. Quite the opposite, really. If you don’t get them, you’re going to have a bad time. Google looks to your citations to help understand how prominent your business is. A well established and popular business should be present on the most important business directories in their industry, and if it’s not, that can be a signal of lower prominence to Google.

The good news is that citations are one of the easiest items to check off your local search to do list. There are dozens of services and tools out there to help you get your business listed and accurate for only a few hundred dollars. Here’s what I recommend:

Ensure your business is listed, accurate, complete, and duplicate-free on the top 10-15 most important sites in your industry (including the primary data aggregators and industry/city-specific sites).

Build citations (but don’t worry about duplicates and inconsistencies) on the next top 30 to 50 sites.

Google has gotten much smarter about citation consistency than they were in the past. People worry about it much more than they need to. An incorrect or duplicate listing on an insignificant business listing site is not going to negatively impact your ability to rank.

You could keep building more citations beyond the top 50, and it won’t hurt, but the law of diminishing returns applies here. As you get deeper into the available pool of citation sites, the quality of these sites decreases, and the impact they have on your local search decreases with it. That said, I have heard from dozens of agencies that swear that “maxing out” all available citation opportunities seems to have a positive impact on their local search, so your mileage may vary. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The future of local search

One of my favorite questions in the commentary section is “Comments about where you see Google is headed in the future?” The answers here, from some of the best minds in local search, are illuminating. The three common themes I pulled from the responses are:

Google will continue providing features and content so that they can provide the answers to most queries right in the search results and send less clicks to websites. Expect to see your traffic from local results to your website decline, but don’t fret. You want those calls, messages, and driving directions more than you want website traffic anyway.

Google will increase their focus on behavioral signals for rankings. What better way is there to assess the real-world popularity of a business than by using signals sent by people in the real world. We can speculate that Google is using some of the following signals right now, and will continue to emphasize and evolve behavioral ranking methods:

Searches for your brand name.

Clicks to call your business.

Requests for driving directions.

Engagement with your listing.

Engagement with your website.

Credit card transactions.

Actual human foot traffic in brick-and-mortar businesses.

Google will continue monetizing local in new ways. Local Services Ads are rolling out to more and more industries and cities, ads are appearing right in local panels, and you can book appointments right from local packs. Google isn’t investing so many resources into local out of the goodness of their hearts. They want to build the ultimate resource for instant information on local services and products, and they want to use their dominant market position to take a cut of the sales.

And that does it for my summary of the survey results. A huge thank you to each of the brilliant contributors for giving their time and sharing their knowledge. Our understanding of local search is what it is because of your excellent work and contributions to our industry.

There is much more to read and learn in the actual resource itself, especially in all the comments from the contributors, so go dig into it:

Click here for the full results!

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!

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Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không 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bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 xem thêm tại: https://ift.tt/2mb4VST để biết thêm về địa chỉ bán tai nghe không dây giá rẻ Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey https://ift.tt/2R4qW17 Bạn có thể xem thêm địa chỉ mua tai nghe không dây tại đây https://ift.tt/2mb4VST

[lawrenceseitz22]

Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey

Posted by Whitespark

It has been another year (and a half) since the last publication of the Local Search Ranking Factors, and local search continues to see significant growth and change. The biggest shift this year is happening in Google My Business signals, but we’re also seeing an increase in the importance of reviews and continued decreases in the importance of citations.

Check out the full survey!

Huge growth in Google My Business

Google has been adding features to GMB at an accelerated rate. They see the revenue potential in local, and now that they have properly divorced Google My Business from Google+, they have a clear runway to develop (and monetize) local. Here are just some of the major GMB features that have been released since the publication of the 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors:

Google Posts available to all GMB users

Google Q&A

Website builder

Services

Messaging

Videos

Videos in Google Posts

These features are creating shifts in the importance of factors that are driving local search today. This year has seen the most explosive growth in GMB specific factors in the history of the survey. GMB signals now make up 25% the local pack/finder pie chart.

GMB-specific features like Google Posts, Google Q&A, and image/video uploads are frequently mentioned as ranking drivers in the commentary. Many businesses are not yet investing in these aspects of local search, so these features are currently a competitive advantage. You should get on these before everyone is doing it.

Here’s your to do list:

Start using Google posts NOW. At least once per week, but preferably a few times per week. Are you already pushing out posts to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter? Just use the same, lightly edited, content on Google Posts. Also, use calls to action in your posts to drive direct conversions.

Seed the Google Q&A with your own questions and answers. Feed that hyper-relevant, semantically rich content to Google. Relevance FTW.

Regularly upload photos and videos. (Did you know that you can upload videos to GMB now?)

