#i might. i do sadly need to update twitter. it's taking up too much space. but i dread that update

[risingsunresistance]

twitter is trying its damn best to get me to lean right but it underestimates how many times i am willing to click that block button

[kleptic-writes]

Drop ‘Em Out (Let Me See Them Knockers)

“Well, this is a cover of the song “Drop ‘Em Out” by Wheeler Walker Jr,” Kara says to the camera, her striking blue eyes staring into the camera as if trying to get it across that she is really saying this to Lena. She hums a note, before pausing, and saying, “I really hope you enjoy this, Lena.”

Kara strums a chord again and hums for about two seconds. She takes a deep breath and nods to herself, her left leg starting to bounce up and down as if keeping time. Kara looks like a real musician.

--

A one-shot where Lena is having a dilemma surrounding Kara. But, to be honest, when is she not having a dilemma surrounding Kara?

Word Count: 2134 words

Rating: T--but talks about boobs, so... take that how you will.

Read It Below or on AO3.

Sam exits the elevator quickly, her heels tapping against the floor. Her long legs stride towards the door to the CEO's penthouse, the urge to run bubbling up from deep down within her soul. She pulls her spare key out of her pocket, hands shaking as she clicks the door open and walks inside.

She nods at Jess, who is sitting and scrolling through her phone on the couch. “I came as fast as I could,” Sam says, almost yelling as her eyebrows furrowing together with worry. “What do you mean that Lena is ‘having a moment?’ Is she alright?” she asks.

Jess leans closer to the taller woman, but her eyes glance towards the closed bedroom door. “Go in for yourself and talk to her,” she whispers. “There’s just no logic and reason going through her head right now.”

Sam sucks in a deep breath and nods, mentally preparing herself for the absolute worse. She turns on her heel and walks to the door of the bedroom, pushing it open to see Lena staring wide-mouthed at her computer screen. She obviously hasn’t changed for the day because she is still wearing her morning red silk robe—not that there is much of the day left.

It’s already 3:53 according to Sam’s phone.

Oh, this is a lot worse than what Sam thought. She sighs and steps further into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

“Lena?” Sam asks, turning around to fully survey the situation.

The young CEO glances up at her with a glazed look in her eyes.

Sam bites her lip, studying Lena for a second too long so that it passes over the point of ‘      I am being a great friend    ’ and into ‘      I am a concerned mother looking over my child    ’ territory. But, to be honest, Lena is acting very similar to when Ruby came home lamenting over how cute her crush was three weeks ago.

Sam frowns. “Is everything alright?” she asks, stepping closer into Lena’s personal space.

Lena shakes her head as if she were shaking the cobwebs free from all the crevices in her brain. Her bright green eyes finally land on Sam, her eyes widening to almost a humorous degree.

“Sam,” Lena says, her voice cracking like a teenage boy going through puberty. Sam frowns as this is so much worse than what she thought it would be. “I think it finally got through to Kara that I’ve been flirting with her,” the CEO squeaks.

Sam tilts her head. “Why do you say that?” She quickly glances around the room for any signs of romance: flowers, cards,      anything    . She looks back at the CEO and raises an eyebrow at Lena when nothing appears to Sam right away. Her eyes flicker down, briefly, to the computer before Lena, and a thought pops into her head that makes her shiver.

Did Kara send Lena a sex video?  

 Sam shakes her head, that would be ridiculous. Kara is in isolation according to Supergirl’s twitter page.

 (“Lmao guys, I might have an alien virus!! I’ll keep you updated!!” it had said. Sam still balks every time she thinks about that. Who says LMAO when they have a potentially deadly virus?)

 “Just start from the beginning, Lena,” Sam ends up saying, trying to coax the CEO into telling her what’s wrong.

 “I am the product of a sordid love affair and my mother hates-”

 “Lena.”

 “Fine, fine,” Lena huffs and crosses her arms, staring Sam in the eye with obvious annoyance on her face. “It all started this morning when Kara and I were supposed to have our daily Zoom call with one another. She might’ve been exposed to an alien virus, you know.”

 “I heard.” Sam feels her eye twitch.

 “Anyway, this morning…”

--

 Lena sips on her morning coffee while her fingers rapidly click against the spacebar of her computer, coaxing the machine to wake up for the day. It blinks awake and she quickly types in her password.

--

 “I don’t need like a fucking novel,” Sam groans, her left hand flying up the air as a feeling of exasperation settles in her stomach. “Just tell me what happened!”

 “I’m getting there,” Lena snaps, “Hold your horses.”

--

 Lena hums and softly blows the steam away from her face as she refreshes her email inbox, waiting for Kara’s email to the Zoom room link.

 She looks out the window, frowning when a red dart--sadly, not Supergirl--flashes across the sky. Must’ve been a bird or something. Oh, Lena misses Kara like a fish missing water.

 Lena opens her phone and clicks on the texting conversation between her and Kara.

 “where are you??” Lena types, before deleting, pausing, and looking out the window once again so she can think of a better text to send to her best friend. She bites her lip, every possible message running through her mind rapidly and slowly at the same time because this is Lena’s most anxious part of the day, despite what anyone else thinks.

 She looks back to her phone and sucks in a breath, sending “are we still on for zoom?” to the blonde, quarantined superhero. “i can also do it later in the day if you can’t do it right now,” she adds in quick succession.

 “Check your email! :D” Kara quickly responds not a second later, and Lena feels her heart flutter as she stares at the cute emoticon. It is so Kara. “But could we possibly Zoom later? I have some lab tests about to be done on me” and “I don’t want our time cut short” comes in two messages back to back.

 “then why am i checking my email,” Lena almost asks, before deleting the message. She sighs, bringing her cup back up to her lips as her fingers fly to click the reload button. She clicks and anxiety starts to build in her stomach.

 She frowns as an email from Kara loads with the title:  Watch Me!!!

--

 Sam puts her hands on her hips and looks up at the ceiling. “So,” she says, interrupting Lena’s story. “you’re freaking out slash mildly upset because you didn’t have your daily Zoom call?”

 Lena sputters. “N-no,” she says while her eyes fly around the room rapidly as if the young CEO wouldn’t dare look her friend in the eye. Sam raises an eyebrow at the action and hums, trying to figure out what is going on.

 “Let me just continue with my story, Sam,” Lena whines, “Then, you can offer your genius or whatever.”

 “You’re damn right I’m going to offer my genius after all this,” Sam nods, motioning for Lena to continue, “please tell me more about why you’re so freaked out right now.”

 “Well, I clicked on the email which had a YouTube link sitting inside...”

--

 Lena almost chokes on her coffee once the video loads. Her green eyes squint together, amused, as she stares at Kara smiling widely into the camera.

 The blonde is wearing an      interesting     outfit, to say the least, and it makes Lena wonder if Alex decided to get Kara’s clothes for her--but at a steep price. But, like always, Kara still looks like the perfect mix between hot and cute. Maybe it’s an alien thing.

 Well, to put it plainly, Kara looks like a Cowboy. And, it is making Lena feel      things    .

 Her taut white t-shirt is covered by a blue and red well-worn flannel, and a straw cowboy hat rests on top of her head with her blonde hair down and semi-wild. Since Kara isn’t wearing her glasses, she looks as if Supergirl decided to go to a rodeo and just fought an evil bucking alien.

 “Hey, Lena,” Kara says, grinning into the camera. She reaches one of her hands up as if wanting to fix her glasses, but then coughs, and fixes her hat instead. “I haven’t seen you in person for a few weeks now,” the blonde muses, her blue eyes dropping to her lap as if extremely disappointed.

 . “I really hate that,” she continues, “But, nevermind that. I have something to show you! Something that I hope--oh, golly--I hope you’ll like this.”