Make sure your profile is 100% complete. If there is an empty field in GMB, fill it. If you haven’t logged into your GMB account in a while, you might be surprised to see all the new data points you can add to your listing.

Why spend your time on these activities? Besides the potential relevance boost you’ll get from the additional content, you’re also sending valuable engagement signals. Regularly logging into your listing and providing content shows Google that you’re an active and engaged business owner that cares about your listing, and the local search experts are speculating that this is also providing ranking benefits. There’s another engagement angle here too: user engagement. Provide more content for users to engage with and they’ll spend more time on your listing clicking around and sending those helpful behavioral signals to Google.

Reviews on the rise

Review signals have also seen continued growth in importance over last year.

Review signals were 10.8% in 2015, so over the past 3 years, we’ve seen a 43% increase in the importance of review signals:

Many practitioners talked about the benefits they’re seeing from investing in reviews. I found David Mihm’s comments on reviews particularly noteworthy. When asked “What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?”, he responded with:

“In the search results I look at regularly, I continue to see reviews playing a larger and larger role. Much as citations became table stakes over the last couple of years, reviews now appear to be on their way to becoming table stakes as well. In mid-to-large metro areas, even industries where ranking in the 3-pack used to be possible with a handful of reviews or no reviews, now feature businesses with dozens of reviews at a minimum — and many within the last few months, which speaks to the importance of a steady stream of feedback.

Whether the increased ranking is due to review volume, keywords in review content, or the increased clickthrough rate those gold stars yield, I doubt we'll ever know for sure. I just know that for most businesses, it's the area of local SEO I'd invest the most time and effort into getting right -- and done well, should also have a much more important flywheel effect of helping you build a better business, as the guys at GatherUp have been talking about for years.”

Getting keywords in your reviews is a factor that has also risen. In the 2017 survey, this factor ranked #26 in the local pack/finder factors. It is now coming in at #14.

I know this is the Local Search Ranking Factors, and we’re talking about what drives rankings, but you know what’s better than rankings? Conversions. Yes, reviews will boost your rankings, but reviews are so much more valuable than that because a ton of positive reviews will get people to pick up the phone and call your business, and really, that’s the goal. So, if you’re not making the most of reviews yet, get on it!

A quick to do list for reviews would be:

Work on getting more Google reviews (obviously). Ask every customer.

Encourage keywords in the reviews by asking customers to mention the specific service or product in their review.

Respond to every review. (Did you know that Google now notifies the reviewer when the owner responds?)

Don’t only focus on reviews. Actively solicit direct customer feedback as well so you can mark it up in schema/JSON and get stars in the search results.

Once you’re killing it on Google, diversify and get reviews on the other important review sites for your industry (but also continue to send customers to Google).

For a more in-depth discussion of review strategy, please see the blog post version of my 2018 MozCon presentation, “How to Convert Local Searchers Into Customers with Reviews.”

Meh, links

To quote Gyi Tsakalakis: “Meh, links.” All other things being equal, links continue to be a key differentiator in local search. It makes sense. Once you have a complete and active GMB listing, your citations squared away, a steady stream of reviews coming in, and solid content on your website, the next step is links. The trouble is, links are hard, but that’s also what makes them such a valuable competitive differentiator. They ARE hard, so when you get quality links they can really help to move the needle.

When asked, “What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?” Gyi responded with:

“Meh, links. In other words, topically and locally relevant links continue to work particularly well. Not only do these links tend to improve visibility in both local packs and traditional results, they're also particularly effective for improving targeted traffic, leads, and customers. Find ways to earn links on the sites your local audience uses. These typically include local news, community, and blog sites.”

Citations?

Let’s make something clear: citations are still very valuable and very important.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s look at what’s been happening with citations over the past few surveys:

I think this decline is related to two things:

As local search gets more complex, additional signals are being factored into the algorithm and this dilutes the value that citations used to provide. There are just more things to optimize for in local search these days.

As local search gains more widespread adoption, more businesses are getting their citations consistent and built out, and so citations become less of a competitive difference maker than they were in the past.

Yes, we are seeing citations dropping in significance year after year, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need them. Quite the opposite, really. If you don’t get them, you’re going to have a bad time. Google looks to your citations to help understand how prominent your business is. A well established and popular business should be present on the most important business directories in their industry, and if it’s not, that can be a signal of lower prominence to Google.

The good news is that citations are one of the easiest items to check off your local search to do list. There are dozens of services and tools out there to help you get your business listed and accurate for only a few hundred dollars. Here’s what I recommend:

Ensure your business is listed, accurate, complete, and duplicate-free on the top 10-15 most important sites in your industry (including the primary data aggregators and industry/city-specific sites).

Build citations (but don’t worry about duplicates and inconsistencies) on the next top 30 to 50 sites.

Google has gotten much smarter about citation consistency than they were in the past. People worry about it much more than they need to. An incorrect or duplicate listing on an insignificant business listing site is not going to negatively impact your ability to rank.

You could keep building more citations beyond the top 50, and it won’t hurt, but the law of diminishing returns applies here. As you get deeper into the available pool of citation sites, the quality of these sites decreases, and the impact they have on your local search decreases with it. That said, I have heard from dozens of agencies that swear that “maxing out” all available citation opportunities seems to have a positive impact on their local search, so your mileage may vary. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The future of local search

One of my favorite questions in the commentary section is “Comments about where you see Google is headed in the future?” The answers here, from some of the best minds in local search, are illuminating. The three common themes I pulled from the responses are:

Google will continue providing features and content so that they can provide the answers to most queries right in the search results and send less clicks to websites. Expect to see your traffic from local results to your website decline, but don’t fret. You want those calls, messages, and driving directions more than you want website traffic anyway.

Google will increase their focus on behavioral signals for rankings. What better way is there to assess the real-world popularity of a business than by using signals sent by people in the real world. We can speculate that Google is using some of the following signals right now, and will continue to emphasize and evolve behavioral ranking methods:

Searches for your brand name.

Clicks to call your business.

Requests for driving directions.

Engagement with your listing.

Engagement with your website.

Credit card transactions.

Actual human foot traffic in brick-and-mortar businesses.

Google will continue monetizing local in new ways. Local Services Ads are rolling out to more and more industries and cities, ads are appearing right in local panels, and you can book appointments right from local packs. Google isn’t investing so many resources into local out of the goodness of their hearts. They want to build the ultimate resource for instant information on local services and products, and they want to use their dominant market position to take a cut of the sales.

And that does it for my summary of the survey results. A huge thank you to each of the brilliant contributors for giving their time and sharing their knowledge. Our understanding of local search is what it is because of your excellent work and contributions to our industry.

There is much more to read and learn in the actual resource itself, especially in all the comments from the contributors, so go dig into it:

Click here for the full results!

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!

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[byronheeutgm]

Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey

Posted by Whitespark

It has been another year (and a half) since the last publication of the Local Search Ranking Factors, and local search continues to see significant growth and change. The biggest shift this year is happening in Google My Business signals, but we’re also seeing an increase in the importance of reviews and continued decreases in the importance of citations.

Check out the full survey!

Huge growth in Google My Business

Google has been adding features to GMB at an accelerated rate. They see the revenue potential in local, and now that they have properly divorced Google My Business from Google+, they have a clear runway to develop (and monetize) local. Here are just some of the major GMB features that have been released since the publication of the 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors:

Google Posts available to all GMB users

Google Q&A

Website builder

Services

Messaging

Videos

Videos in Google Posts

These features are creating shifts in the importance of factors that are driving local search today. This year has seen the most explosive growth in GMB specific factors in the history of the survey. GMB signals now make up 25% the local pack/finder pie chart.

GMB-specific features like Google Posts, Google Q&A, and image/video uploads are frequently mentioned as ranking drivers in the commentary. Many businesses are not yet investing in these aspects of local search, so these features are currently a competitive advantage. You should get on these before everyone is doing it.

Here’s your to do list:

Start using Google posts NOW. At least once per week, but preferably a few times per week. Are you already pushing out posts to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter? Just use the same, lightly edited, content on Google Posts. Also, use calls to action in your posts to drive direct conversions.

Seed the Google Q&A with your own questions and answers. Feed that hyper-relevant, semantically rich content to Google. Relevance FTW.

Regularly upload photos and videos. (Did you know that you can upload videos to GMB now?)

Make sure your profile is 100% complete. If there is an empty field in GMB, fill it. If you haven’t logged into your GMB account in a while, you might be surprised to see all the new data points you can add to your listing.

Why spend your time on these activities? Besides the potential relevance boost you’ll get from the additional content, you’re also sending valuable engagement signals. Regularly logging into your listing and providing content shows Google that you’re an active and engaged business owner that cares about your listing, and the local search experts are speculating that this is also providing ranking benefits. There’s another engagement angle here too: user engagement. Provide more content for users to engage with and they’ll spend more time on your listing clicking around and sending those helpful behavioral signals to Google.

Reviews on the rise

Review signals have also seen continued growth in importance over last year.