 The CEO raises an eyebrow at the screen, silently wondering if Kara is going to use her superhearing to listen to Lena’s reaction.

 “Anyway,” Kara continues, “I’ve had a lot of time on my hands recently. I’ve really enjoyed our Zoom calls, but they’re the only thing that I really look forward to nowadays. So, I decided to learn how to play some country music. One sec,” she stands and exits offscreen.

 Lena bites down on her lower lip, slamming her eyes together so a groan doesn’t escape from her lips. Sure, Lena would love to watch Kara’s serenade from the DEO, but she doesn’t really care for country music.

 “Well, here is a song that I hope that you enjoy,” Kara says, and Lena slowly opens her eyes. Kara is holding a guitar with a shit-eating grin on her face.

--

 “Wait,” Sam interrupts again, “This all about a      song    . You’re freaking out over a song?”

 “Let me tell my own story, Sam,” Lena sniffs, crossing her arms. “It makes more sense if you just listen.”

 “Jeez, okay.”

--

 Kara clears her throat, and strums such a beautiful chord that Lena suddenly gets the urge to listen to more country music--but, only if Kara will listen to it as well. Her blue eyes shimmer and shine almost as if she had caught stars and put them in her eyes.

 “Well, this is a cover of the song “Drop ‘Em Out” by Wheeler Walker Jr,” Kara says to the camera, her eyes staring into the camera so she could get it across that she is really saying it to Lena while strumming another angelic chord. She hums, before pausing, and saying, “I really hope you enjoy this, Lena.”

 Kara strums a chord again and hums for about two seconds. She takes a deep breath and nods to herself, her left leg starting to bounce up and down as if keeping time. Kara looks like a real musician.

 Lena leans closer to the screen, enraptured by what she sees. Maybe after Kara gets out of Quarantine, Lena will just ask Kara to play guitar chords while the CEO happily (and hornily) drinks wine.

 Kara plays another chord and opens her mouth, her bright voice echoing in the bedroom.

 “Drop 'em out,” Kara’s voice is angelic, Lena thinks. “Let me see them titties. Gonna take a long look at those tig 'ol bitties. Areolas lookin' nice, nipples lookin' real pretty…”

 Lena gasps, shock ricocheting throughout her entire body as she watches Kara… sing about boobs? Kara would never do that.

 “Come on let me gander at your boobs.”

 Scratch that. Kara wants to see her boobs..? What in the--

--

 “No way that happened,” Sam says, rolling her eyes. “Kara can barely even say boobs, much less ‘titties.’ And that part with the Areolas? Bah!”

 “She did,” Lena says, nodding her head. “I’ve been watching the video all morning in fact. Do you want to see it?”

 Sam pauses, considering her choices very carefully. “I’m good,” she decides.

 “Are you sure?” Lena asks, looking worried and unsure as if she were afraid that Sam doesn’t believe her. “All I have to do is just click--”

 “Do      not     click that button,” Sam says, firmly, her hand almost slapping herself in the face. “I don’t want to hear it.”

 Lena pauses, biting on her lip. “What do I do, Sam?” she asks, her voice small. “I’ve never been in this situation before.”

 “Honey,” Sam sighs, “I don’t think anyone has been in this situation before. But you know what?” Lena perks up and stares at Sam with an extreme fascination. “You can do exactly what Kara told you to do… show her your boobs!”

 “Really?”

 “Yes,” Sam says, and then she hesitates. But, then she shrugs and agrees with herself that this might be the fastest course of action. “Yeah, show her your wonderful boobs.”

 Lena nods. “Okay,” she says as if trying to psych herself up, “I will. I will show Kara my boobs. But,” she pauses staring at Sam with an extremely pitiful gaze, “I will only do it if you help me make sure that they look perfect. Help me with lighting and whatnot.”

 Sam looks up at the ceiling and closes her eyes. The fate of her friend’s relationship is now in her hands, no matter how much she doesn’t want it to be. She sighs and looks back down at Lena.

 “Sure,” she says, “Let’s make sure your boobs look great for Kara.”

 “Our zoom call is at 4:30.”

 “You will look like Kara’s personal cam star at 4:30, then.”

[quackspot]

i started thinking about that gay bastard oc of yours. platano. can u tell me about him

omg u wer thinkgin about platano..... mr banana man... mr 4011. i am obsessed with the banana code srry i just got back from work (it was good :-D)

any way. um. im going below the cut. he kidnaps people and he murders people and i hate him because he’s also a massive weeb so. hm

HISTORY OF PLATANO... yea his name is spanish for banana

his father, pablo, will probably get a name change someday but i literally never think of his father since the only thing he did in platano’s backstory was disappear 

since platano’s world has characters based off like. fruits and vegetables (there aren’t really any limit to what the characters are based off of. it was in my lazy google translate name phase so we have like... a gay character named arcenciel who becomes dadlike through my powerful canon-changing touch. also arcenciel wears the colors of the rainbow as often as he can i haven’t figured out a good design for him since i’m not used to using more than 5 colors. he also owns a hat factory)

i think arcenciel and platano are friends they met when platano was like. 17 probably and arcenciel would be around uhhhhh ummmmmmm 21??? idk man but in canon he’s probably around 30 . yes i m saying “in canon” because i wrote a really dumb and horrible story back in 2018 arcenciel used to have HUGE internalized homophobia and i turned that into a running joke and i dislike that so that’s a reason why i’m not sharing the fun little story i wrote for my friends

(the best part of that story is when arcenciel threw his light-up rainbow heelies at platano, thus starting the boss fight which the main cast LOST.)

ok back to the topic at hand. platano.

i have a whole doc named platano where i just wrote drabbles about him so i’m going to summarize them

the first one was his friend, percisi (my only cishet oc he’s very short and very aggressive while also dressing in a soft-colored turtleneck since he’s based off of peaches) using a misunderstood form of satanism to summon satan. guess what percisi and platano summoned satan for. it was a manga update! wow

i won’t say the mangas name it was an inside joke

so platano was like “hey satan can i have this manga now please please” and satan went “sure just kill people for me” 

that determined platanos job for the next 7 or so years <3 wonderful. 

(it was basically me writing a backstory for a scene to happen in the main writing i wrote for my friends. he killed someone because someone else in the building was trying to summon satan. very confusing but okay i guess.)

i think right after that i wrote about platano meeting his boyfriend, sage, for the first time. i have horribly mixed feelings about their relationship since it’s very. Hm.

so platano kidnaps people to watch anime with him because all his friends left him and his best friend, mangue, is too busy being a dictator over the Land of the Fruits. i shit you not fruits oppressed the vegetables. i wrote that dynamic between the two because i was learning about the revolutionary war in US History. something like that at least

(the Land of the Fruits is not the official name)

on the topic of kidnapping people. guess who his favorite person was. sage. it was sage. so he tried to take sage often but they probably discussed Proper boundaries since everyone else tried to run away. hmm i am now going to write a bit right now 

“Platano,” Sage started. “Why do you keep kidnapping me? It’s rude and I hate it.”

“What else am I supposed to do?” The yellow-haired fool leaned on his sword, digging the tip deeper into the ground. 

“ASK ME IF I WANT TO HANG OUT??” 

“I can do that?”

“You keep making my dads worried.” Sage looked around the area, fidgeting with his hands. 

“Oh. Okay. Want to hang out? Watch some anime?” Platano paused for a moment, but managed to say “Maybe kiss?” before Sage got to answer.

“I- KISS??? We can watch anime together. We can go now.” 

Sage ushered Platano through a portal as fast as he could. 

His dads were never worried.

hmmm maybe that’s alright idk i’m a little tired so it’s probably a little out of character. sage probably isn’t that loud but i think it was trying to be the dynamic of “oh, we’re not dating” when they kiss every sunday at 5 pm by a romantic river scene 

he’s a character who is, at his very core, horrible and bad. he is portrayed in a way i DESPISE but i’m too lazy to correct it. his interest in sage actually started with me going “hmm i think platano would draw sage like this” then sauce giving me fun facts about his oc, sage, yea sage is sauce’s oc <3 epic win . so sauce gave me fun facts about sage and i was like “time to doodle these in platanos ‘art style’” when in reality it’s just the mockery of people just getting into an anime art style, with the chin so pointy it could cut a cake 

i might reread my old writing from 2018. i gotta agree with the judges for that year i did not write very well

it mightve actually been made in 2017 which would be FUCKIN CRAZY im gonna check rn 

yea it was started in 2018. february 14th... huh . finished it completely in june of that year it was 41 pages total and it’s not even double spaced how did i write something without double spacing it

OH MY GOD BOB IS GOING TO HIJACK THIS RANT JUST FOR A LITTLE

so bob is a fluffy little anthro cloud with a grey top hat and bowtie. he is amazing. i love bob. bob is another one of sauce’s character and mangue (mentioned earlier) was made by my friend jamie 

(you can always ask for their tumblrs but i’d ask them if its okay to share their tumblrs. i might just look at them and reblog their stuff cuz i like their art!!! maybe jamie posted a drawing she made recently on her blog but tbh i don’t think she would she’s more of a twitter user)

ok so im skimming thru UMG which is the story it stands for “Universe of Magic Gardens” and it was originally made for a prank on ponytown so people would go “what’s UMG” and my friends and i would be like “ur mom gay xDDDDDD” or something like that . horrible but i’m glad i’ve changed from . that.

here’s a bit i actually like AKLJFISJFIO

“What the actual FUCK, Ilkie?!” Arcenciel cringed in fear. “Put it back- it’s too ugly.” He pointed at Platano, whose arms were crossed. 

why is it bolded. anyway.

i just saw a part where eau used y’all... water cowboy moments <333 i really need to make refs for all of those old characters. all of my umg-related characters have to be my oldest-living ocs. 

i cant believe this is making me genuinely reread my old writing just to go “WJHFSIDAJKSFIOJ WTF????” 

some of the lines on it sound like something you would hear on like. a school bus or somethin 

looking at umg like “wtf how did i add so much Meat to this writing” bc most of my writing now is mostly quotations to progress the story (like the quickie i wrote earlier. i could add meat to it but im  tired lol)

OK THIS IS MORE GENERAL BUT MY FAVORITE THING ABOUT THIS WAS WRITING HAIKUS FOR PORTALS. after you visit a place enough times it’s kind of just an instinct to open a portal there so you don’t have to recite a haiku 

uhh ok here’s another bit becuase im feeling like living la vida loca.  ur biggest regret should be “can you tell me about him” by this point bc i’ve written too much to go back now

He landed on his face once he was outside of the hat. Meko quickly walked over to the guest room, opened the Portals for Dummies book, and flipped to a page. It looked devious.

“Banana, mango,

Each tasting amazingly.

A taste of evil.” 

Meko did the dance on the page, it consisted of something that looks like it’s from an anime. A portal opened, the familiar scent of bananas and mangoes coming from it. With some hesitation, Meko stepped in. He quickly made it so only his head peeked in.

it wasnt bolded this time but i like it bolded. ok i understand how i added meat it was just shitty expired meat ALKFSJSHDAIUJKFEIODSJAK . it wasnt even that much meat DAMN. it just looked like more.

actually that’s all i will write. i could  do more w platano but yea at his base he is a blonde twink who kills people because he wanted a manga but now he’s friends with a dictator. woo! wow. amazing character writing. i cant wait to get motivation to rewrite everything and make platano a good villain (he will still be very interested in anime sadly. idk why around that time i liked making characters who were obsessed with anime i didn’t even watch it much myself. i think it was because i wanted to put capes on them)

[kindabraveandlittlestupid]

Why Tumblr Chooses Censorship

It’s a strange day to jump online and suddenly hear about a major policy change on Tumblr from a few people I talk too. Words like “Total Bullshit”, “End of Tumblr”, “Burning Garbage Heap” and so on tossed among them to describe the policy change. Curious enough I logged on began reading over all the purposed changes and I admit I am a bit disheartened. Usually when a digital institution like AOL, Yahoo, Napster, or MySpace falls it because they didn't evolve and became stagnant in what they were providing the internet. I can’t think of a time where a site willfully regressed its own freedom of speech on a broad scale and basically swallowed a poison capsule that destroys their user base (perhaps deservingly so) but here we are.

That point aside, I am trying to have insight and hindsight to understand how/why they were pushed to this reckless conclusion (I will be leaving foresight out because I think Tumblr lacks foresight, the exodus from Tumblr will dramatically change the culture of this site likely for the worse). Tumblr like any social media medium is struggling in the current age of the internet; Bots, Far Right Extremists, Fake News, Illegal Porn, Data Theft, and so on. Many companies are walking this fine line between trying to combat these problems while preserving freedom of speech.

I struggle to find my own footing on this topic because I believe that society with LESS censorship historically does better. You look to countries in the past that repressed sexuality, individual thought, and so on; those countries were often the ones to invite the rise of repressive groups doing atrocious acts in history. While on the other hand because of this open and free social media platform we all see the echoing of those same repressive groups (who are also on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Youtube) and to simply say/do nothing about their posts will inevitably allow them to rise still. This is where I struggle as I believe in that concept of a free society but I do feel that removing fake new stories is essential for the health of democracy.

I imagine the reason why sexual images are the target is that Tumblr makes things so easy to post. It's not hard to imagine pictures of minors getting liked or reposted from one blog or another happening. The problem is many of those pictures will circulate for a long period of time not being flagged as underage and there is good chance that every user has knowingly or unknowingly looked at an image like this on the web. I explore the porn side of Tumblr and have once or twice encountered a Tumblr full of these images at which point I couldn't close that tab fast enough and get the hell out of dodge. So Tumblrs solution of handling this problem instead of playing whack a mole with these underage accounts? Ban all adult content.

I can understand this motivation being a foolproof way of making sure there is no underage porn because there will be no porn. I imagine the result will be very effective, so effective that the various members of the community be they straight, bi, or gay who had their own private collection of legal adult material on Tumblr will stop visiting the site. A slow-moving exodus of users from Tumblr this site to perhaps a new blogging alternative that isn't so restrictive. I don’t suspect Tumblr will be closing its doors the week after the policy kick in (though they will see a HUGE decline in traffic) but even the PG accounts will likely move on because a sizeable user base shifted away and people want to be where the party is at. And much as I love Tumblr, it will not be here (sadly).

PC Culture VS Censorship Culture

One thing I noticed on the various posts is some people attempting to blame this policy change on the PC Culture. I am not sure I believe that as a valid argument. While I don't get along with PC Culture all the time (part of my free society is believing that humor is apart of it and PC Culture doesn't always like humor), I do think PC Culture has a broad/accepting view of orientation and sexuality. Just important is people having the right to explore those thoughts and feelings of their own free will. Tumblr has been one of those sites allowing emerging gay men and women to find others like them but also explore their sexuality with images/gifs/videos. What Tumblr might have not noticed is that the site itself is kind of a cultivation of the best images from the web, sure you can find some pretty hard porn on occasion but of all the adult sites on the web, Tumblr provides an almost artistic lense to the images that come thru the site.

Censorship can come from various political/social/religious groups but this sort of censorship against the human body, sex, and sexuality, in general, comes from a very conservative mindset. People who don’t wish to see nudity in any form on any medium; people who think a woman's nipple is lewd, that breastfeeding publically is disgusting, and that anything remotely sexual is a sin. And by the nature of Tumblrs policy change their beliefs align themselves alarmingly close to these individuals.