Review signals were 10.8% in 2015, so over the past 3 years, we’ve seen a 43% increase in the importance of review signals:

Many practitioners talked about the benefits they’re seeing from investing in reviews. I found David Mihm’s comments on reviews particularly noteworthy. When asked “What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?”, he responded with:

“In the search results I look at regularly, I continue to see reviews playing a larger and larger role. Much as citations became table stakes over the last couple of years, reviews now appear to be on their way to becoming table stakes as well. In mid-to-large metro areas, even industries where ranking in the 3-pack used to be possible with a handful of reviews or no reviews, now feature businesses with dozens of reviews at a minimum — and many within the last few months, which speaks to the importance of a steady stream of feedback.

Whether the increased ranking is due to review volume, keywords in review content, or the increased clickthrough rate those gold stars yield, I doubt we'll ever know for sure. I just know that for most businesses, it's the area of local SEO I'd invest the most time and effort into getting right -- and done well, should also have a much more important flywheel effect of helping you build a better business, as the guys at GatherUp have been talking about for years.”

Getting keywords in your reviews is a factor that has also risen. In the 2017 survey, this factor ranked #26 in the local pack/finder factors. It is now coming in at #14.

I know this is the Local Search Ranking Factors, and we’re talking about what drives rankings, but you know what’s better than rankings? Conversions. Yes, reviews will boost your rankings, but reviews are so much more valuable than that because a ton of positive reviews will get people to pick up the phone and call your business, and really, that’s the goal. So, if you’re not making the most of reviews yet, get on it!

A quick to do list for reviews would be:

Work on getting more Google reviews (obviously). Ask every customer.

Encourage keywords in the reviews by asking customers to mention the specific service or product in their review.

Respond to every review. (Did you know that Google now notifies the reviewer when the owner responds?)

Don’t only focus on reviews. Actively solicit direct customer feedback as well so you can mark it up in schema/JSON and get stars in the search results.

Once you’re killing it on Google, diversify and get reviews on the other important review sites for your industry (but also continue to send customers to Google).

For a more in-depth discussion of review strategy, please see the blog post version of my 2018 MozCon presentation, “How to Convert Local Searchers Into Customers with Reviews.”

Meh, links

To quote Gyi Tsakalakis: “Meh, links.” All other things being equal, links continue to be a key differentiator in local search. It makes sense. Once you have a complete and active GMB listing, your citations squared away, a steady stream of reviews coming in, and solid content on your website, the next step is links. The trouble is, links are hard, but that’s also what makes them such a valuable competitive differentiator. They ARE hard, so when you get quality links they can really help to move the needle.

When asked, “What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?” Gyi responded with:

“Meh, links. In other words, topically and locally relevant links continue to work particularly well. Not only do these links tend to improve visibility in both local packs and traditional results, they're also particularly effective for improving targeted traffic, leads, and customers. Find ways to earn links on the sites your local audience uses. These typically include local news, community, and blog sites.”

Citations?

Let’s make something clear: citations are still very valuable and very important.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s look at what’s been happening with citations over the past few surveys:

I think this decline is related to two things:

As local search gets more complex, additional signals are being factored into the algorithm and this dilutes the value that citations used to provide. There are just more things to optimize for in local search these days.

As local search gains more widespread adoption, more businesses are getting their citations consistent and built out, and so citations become less of a competitive difference maker than they were in the past.

Yes, we are seeing citations dropping in significance year after year, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need them. Quite the opposite, really. If you don’t get them, you’re going to have a bad time. Google looks to your citations to help understand how prominent your business is. A well established and popular business should be present on the most important business directories in their industry, and if it’s not, that can be a signal of lower prominence to Google.

The good news is that citations are one of the easiest items to check off your local search to do list. There are dozens of services and tools out there to help you get your business listed and accurate for only a few hundred dollars. Here’s what I recommend:

Ensure your business is listed, accurate, complete, and duplicate-free on the top 10-15 most important sites in your industry (including the primary data aggregators and industry/city-specific sites).

Build citations (but don’t worry about duplicates and inconsistencies) on the next top 30 to 50 sites.

Google has gotten much smarter about citation consistency than they were in the past. People worry about it much more than they need to. An incorrect or duplicate listing on an insignificant business listing site is not going to negatively impact your ability to rank.

You could keep building more citations beyond the top 50, and it won’t hurt, but the law of diminishing returns applies here. As you get deeper into the available pool of citation sites, the quality of these sites decreases, and the impact they have on your local search decreases with it. That said, I have heard from dozens of agencies that swear that “maxing out” all available citation opportunities seems to have a positive impact on their local search, so your mileage may vary. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The future of local search

One of my favorite questions in the commentary section is “Comments about where you see Google is headed in the future?” The answers here, from some of the best minds in local search, are illuminating. The three common themes I pulled from the responses are:

Google will continue providing features and content so that they can provide the answers to most queries right in the search results and send less clicks to websites. Expect to see your traffic from local results to your website decline, but don’t fret. You want those calls, messages, and driving directions more than you want website traffic anyway.