There is a thin veneer of progressive views on the site that remains where they say they are ok with this and that like gender orientation surgery but its just that a veneer. Once a person has transitioned anything that is shared of their new body (nudity or sex wise) beyond the initial transition falls into the realm of ‘smut’ by Tumblrs policies. I imagine the perception they are trying to sell us is “Hey we are still the same progressive safe haven for LGTBQ community! Stay with us!” but secretly thinking “Everything you enjoy in the bedroom is horrible and we fucking hate you.”

Perhaps I am being hyperbolic in that statement but damn if it doesn't feel like a vast policy of censorship on the human body. And whenever this happens (historically) it always comes from hyper-conservatives.

A General Attack On Expression and Orientation

I touched on this topic a little bit above but I feel it's worth stating again that Tumblr might be losing its safe-haven status for gender expression and sexual orientation. When scrolling through Tumblr you will likely see those new expressions of genders that is beyond that of ‘traditional’ male and female definitions. And while I don’t have any attraction to some of these new expressions, I understood why they are there and don’t get upset if/when the cross my feed. Like two men having sex my mind thinks “Not for me but I am sure that will make someones day”. I view sex (in all its forms) as natural, I don’t have to be into it for me to be ok with it (if that makes sense). It’s visual participation if that image you see isn't a turn on for you and does nothing for you, simply move on.

Tumblr’s policy doesn't seem to care about this concept of visual participation and while it is taking away my straight/lesbian porn I enjoy. It is also sweeping up all these new forms of expression and orientation in the process.

I am not sure what else to say... I am a straight male and I try to have a deep empathy for other people when I can. I feel this argument can be better structured but I also come from a position where I don’t know all the details. I add this to the post because Tumblr seemed to go out of their way to suggest that they would protect this community but from a long view that doesn't seem to be the case.

A Lessons To Be Learned

I am not going to say fuck Tumblr. I don’t want to see them fail. I liked what this space was about and what it provided. I prefer they reconsider changing the guidelines and consider a different course of action but I also understand why they want to do this. It’s “The Easy Way” to do things. If they ban all porn then it simplifies managing underage nudity and allows the site to have less criticism drawn to it.

I do, however, think this broad censorship approach will ultimately hurt the site and the community though. People will leave, alternative websites will arise and Tumblr will eventually become no more. I am not going to tell anyone to boycott or delete their accounts. I plan to collect my writing and images, backup my favorite adult gifs (might need to buy a hard drive) and settle into this new reality. I know I will personally be visiting the site less as I used to look at porn here at some of the better cultivated Tumblr archives. That lack of traffic by me and all the other users will hurt the company. I hope they understand eventually I won't show up at all and over time, eventually, no one else will either. Maybe the site will survive and change into something else but right now under these conservative policies of censorship, Tumblr won't last.

Sad Regards, Michael California

Update: Posted this originally with a woman in a shower with large censorship bars over the naughty bits. Flagged despite the fact she was more covered than most Sports Illustrated models. I know I just wrote above I am not advocating leaving the site... but after all this and the fact that Tumblr Support finally responded to a far-right Tumblr blogger photoshopping/doctoring a PM conversation we had before posting it to his blog. I feel as though Tumblr A) hates sex and sexuality B) not only enables but protects racism and harassment on this website. I think it’s time to move on.

[hockeyandstuff91]

How did this happen? - Part 1

Word count: 1,614

Players: Tyler Seguin, Alexander Radulov

Authors note: This story is more of a fanfic not really an imagine. It was a random idea that I had pop in my head while bored at work the other day and I just had to write it down. It's dedicated to my lovely friend that I met on here, she is so great and I knew she would enjoy this a lot.

Like with a normal imagine story I wrote it in the perspective of the reader, however in this case the perspective is the character Brooke instead of Y/N. If I do more parts of this story I might jump back and forth between Brooke and Ashlyn's perspective but it will be clear who is who. :)

(Also note: I switch between calling Alexander Radulov by his first name, last name, and nicknames so I hope that's not too confusing. I mostly refer to Tyler Seguin as just Tyler but sometimes by his nicknames as well)

Hope you enjoy!

**update!** I have gone back and fixed a few things here and there, and changed it from imagine format (using you) to what the rest of the story turned into (using I) :)

Part 2

Ashlyn gasped, gently smacking my arm. I looked up from my, food giving Ashlyn a questioning look.

"What the hell was that for?" I laugh as I took another bite of the cesar salad that I had ordered with the entree.

"Brooke, look over there. But don't make it look like you are looking," Ashlyn whispered.

"Okaaaay.." I whispered back and slowly looked over towards the direction that Ashlyn was motioning towards.

As I looked up I immediately realized why Ashlyn had smacked my arm to get my attention. My eyes went wide and I looked back over at her.

"I know! What are the odds?" Ashlyn laughed as I took another peek over. There they were, sitting in a booth eating lunch. It just happened to be both of our favorite hockey players that we got to see two nights ago at the American Airlines Center, Tyler Seguin and Alexander Radulov.

It had only been a year since I started watching hockey but during that whole time Tyler had always been my favorite. He was so talented on the ice, and being that he was super handsome was definitely a plus.

Ashlyn had always liked Alexander and we both had joked about how we were going to marry the hockey players and be best friends for life, going to games together, and all the other events that hockey players and their wives got to go to.

"Should we say hi?" She asked.

"No I don't want to bother them," I said shaking my head. I bit my lip, really wanting to say hi though. I didn't want to be one of those people who bothered celebrities while they were out trying to have a nice time, and I for sure did not want to come off as a puck bunny either.

"Come on Brooke when are we ever going to see them again besides at a game?"

"I know.."

"Hey I have an idea, why don't you take a picture and tweet it at them, see if they answer," She laughed.

"That doesn't sound stalkery at all," I laughed back.

"Well I mean we were here first. We had no idea they were going to be here," Ashlyn responded.

"True.. alright I guess," I respond as I pull out my phone. "Wait a second why do I have to be the one to do it? It was your idea," I said, squinting at her.

"Because! I have to go to the bathroom," she said and got up from her side of the booth and smirked.

"Oh I see how it is," I laughed and shook my head.

She laughed and turned, walking towards the bathrooms.

I tried my best to sneak a picture and then quickly tweeted it at them, trying to not be super creepy, I added a caption that said "We didn't want to bother you guys, but hope you are having a good lunch! Ps the game a couple nights ago was great :)" How did she talk me into doing this, I had no idea, but it was too late now as I just hit send.

I scrolled through Instagram for a moment, liking a few random puppy pictures that I saw. As soon as I looked back up from my phone I saw that Radulov had gotten up as well, leaving Tyler there by himself.. looking at his phone.

My eyes went wide as I felt my phone vibrate in my hands, I glanced down, nervous, seeing a notification from twitter. I hesitated to open it but after a moment did. I saw that it was actually from Tyler's account and it had a picture attached.. one of me staring at my phone. The caption read "Lunch is great, hope yours was too! Don't be scared to come say hi ;)"

"Oh. my. god," I laughed and covered half my face with one of my hands, looking down at the tweet. I liked the tweet and slowly peeked up, seeing that he was still alone. I took a deep breath and sighed. I scooted out of the booth and slowly walked over to where he was sitting.

He must of heard my footsteps behind him and turned his head, smiling at me.

"Hello," He said.

"Hi," I smiled back.

"Would you like to sit?" he asked motioning to the spot across from him.

"Sure," I responded and moved to sit across from him. "I hope that tweet wasn't too creepy.. my friend made me do it," I laughed.

Tyler laughed back and shook his head "No I thought it was funny," he said. "Creative, most girls would not care about bothering us and just come up asking us a million questions and then get pictures. I appreciate someone who is thoughtful of others."

"Aw well thank you," I smiled at him sheepishly.

"So whats your name?" He said.

"Brooke."

"Very nice to meet you, Brooke. So you and your friend went to the game a couple nights ago?"

"Yeah it was awesome. It was actually my first NHL game I have ever been to, I was super excited," I smiled and look over, seeing that Ashlyn still wasn't back yet.

"Oh that's awesome. Well I'm glad we could play a good one for you for your first game," he smiled. "So are you from around here?"

"No sadly not. Though I am looking into moving down here. I came to visit for a few weeks, kind of bouncing around from friend to friend before I go home. I sort of needed a long break from where I live so I bought a one way ticket, have enough saved for one when I decide to go back, and I'm here until then I guess," I laughed a bit, realizing how crazy that probably sounds.

"Oh that's awesome! Especially to have friends that will let you stay with them for a while. Where are you from originally?"

"Oh New Hampshire."

"Oh yeah so this is a big difference then huh?"

"Yeah back home its snowing and here its sunny so I for sure like it here a lot better right now," I laughed.

"I don't blame you. I remember the snow all too well, and as pretty as it is, I don't really miss it that much," Tyler smiled.

"Yeah I don't either. Gets old after a while."

"That it does. So how are you liking it down here then?"

"It's great! I love it to be honest. I'm just trying to find somewhere that is affordable."

"Ah yeah that's the hard part."

"Yeah.. And I don't want to be a burden to my friends. They have been sweet to let me stay and thankfully I have enough saved up to cover all of my own costs its just I know they probably would like their personal space back," I laugh a bit. "I might just get a hotel or something soon. I really don't want to go home yet."

"I don't blame you," he smiled.

We talked for a few more minutes before I turned to see that Ashlyn was walking back. I smiled and waved at her, only then realizing who was walking beside her. I smirked knowing that she must of ran into Radulov on the way back from the bathroom. She smiled at me and the two of them joined us in the booth. We all talked for a while before the boys realized what time it was, having to leave for some pregame meeting.

Ashlyn and I walked out with both Tyler and Alexander and took quick pictures outside.

"It was really great meeting you guys," I smiled at them.

"You too!" Tyler responded as we all waved to one another before they started to walk over to Tyler's car.

"I can't believe we just got to talk to them for the last like half hour," I said and Ashlyn nodded.

"Aren't you glad I made you tweet him?"

"Yeah.." I laughed before turning after hearing your name called from the direction that Tyler and Rad had walked.

I saw that Tyler was jogging in our direction "Hey! Rad and I were just talking on the way to the car. I was mentioning how you were thinking about going to the game tonight but weren't able to make it. Would you still like to go?" He smiled as he caught up with us.

"I mean yeah of course we would but-" I started to say.

"No buts! It's on us," he said pointing back to where Rad was standing by the car, smiling at us.

"Are you serious?!" Ashlyn gasped.

"Yeah and after the game maybe we could all hang out or something. Give you a little tour?"

"Oh my god that would be amazing! Thank you so much," I smile brightly.

"Of course! You two are some of the most down to earth fans we have met. Especially for girls.. you didn't scream and beg for pictures. You just hung out and had a nice conversation. We both appreciate being treated like everyone else," He responded.

"Aw well of course!" I smile.

"Ok so I'll send someone to hang out by the front door to get you two around like 5ish? I know its two hours early but its a good idea so you can be there for the pregame skate and we'll have time to get you all set up," he smiled as he started to walk back to his car.

"Ok thank you so much! See you then."

"Oh my god today has been seriously the best," Ashlyn said as we get into her car.

"Right?!" I responded, not able to stop smiling.

[getaether]

Aether for Redditors

Hey there!

Due to the recent news about Reddit, we've had a few redditors coming to check us out. Which is awesome, so I wanted to write a guide about how Aether compares to Reddit, and what it does similarly, and differently. Likely you'll be fairly comfortable quick, but there are still a few interesting aspects of Aether you might want to keep in mind as you warm up.

We are a small, friendly community, consider this a welcome pack. 🙂

As I hear more and more questions from redditors in the community, this might be updated occasionally.

Aether is a peer-to-peer network

This is the most major, obvious difference. Aether has no servers. It exists ... nowhere, really. As a result, Aether is an app, not a website. It's available for Windows, Mac and Linux, and mobile apps are (eventually) coming.

This has a few implications. When you post on Aether, what happens is that your computer starts to share the content you posted. Other computers will get that content from you, and they will broadcast it to other computers, letting your post spread to the network in a sweeping fashion. As of February 2019, a post takes about ten minutes to reach the whole network.

That means Aether app is an app that needs to keep running in the background, like an email client.

If you post something, and then close the app immediately, that content will not be delivered to other people.

If you want to be sure your post is delivered, wait half an hour or so. Aether just stays on the taskbar / menubar (like Discord), so you can close the window and it'll continue to work in the background. In the future this is going to be visible in the UI when your post has spread to the network. (Like double checkmark from messaging apps)

Aether is ephemeral (like Snapchat - things disappear eventually)

Anything you post on Aether will be gone in about 6 months. This is nice, because no one can stalk your decade's worth of Reddit history and figure out where you sleep.

This is both a philosophical and a practical thing.

It is a philosophical thing, because having information gone vastly improves privacy. It also makes people be able to discuss more freely, without being concerned about whatever they wrote will bite them ten years into the future. We all grow up, and we were all less experienced when we were younger. Aether tries to respect the humanity in that by deleting too-old content.

But it is also a practical thing since it's a peer to peer network, it is limited by the disk space of its participants, so we try to be respectful of that as well.

Unlike Reddit, in Aether, moderator actions are visible to users

First of all, before anything, no one can edit your posts except you. It is cryptographically impossible. You'd think no one would do that, but given the current climate, you'd (sadly) be wrong.

Beyond that, when a moderator takes an action (delete a comment, let's say), that action is visible on the community's mod actions feed. This is a feed of events that mods generate that shows exactly what got deleted, and the reason why.

You can disable any mod, and choose anyone as a mod

In Aether, if you don't like what a mod is doing, you can just disable him. Flip a switch, and everything he deleted reappears. You can also choose a non-mod as a mod.

There is a 'front page' list of communities, called SFW list

These SFWlisted communities are the ones that appear on the front page. This is a limited, curated list of larger communities. You can always create your own community without ever needing to get into this front-page-eligible list of communities if you want. You can also disable this list completely by following the instructions in the app if you want.

Like Reddit, Aether is within the jurisdiction of the United States

That means US law applies — it is not a free-for-all. We have to remove copyrighted content via DMCA, as well as illegal (and those with reasonable chance of being illegal) content.

Aether keeps a copy of the whole network on your machine

This is why it can be so snappy: you can post offline, and when you connect, those posts will be spread to the network. The 'whole of the network' is actually very small, because Aether only carries compressed text. It doesn't carry images, videos, or anything else, so you need to post to Imgur or other image hosts, similar to Reddit.

This also emphasises the importance of no-illegal-content mentioned above. Since we all carry the text of the whole of the network, it's in all our best interest to keep the network clean. It's very hard to make text illegal, however, it's up to all of us to keep it as such. If you see something illegal, use the report button, or send an email with a link to it.

(And yes, there are guards to prevent spammers from creating a million posts and bloating the network size, such as required proofs-of-work.)