Google will increase their focus on behavioral signals for rankings. What better way is there to assess the real-world popularity of a business than by using signals sent by people in the real world. We can speculate that Google is using some of the following signals right now, and will continue to emphasize and evolve behavioral ranking methods:

Searches for your brand name.

Clicks to call your business.

Requests for driving directions.

Engagement with your listing.

Engagement with your website.

Credit card transactions.

Actual human foot traffic in brick-and-mortar businesses.

Google will continue monetizing local in new ways. Local Services Ads are rolling out to more and more industries and cities, ads are appearing right in local panels, and you can book appointments right from local packs. Google isn’t investing so many resources into local out of the goodness of their hearts. They want to build the ultimate resource for instant information on local services and products, and they want to use their dominant market position to take a cut of the sales.

And that does it for my summary of the survey results. A huge thank you to each of the brilliant contributors for giving their time and sharing their knowledge. Our understanding of local search is what it is because of your excellent work and contributions to our industry.

There is much more to read and learn in the actual resource itself, especially in all the comments from the contributors, so go dig into it:

Click here for the full results!

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!

https://ift.tt/2S5eG0m

[fairchildlingpo1]

Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey

Posted by Whitespark

It has been another year (and a half) since the last publication of the Local Search Ranking Factors, and local search continues to see significant growth and change. The biggest shift this year is happening in Google My Business signals, but we’re also seeing an increase in the importance of reviews and continued decreases in the importance of citations.

Check out the full survey!

Huge growth in Google My Business

Google has been adding features to GMB at an accelerated rate. They see the revenue potential in local, and now that they have properly divorced Google My Business from Google+, they have a clear runway to develop (and monetize) local. Here are just some of the major GMB features that have been released since the publication of the 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors:

Google Posts available to all GMB users

Google Q&A

Website builder

Services

Messaging

Videos

Videos in Google Posts

These features are creating shifts in the importance of factors that are driving local search today. This year has seen the most explosive growth in GMB specific factors in the history of the survey. GMB signals now make up 25% the local pack/finder pie chart.

GMB-specific features like Google Posts, Google Q&A, and image/video uploads are frequently mentioned as ranking drivers in the commentary. Many businesses are not yet investing in these aspects of local search, so these features are currently a competitive advantage. You should get on these before everyone is doing it.

Here’s your to do list:

Start using Google posts NOW. At least once per week, but preferably a few times per week. Are you already pushing out posts to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter? Just use the same, lightly edited, content on Google Posts. Also, use calls to action in your posts to drive direct conversions.

Seed the Google Q&A with your own questions and answers. Feed that hyper-relevant, semantically rich content to Google. Relevance FTW.

Regularly upload photos and videos. (Did you know that you can upload videos to GMB now?)

Make sure your profile is 100% complete. If there is an empty field in GMB, fill it. If you haven’t logged into your GMB account in a while, you might be surprised to see all the new data points you can add to your listing.

Why spend your time on these activities? Besides the potential relevance boost you’ll get from the additional content, you’re also sending valuable engagement signals. Regularly logging into your listing and providing content shows Google that you’re an active and engaged business owner that cares about your listing, and the local search experts are speculating that this is also providing ranking benefits. There’s another engagement angle here too: user engagement. Provide more content for users to engage with and they’ll spend more time on your listing clicking around and sending those helpful behavioral signals to Google.

Reviews on the rise

Review signals have also seen continued growth in importance over last year.

Review signals were 10.8% in 2015, so over the past 3 years, we’ve seen a 43% increase in the importance of review signals:

Many practitioners talked about the benefits they’re seeing from investing in reviews. I found David Mihm’s comments on reviews particularly noteworthy. When asked “What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?”, he responded with:

“In the search results I look at regularly, I continue to see reviews playing a larger and larger role. Much as citations became table stakes over the last couple of years, reviews now appear to be on their way to becoming table stakes as well. In mid-to-large metro areas, even industries where ranking in the 3-pack used to be possible with a handful of reviews or no reviews, now feature businesses with dozens of reviews at a minimum — and many within the last few months, which speaks to the importance of a steady stream of feedback.