Aether is a work-in-progress

Despite the UI, Aether is still very much a work in progress. There are parts of the app that are being worked on, such as elections, being able to add a second mod to a community (Aether communities are denoted as b/Community instead of r/Subreddit) and so on. Things will break, and perhaps repeatedly so. At this point (a month after its release in December) things generally work provided that you have a stable internet connection and can keep the app open appropriately. Nevertheless, this is alpha software. If you have any bugs or feature requests, file them at https://meta.getaether.net. b/Meta is also a good place. (The link requires you have Aether installed)

Like Reddit, you can link to Aether from the web

Here's an example link:

aether://board/86e782e80681ac580b4d6d102b12e787c066e59f194fee57bb0bf83cc1e42fc6

(this links to b/Meta)

Notice aether:// instead of http:// at the beginning. As mentioned above, it needs the recipient to have Aether installed, though. We'll eventually have a preview site on the regular web that can show content without needing it installed, but again, work in progress. 🙂

If you want to post on Reddit or Twitter, and have it be recognised as a link, you can shorten the links at TinyURL, which accepts and shortens Aether links. Or if the place supports Markdown, like Reddit, you can always do:

[my link name](aether://board/86e782...e42fc6)

And make it show up as a link that way.

Aether is paid for by the 'unique' (orange) usernames and its business version

Since the current conversation is around how Reddit is funded, I want to be completely transparent about how Aether makes money (it makes very, very little money) as well. Here's how this works.

a) Similar to Reddit's gold, if you want to support Aether, you can buy a 'unique' username (with a checkmark, like Twitter) that makes you the unique owner of that username for the donation duration. If you want to do so, check out the Patreon.

b) Aether also has an upcoming business version, that allows a company to purchase a private instance of Aether for their own internal use. This comes with a few nice additions, like being able to use email to create threads and posts, and get emails back when other people post. It's good as a productivity, tool, and it's much better than Slack because it interrupts your people less. If you're a tech lead and interested in piloting this with your team, please reach out via email and we'll set you up.

Sounds interesting? Try Aether here. Hope to see you around!

[kaikumiko]

Monodrama

a/n: I wrote this as Monodrama played on repeat. might be suck, i don’t know, Still, enjoy. :)

Yixing takes all the fan letters handed to him with smiles never leaves his face. Trying his best to collect every single letters without ostracizing his bodyguards work.

“I’m sorry for all the ruckus.” Yixing bows deeply right after they ushered to the private waiting room to his bodyguards, which they just waving it off lightly.

“It’s our job. I’m just glad that the people tonight that come to meet you are calmer group. At least none of them screams my ears off.” Jisoo, one of the bodyguards that frequently work together with him slap his shoulder lightly before walking off with the others, leaving him in the comfort of privacy.

Yixing started sorting out the letters on the table carefully after settling his things down. Reaching for the first envelope, he wiggles around the chair to get the most comfortable position before he started reading it.

Wordlessly, she knelt dear the table, helping Yixing to properly sorting the letters by its size and colours, making Yixing chuckles lowly when he realized what she’s doing.

“I think you really need to meet a doctor. Always an OCD~” Yixing winks when she turns to glares at him.

She huffs and put her bag beside Yixing’s before sitting behind him.

“Don’t want to see my handsome face now?” Yixing tries to tease her again, bored at the too quiet surroundings. Or rather, her silent. “Hey, are you okay?”

When Yixing turns to look at her, she was eagerly scrolling through her Twitter apps, face scrunching in concentration. Her looks alarming him.

“Hey, is there anything wrong?”

“They’re fast.” Come her short comment after some time passed.

“Uh, what do you mean by ‘fast’?” Yixing tilted his head a little in confusion.

She shoved her phone to his face. “This. Your picture just now. I mean, it’s not even an hour had passed.” Letting Yixing sees the pictures by himself, she starts analysing her nails cuticles in much interest. “By the way, you look hot in those pictures.” She whistles and nudging his shoulder playfully.

“They even knew that I come back for ma’s birthday? Wow.” Yixing smiles brightly as he handed her phone back to her.

“Just go back and read those, okay?”

Yixing beamed when he realized that he had more letters to read before his delayed flight will be ready. “I should, shouldn’t I?”

---

She walks slowly to the table, deciding that he need some help to organize the letters again properly.

“I don’t even know how she folded it nicely like that. Thank you for helping me.” Yixing heave a relieved sigh when she professionally folding one difficult letter back as it was before.

“She got great origami skills.” She praises his fan, because she needed a few tries before getting it right and proper.

“Great fans.” Yixing smiles.

“Yeah.” She smiles back, before reaching for another letter and tries reading it out of curiosity. “This. They seems to be trusting you more than their family,” she commented, referring to the letter full of concern about her study and career path – something that usually talked with family members or teacher.

“Hm?”

“Aren’t you… I don’t know. Burdened by this?” When she turns to face him, he was smiling softly before reaching for her head and play with some strands of her hair.

“A little bit. It’s a big responsibilities, but I really want to try my best for them, too.” Yixing reach out for her chin and tilting their head closer, seeking for a kiss.

“You better pack up your things now, I think the flight is almost ready.” Come Jisoo’s voice suddenly, breaking Yixing out of his reverie.

Yixing look around the room and realizing that he’s alone. Pinching his thigh as hard as he can, he realized that he’s no longer dreaming. “Ah…”

“Yixing, are you okay?” Jisoo walks slowly to Yixing, concern written all over his face. “You look pale.”

Yixing could only shook his head, smiling sadly. “I’m okay.”

---

“Ma, this is for you.” Yixing hug her tightly before giving her the wrapped present.

His mother opened the box, revealing a pretty necklace with diamonds. “Thank you. Let’s eat, I cook a lot of your favourite dishes today.”

His father dramatically shook his head and making faces from standing behind his mother. Yixing chuckles because he agreed so much with his father. She always put too much efforts when he’s back when he really wants her to just relax and enjoy.

In the dining table, he eventually just let his mother babying him, picking up all side dishes and mountain it on his bowl while his father look amused at his troubled face.

“You need to let him breathe, darling. I can barely see the rice in his bowl.”

“Oh dear.” She shook her head when she realized what she had done at Yixing’s bowl. “I’m sorry, but you really look skinny lately. Is the work very hard lately?”

“No, Ma. I’m just not having appetite to eat a lot.” When he sees her face fall, he tried to smile the best. “I just really, really miss your cooking.”

Before he went to sleep that night, he pull his mother’s hand to talk with her privately. “Ma, can I visit her tomorrow?”

“Of course you can. Just make sure you’re properly hidden, okay?” She smiles gently to him and patting his disarray hair.

“I miss her so much, Ma.”

“I miss her too.”

---

Yixing enters the room before pulling off his cap and walks slowly to the bed. His heart feels heavy but he knows that there’s nothing he could do.

“Hey.” Taking her cold hand in his’, he kisses the fingers lightly. “So, how are you today?”

Only soft beeping sound from the machine could be heard.

“I just come back here, but I won’t be long. Please,” he wipes his hot tears slowly, “ah, I promise Ma that I won’t cry today. I’m sorry.”

---

“Xing, she just met with an accident.”

Yixing feels that his world spins too fast for him to get a grip.

“Ma?”

“Her mother just call me, but I promise you if there’s anything, any update, I’ll tell you. You just, you promise me that you’ll focus, okay?”

“I will.”

That day, despite everyone around him keep saying how sunny the day is, Yixing feels he was being surrounded by darkness.

---

“Don’t you promised me that you’ll take care of grandma when I’m not here? But now…” Yixing sighs, wiping hot tears from his eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m not blaming you, you know? It’s just… this is hard, seeing you like this.”

---

“Ma? Something smells nice here.” Without waiting for any reply from his mother, Yixing slowly hugging her back, taking her scent by breathing deeply.

“When will you go back?”

“Ma?”