Whether the increased ranking is due to review volume, keywords in review content, or the increased clickthrough rate those gold stars yield, I doubt we'll ever know for sure. I just know that for most businesses, it's the area of local SEO I'd invest the most time and effort into getting right -- and done well, should also have a much more important flywheel effect of helping you build a better business, as the guys at GatherUp have been talking about for years.”

Getting keywords in your reviews is a factor that has also risen. In the 2017 survey, this factor ranked #26 in the local pack/finder factors. It is now coming in at #14.

I know this is the Local Search Ranking Factors, and we’re talking about what drives rankings, but you know what’s better than rankings? Conversions. Yes, reviews will boost your rankings, but reviews are so much more valuable than that because a ton of positive reviews will get people to pick up the phone and call your business, and really, that’s the goal. So, if you’re not making the most of reviews yet, get on it!

A quick to do list for reviews would be:

Work on getting more Google reviews (obviously). Ask every customer.

Encourage keywords in the reviews by asking customers to mention the specific service or product in their review.

Respond to every review. (Did you know that Google now notifies the reviewer when the owner responds?)

Don’t only focus on reviews. Actively solicit direct customer feedback as well so you can mark it up in schema/JSON and get stars in the search results.

Once you’re killing it on Google, diversify and get reviews on the other important review sites for your industry (but also continue to send customers to Google).

For a more in-depth discussion of review strategy, please see the blog post version of my 2018 MozCon presentation, “How to Convert Local Searchers Into Customers with Reviews.”

Meh, links

To quote Gyi Tsakalakis: “Meh, links.” All other things being equal, links continue to be a key differentiator in local search. It makes sense. Once you have a complete and active GMB listing, your citations squared away, a steady stream of reviews coming in, and solid content on your website, the next step is links. The trouble is, links are hard, but that’s also what makes them such a valuable competitive differentiator. They ARE hard, so when you get quality links they can really help to move the needle.

When asked, “What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?” Gyi responded with:

“Meh, links. In other words, topically and locally relevant links continue to work particularly well. Not only do these links tend to improve visibility in both local packs and traditional results, they're also particularly effective for improving targeted traffic, leads, and customers. Find ways to earn links on the sites your local audience uses. These typically include local news, community, and blog sites.”

Citations?

Let’s make something clear: citations are still very valuable and very important.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s look at what’s been happening with citations over the past few surveys:

I think this decline is related to two things:

As local search gets more complex, additional signals are being factored into the algorithm and this dilutes the value that citations used to provide. There are just more things to optimize for in local search these days.

As local search gains more widespread adoption, more businesses are getting their citations consistent and built out, and so citations become less of a competitive difference maker than they were in the past.

Yes, we are seeing citations dropping in significance year after year, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need them. Quite the opposite, really. If you don’t get them, you’re going to have a bad time. Google looks to your citations to help understand how prominent your business is. A well established and popular business should be present on the most important business directories in their industry, and if it’s not, that can be a signal of lower prominence to Google.

The good news is that citations are one of the easiest items to check off your local search to do list. There are dozens of services and tools out there to help you get your business listed and accurate for only a few hundred dollars. Here’s what I recommend:

Ensure your business is listed, accurate, complete, and duplicate-free on the top 10-15 most important sites in your industry (including the primary data aggregators and industry/city-specific sites).

Build citations (but don’t worry about duplicates and inconsistencies) on the next top 30 to 50 sites.

Google has gotten much smarter about citation consistency than they were in the past. People worry about it much more than they need to. An incorrect or duplicate listing on an insignificant business listing site is not going to negatively impact your ability to rank.

You could keep building more citations beyond the top 50, and it won’t hurt, but the law of diminishing returns applies here. As you get deeper into the available pool of citation sites, the quality of these sites decreases, and the impact they have on your local search decreases with it. That said, I have heard from dozens of agencies that swear that “maxing out” all available citation opportunities seems to have a positive impact on their local search, so your mileage may vary. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The future of local search

One of my favorite questions in the commentary section is “Comments about where you see Google is headed in the future?” The answers here, from some of the best minds in local search, are illuminating. The three common themes I pulled from the responses are:

Google will continue providing features and content so that they can provide the answers to most queries right in the search results and send less clicks to websites. Expect to see your traffic from local results to your website decline, but don’t fret. You want those calls, messages, and driving directions more than you want website traffic anyway.

Google will increase their focus on behavioral signals for rankings. What better way is there to assess the real-world popularity of a business than by using signals sent by people in the real world. We can speculate that Google is using some of the following signals right now, and will continue to emphasize and evolve behavioral ranking methods:

Searches for your brand name.

Clicks to call your business.

Requests for driving directions.

Engagement with your listing.

Engagement with your website.

Credit card transactions.