“My heart is in unease when you’re here right now, somehow.” She slowly turns to face her son, caressing his cheek lovingly. “Maybe you shouldn’t be here right now.”

“Ma, I’m here for your birthday!”

“Can you… Will you go back soon?”

“Ma!”

---

Yixing throw his pillow as strong as he can to the wall before letting himself fall on the floor, crying silently. He knows that his mother worries about him a lot, especially after he sees her lying lifelessly on the hospital bed by his own self but he really, really want to stay here as long as he can.

Clutching his chest tightly, he weeps on the floor, letting his warm tears falls freely.

Yixing open his laptop, knowing full well what his mother’s feeling right now. She’s worried that if this part of his life brought up to public, it’ll bring more harm than good to everyone.

Especially to her.

With determination, he open the website for tomorrow’s flight.

---

Yixing felt that he had made the right decision when he sees his mother’s smiling face after he tells that he’s going back that evening.

---

“Hey, you okay Xing?” Jisoo asks slowly after the other bodyguards had dismissed from the private waiting room. They still have another hour before they can enter the flight.

Yixing smiles even when it didn’t even reach his eyes. “I’m sorry about the short notice. It must be hard for you guys to arrange my flight back there.” He pat the space beside him, the silent invitation for Jisoo to join him.

Jisoo shook his head lightly. “No worries, Xing. But you look pale right now. Even paler than the last time I saw you.”

Yixing pretends he didn’t listen to Jisoo’s concern instead focusing on arranging all the fan letters carefully to be put into his backpack.

“Yixing.”

Yixing’s eyes met Jisoo’s for a few seconds while he bit his lips tightly, trying to collect courage to share his sorrows. He’d known Jisoo for a few years now, and they naturally grow close to each other.

“I didn’t come back here just for Ma’s birthday.” Upon meeting Jisoo’s confusing eyes, Yixing takes a deep breath before he starts sharing about her.

“I feel so weak right now because I know about her condition, but yet, there’s nothing in this world I could do to help her. Even a little. And the worst part is, I could always see her, feel her presence around me, always, always when I’m alone despite all of my being knows that she’s there, unconscious until now. ”

Jisoo pulls Yixing into a tight embrace. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about her. But let’s trust her that she’ll be better soon, okay? ”Jisoo feels tiny bit lighter when he feels that Yixing is nodding his head despite clutching tightly to him. “It’ll be okay, she’ll be okay and this will be just another phase of your life, for both of you to walk through.”

Jisoo only let go of Yixing when the latter is evidently calmer than he is before.

Yixing take his phone from his jean’s pocket to show that Ma’s calling for him, a habit that never goes away even after years he had been living away from her. She always want to check up on his condition.

Jisoo smiles as he nods his head, giving signal that he’ll left Yixing alone to have private conversation with his mother.

“Yes, Ma?”

Jisoo didn’t even get out from the room when he heard a loud thud from behind.

And when he turn around, Yixing was on the floor; his phone beside him, unconscious.

“YIXING! SHIT, HELP ME ANYONE! YIXING FAINTED-!”

[asrisgratitudejournal]

BTS Meal

It's 19:32 pm and I'm closing my day in the office (after I got to write 2 descriptive paragraphs the whole day - I definitely did better at that time I was preparing for my IELTS), but I feel like I got to say a thing or two about the BTS Meal phenomenon that just happened back home. No one asked my opinion. No one needed to hear of solutions nor how to make things better, and not that what I said here could be helpful for anyone in any way juga. It's just my "scientist" and "problem solver" brain, I guess?, that motivates me to write this, so here we go.

My day started with this "mess" about BTS Meal on (surprisingly, not my stan Twitter account, but) my main Indonesian Twitter account. The tone of the tweets mixed a lot between very sweet and positive ones (especially from my mutuals that are also ARMYs) and the kinda-mocking meme-y ones (those tweeted by the "funny" "woke" guys - which mostly were not tweeted by my mutuals, just saw some of the tweets passing by on the tl).

I won't talk about the positive sweet tweet ones because... I wouldn't just be telling the world that we are the best fandom in the world or anything (yes, BTS teaches us self-love, but we're not that full of ourselves). Then again, as I mentioned in the previous post, quoting Pak Dosen Prama, "people everywhere are in a normal distribution". Of course, there are very nice and kind ARMYs out there who gave the drivers 100k IDR tip, a sack of rice, bottles of drink, a bunch of snacks, chocolates, etc. But, there are also, as we're mostly known of, toxic and mean ARMYs out there, that (thank God) didn't show up a lot in my timeline today.

I would love to talk mostly about how these "funny" "woke" people on the timeline react to these nasty videos of huge crowds, drivers stuck together in a closed indoor space without masks, polices closed down McD branches, people shouted in anger because of the McD closure, Pol PP tried to rip down a huge BTS Meal banner in front of the McD building, you know... those kinds of videos. Disclaimer: by these "funny" and "woke" people, I don't mean the ones who made dad jokes on ARMY as TNI or edited King Nassar into BTS Meal packaging -- I found them very funny, thanks, King. I specifically reacted to these people who think that we, ARMYs, (well, not we technically because geographically I'm not part of them rn? Well, anyways) were not considerate of the drivers who had to wait hours in line, were just causing unsafe environments for the drivers in the middle of a pandemic, were panic buying, were irrational and childish, and were possibly making a new cluster of Covid-19 because of this 50k IDR worth of meal.

Well, I'm not trying to find a scapegoat here, but in the perspective of someone who has been following perkiprahan BTS Meal all over the world, all of this craziness actually could be avoided and prevented very easily. If only, if only, McDonald's Indonesia had learned and studied and seen how the BTS Meal has been released in other countries, has at least consult an ARMY (it took only one person to estimate the number of ARMY in Indonesia. Heol, they didn't even have to consult. It's one google away), they could've easily made a strategy to prepare for this.

Before I go into possible solution(s) McDonald's Indonesia could've/should've taken, I'd take time first to explain why BTS Meal would matter THAT much to ARMYs. A famous Twitter chef in Indonesia tweeted after eating the meal: "so this is it? what's so special about 10 pieces of McNuggets, fries, 2 dipping sauces, and a cup of coke?" -- well, probably not the exact verbatim, but I saw a couple of tweets in a similar nuance: asking what's the hype of this BTS Meal.

Hhhh, here we go, the difficult part. It's always very difficult, at least to me, to explain something I love so much (as much as it is unconditional) to other people who are not on the same train of thoughts and feelings and mind. But, anyway... I'll try.

It's probably the cheapest official thing we can get as an ARMY. Let's say the price of one BTS Meal is around... 50k IDR(?). That amount of money is actually VERY cheap compared to BTS official merch (ranging from 100k to more than 500k apiece), an album (300k to 500k -- I even bought my BE Deluxe at £50), an online concert ticket (350 k and above), a BT21 merch (100k to 300k), a BTSxSamsung phone (18000k), a BTSxSamsung earbud (I don't know, 5000k?), and their many other expensive stuff. To be able to pay only 50k to show how we support them??? Why didn't people just let us be? Anyway, this BTS Meal is not made to cater to you, muggles. It's specifically marketed to us ARMYs. Don't get into a fight you're not supposed to be in, please. Ok, that's number 1.

We Indonesian ARMYs are part of the bigger family that is the global ARMYs all over the world. We have this sense of camaraderie that by eating this BTS Meal, it'd feel like we have lunch together eating the same exact meal with other ARMYs from SK, US, Egypt, Peru, and other countries (which has BTS Meal of course). Especially, looking at we, Indonesia, is included as one of the latest countries to release BTS Meal, our social media timeline and feed has been full of BTS Meal since two weeks ago and we can't help but order right away as it is out!