Actual human foot traffic in brick-and-mortar businesses.

Google will continue monetizing local in new ways. Local Services Ads are rolling out to more and more industries and cities, ads are appearing right in local panels, and you can book appointments right from local packs. Google isn’t investing so many resources into local out of the goodness of their hearts. They want to build the ultimate resource for instant information on local services and products, and they want to use their dominant market position to take a cut of the sales.

And that does it for my summary of the survey results. A huge thank you to each of the brilliant contributors for giving their time and sharing their knowledge. Our understanding of local search is what it is because of your excellent work and contributions to our industry.

There is much more to read and learn in the actual resource itself, especially in all the comments from the contributors, so go dig into it:

Click here for the full results!

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!

https://ift.tt/2S5eG0m

[christinesumpmg1]

Announcing the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey

Posted by Whitespark

It has been another year (and a half) since the last publication of the Local Search Ranking Factors, and local search continues to see significant growth and change. The biggest shift this year is happening in Google My Business signals, but we’re also seeing an increase in the importance of reviews and continued decreases in the importance of citations.

Check out the full survey!

Huge growth in Google My Business

Google has been adding features to GMB at an accelerated rate. They see the revenue potential in local, and now that they have properly divorced Google My Business from Google+, they have a clear runway to develop (and monetize) local. Here are just some of the major GMB features that have been released since the publication of the 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors:

Google Posts available to all GMB users

Google Q&A

Website builder

Services

Messaging

Videos

Videos in Google Posts

These features are creating shifts in the importance of factors that are driving local search today. This year has seen the most explosive growth in GMB specific factors in the history of the survey. GMB signals now make up 25% the local pack/finder pie chart.

GMB-specific features like Google Posts, Google Q&A, and image/video uploads are frequently mentioned as ranking drivers in the commentary. Many businesses are not yet investing in these aspects of local search, so these features are currently a competitive advantage. You should get on these before everyone is doing it.

Here’s your to do list:

Start using Google posts NOW. At least once per week, but preferably a few times per week. Are you already pushing out posts to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter? Just use the same, lightly edited, content on Google Posts. Also, use calls to action in your posts to drive direct conversions.

Seed the Google Q&A with your own questions and answers. Feed that hyper-relevant, semantically rich content to Google. Relevance FTW.

Regularly upload photos and videos. (Did you know that you can upload videos to GMB now?)

Make sure your profile is 100% complete. If there is an empty field in GMB, fill it. If you haven’t logged into your GMB account in a while, you might be surprised to see all the new data points you can add to your listing.

Why spend your time on these activities? Besides the potential relevance boost you’ll get from the additional content, you’re also sending valuable engagement signals. Regularly logging into your listing and providing content shows Google that you’re an active and engaged business owner that cares about your listing, and the local search experts are speculating that this is also providing ranking benefits. There’s another engagement angle here too: user engagement. Provide more content for users to engage with and they’ll spend more time on your listing clicking around and sending those helpful behavioral signals to Google.

Reviews on the rise

Review signals have also seen continued growth in importance over last year.

Review signals were 10.8% in 2015, so over the past 3 years, we’ve seen a 43% increase in the importance of review signals:

Many practitioners talked about the benefits they’re seeing from investing in reviews. I found David Mihm’s comments on reviews particularly noteworthy. When asked “What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?”, he responded with:

“In the search results I look at regularly, I continue to see reviews playing a larger and larger role. Much as citations became table stakes over the last couple of years, reviews now appear to be on their way to becoming table stakes as well. In mid-to-large metro areas, even industries where ranking in the 3-pack used to be possible with a handful of reviews or no reviews, now feature businesses with dozens of reviews at a minimum — and many within the last few months, which speaks to the importance of a steady stream of feedback.

Whether the increased ranking is due to review volume, keywords in review content, or the increased clickthrough rate those gold stars yield, I doubt we'll ever know for sure. I just know that for most businesses, it's the area of local SEO I'd invest the most time and effort into getting right -- and done well, should also have a much more important flywheel effect of helping you build a better business, as the guys at GatherUp have been talking about for years.”

Getting keywords in your reviews is a factor that has also risen. In the 2017 survey, this factor ranked #26 in the local pack/finder factors. It is now coming in at #14.

I know this is the Local Search Ranking Factors, and we’re talking about what drives rankings, but you know what’s better than rankings? Conversions. Yes, reviews will boost your rankings, but reviews are so much more valuable than that because a ton of positive reviews will get people to pick up the phone and call your business, and really, that’s the goal. So, if you’re not making the most of reviews yet, get on it!

A quick to do list for reviews would be:

Work on getting more Google reviews (obviously). Ask every customer.

Encourage keywords in the reviews by asking customers to mention the specific service or product in their review.

Respond to every review. (Did you know that Google now notifies the reviewer when the owner responds?)

Don’t only focus on reviews. Actively solicit direct customer feedback as well so you can mark it up in schema/JSON and get stars in the search results.

Once you’re killing it on Google, diversify and get reviews on the other important review sites for your industry (but also continue to send customers to Google).

For a more in-depth discussion of review strategy, please see the blog post version of my 2018 MozCon presentation, “How to Convert Local Searchers Into Customers with Reviews.”

Meh, links

To quote Gyi Tsakalakis: “Meh, links.” All other things being equal, links continue to be a key differentiator in local search. It makes sense. Once you have a complete and active GMB listing, your citations squared away, a steady stream of reviews coming in, and solid content on your website, the next step is links. The trouble is, links are hard, but that’s also what makes them such a valuable competitive differentiator. They ARE hard, so when you get quality links they can really help to move the needle.

When asked, “What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?” Gyi responded with:

“Meh, links. In other words, topically and locally relevant links continue to work particularly well. Not only do these links tend to improve visibility in both local packs and traditional results, they're also particularly effective for improving targeted traffic, leads, and customers. Find ways to earn links on the sites your local audience uses. These typically include local news, community, and blog sites.”

Citations?

Let’s make something clear: citations are still very valuable and very important.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s look at what’s been happening with citations over the past few surveys:

I think this decline is related to two things:

As local search gets more complex, additional signals are being factored into the algorithm and this dilutes the value that citations used to provide. There are just more things to optimize for in local search these days.

As local search gains more widespread adoption, more businesses are getting their citations consistent and built out, and so citations become less of a competitive difference maker than they were in the past.

Yes, we are seeing citations dropping in significance year after year, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need them. Quite the opposite, really. If you don’t get them, you’re going to have a bad time. Google looks to your citations to help understand how prominent your business is. A well established and popular business should be present on the most important business directories in their industry, and if it’s not, that can be a signal of lower prominence to Google.

The good news is that citations are one of the easiest items to check off your local search to do list. There are dozens of services and tools out there to help you get your business listed and accurate for only a few hundred dollars. Here’s what I recommend:

Ensure your business is listed, accurate, complete, and duplicate-free on the top 10-15 most important sites in your industry (including the primary data aggregators and industry/city-specific sites).

Build citations (but don’t worry about duplicates and inconsistencies) on the next top 30 to 50 sites.

Google has gotten much smarter about citation consistency than they were in the past. People worry about it much more than they need to. An incorrect or duplicate listing on an insignificant business listing site is not going to negatively impact your ability to rank.

You could keep building more citations beyond the top 50, and it won’t hurt, but the law of diminishing returns applies here. As you get deeper into the available pool of citation sites, the quality of these sites decreases, and the impact they have on your local search decreases with it. That said, I have heard from dozens of agencies that swear that “maxing out” all available citation opportunities seems to have a positive impact on their local search, so your mileage may vary. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The future of local search

One of my favorite questions in the commentary section is “Comments about where you see Google is headed in the future?” The answers here, from some of the best minds in local search, are illuminating. The three common themes I pulled from the responses are:

Google will continue providing features and content so that they can provide the answers to most queries right in the search results and send less clicks to websites. Expect to see your traffic from local results to your website decline, but don’t fret. You want those calls, messages, and driving directions more than you want website traffic anyway.

Google will increase their focus on behavioral signals for rankings. What better way is there to assess the real-world popularity of a business than by using signals sent by people in the real world. We can speculate that Google is using some of the following signals right now, and will continue to emphasize and evolve behavioral ranking methods:

Searches for your brand name.

Clicks to call your business.

Requests for driving directions.

Engagement with your listing.

Engagement with your website.

Credit card transactions.

Actual human foot traffic in brick-and-mortar businesses.

Google will continue monetizing local in new ways. Local Services Ads are rolling out to more and more industries and cities, ads are appearing right in local panels, and you can book appointments right from local packs. Google isn’t investing so many resources into local out of the goodness of their hearts. They want to build the ultimate resource for instant information on local services and products, and they want to use their dominant market position to take a cut of the sales.

And that does it for my summary of the survey results. A huge thank you to each of the brilliant contributors for giving their time and sharing their knowledge. Our understanding of local search is what it is because of your excellent work and contributions to our industry.

There is much more to read and learn in the actual resource itself, especially in all the comments from the contributors, so go dig into it:

Click here for the full results!

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!

https://ift.tt/2S5eG0m