BTS Meal is an homage to BTS. I don't know if all Indonesian ARMYs even know about this, but the og story of BTS Meal is that it's BTS' favorite meal package that until a week ago exists only in South Korea (especially the cajun and sweet chili dipping sauce). And since BTS loves ARMYs so much (at least that the narrative the McDonald's marketing people trying to build here), they want all ARMYs around the world to taste it, too. //Mungkin kalau di Indo macem paket panas special gitu kali ya, saking favnya jadi pengen dishare ke orang lain juga (yaampun jd ngidam paket panas special huhu belum makan dinner lapar)//. So, of course, to receive that love BTS wants to share with us their ARMYs, we feel and act as enthusiastic as we could be!

There might still be more reasons why ARMYs are THAT crazy over this meal, but I've tried to outline at least 3 of them. Well, I don't represent all Indonesian ARMYs. They might have those reasons I mentioned above, but they also might not. They probably would just simply said, "because we love them and we want to support them". But there I tried to "explain" the rational reasons under the irrational logic hiding behind the word "love".

So now let's go to what has gone wrong and what McDonald's Indonesia could've done better in anticipating this huge event of BTS Meal release. Well, they still can implement these suggestions actually, since the event itself will still run for a month(?) if I'm not mistaken. Many Indonesian ARMYs (Indomys) Twitter base accounts actually also already have reminded ARMYs to not do panic buying on the 1st day of the release of BTS Meal. However, you just can't help it when you see people on your timeline started to get theirs, updated, and posted pictures of their meal (sigh, the scary side of social media: the FOMO phenomenon).

System! There's got to be a system here. Be it the ordering system (if they need to do buka-tutup strategy or minimum purchase) or the line waiting system for those ojol drivers (put sign everywhere if necessary). I don't know if they even care about this BTS Meal, but McDonald's Indonesia really didn't learn. I've mentioned before that Indonesia was one of the latest countries to release BTS Meal. In the past weeks, we had South Korea, the US, Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, even our closest neighbor, Malaysia, releasing BTS Meal. If only the management of McDonald's Indonesia could've seen and learned how those countries did their job magnificently, I believe all of this chaos wouldn't have happened. Take, for example, Malaysia. What they'd done there was to take orders only from McDelivery, drive-thru, and takeaway counter. Simple and neat. No third-party delivery is involved. And even for the takeaway, they already separated the line for regular order and the one for BTS Meal. Every sign is written clearly to make sure everyone follows the social distancing rule. Ah... why can't we be like Malaysia, though...

Clear notice/announcement on the availability of the packaging. One of the things that sadly successfully drive ARMYs to do panic buying today is that there's this rumor going around that the purple packaging is limited in numbers and they will run out if we don't buy it fast. Until now, we didn't know about the real fact, some ARMYs said that the packaging is produced in the country so they can print them as much as they can, some others said there's only 1000 (? need ref here) of them per branch, we really don't know. The only thing we know for sure is that as in Malaysia, the packaging was out on the 3rd day (? need ref here) of the release. So of course that makes us scared in a way, and that's normal because we've been waiting for it since a month ago! Just imagine our frustration? If only McDonald's Indonesia Twitter account can say a thing about this, especially to give assurance to Indomys that the packaging won't be out, that'd help big time. At least, by knowing that, these ARMYs could strategize, plan their schedule around their time so that they can come by themselves via drive-thru or even order it on Gofood/Grabfood app at other time that's not 11 AM.

Better communication with the authorities. It'd just be nice if McDonald's Indonesia has talked before with local police about this release and the effect it probably will cause. At least just to give notice to them that there will be this special package coming out and there probably be a little bit of traffic here so please mind the disruption. And they can even ask these authorities for help! It just breaks my heart, though, seeing a lot of McDonald's branches are now being closed down by force because they were considered breaking the law for making crowd :(

Waa panjang juga ni bacotan saya. Dari nulis di office sampe laper terus pulang karena takut keburu gelap dan dingin alias ga bawa jaket samsek, sampe akhirnya lanjut lagi di rumah (ini jam 22.52 pm) dan belom dinner gara-gara saking semangatnya abis mandi langsung buka dashboard lagi. Terus sekarang ini ceritanya dah cape berbahasa Inggris jadi mulai ngIndonesia. Dah deh gitu aja. Nga ada yang baca juga ini pasti, tapi at least punya bacaan lah ntar in the next 5 years bakal ngomong "yaampun bucin banget ye dulu w sama BTS sampe gini aja diomongin ditulis panjang lebar". Semoga 5 tahun lagi SUDAH BERHASIL KETEMU LANGSUNG SM BTS DI WEMBLEY YA ALLAH AAMIIN YRA. Minta doanya ya teman2.

-fin,

Oxford, 9 Juni 2021, ditulis karena kesal sama netizen yang gatau apa-apa tapi komen mulu tentang BTS Meal

[douglassmiith]

What do local SEOs really think of Google My Business support?

It’s already hard to remember a time when a local SEO Company’s priorities included having to deal with Google My Business’ various support teams across email, phone, live chat, and social media.

Earlier this year, though, it was a different story. So, inspired by serious issues with incorrect recommendations, errant listing suspensions and very long wait times for reinstatements earlier this year, I sought to find out what the local search experts (many of whom are GMB Product Experts) really thought of the quality of Google My Business’ support, and compiled the following reactions from a long list of local SEO Company pros, including Joy Hawkins, Ben Fisher, Greg Gifford, Dan Leibson, Dana DiTomaso, and more.

I have it on good authority that the quality of support isn’t likely to magically improve once the virus clears, so let’s consider this the “wayback machine” of GMB support gripes, and just hope that the future doesn’t so clearly reflect the past.

Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling will lead a Live with Search Engine Land discussion with two leaders in the local marketing agency space: Foursquare CEO David Shim and PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall. They will discuss how brands and marketers can use location intelligence as they plot a way forward at 2 p.m. ET May 15. Learn more here >>

Incorrect or misleading information and advice

One very common response from almost all sides was around the issues with incorrect information being presented as fact. While experienced SEO Companys may be able to see through the misinformation, any local business owner looking for help from GMB support runs the risk of being told to do something that either won’t help with their problem at all or will actively damage their business’ visibility.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): Phone support is a gamble: if you get someone untrained, they will destroy you with the wrong information. On the other hand, if you get someone who has some sympathy, they will not only help you but follow up to make sure all went okay.

My tip for phone support is to listen to their voice and see if it’s clear that they’re talking from a script. Interrupt them and ask them: “How are you doing?”, “What time is it there?” If they stick to the script, tell them you need to run because of an emergency or something.

I do love live chat, but it is severely understaffed. The staff they have added in the last six months or seem to be the same staff, experience-wise, as phone support.

The worst cases of misinformation I have experienced are where support is telling a user to create a new listing because of the actions of a previous manager. This problem can be overcome, but it’s really difficult and usually requires the involvement of a GMB Product Expert.

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): We avoid and dread support at GMB like it’s the DMV. It can be good for simple requests, like moving reviews or redirecting a closed page, but I pretty much never contact support. My clients occasionally  do, simply because that’s more efficient than my acting as a conduit, but that’s a big time-taker because it’s extremely tough to speak with a human at GMB.

When you do get through to someone, often there is a quasi-language barrier that leads to misunderstandings. Then there’s the conflicting advice: over the years, Google reps have claimed things like that keyword stuffing in the description helps rankings, call-tracking numbers aren’t allowed, and that clicks are a direct ranking factor.

I chalk that up to a lack of training, or a lack of clear SOPs from Google, or both. In any event, the time it takes to get help that may or may not help, and the confusion caused by well-meaning GMB support reps, often makes business owners wonder whether they’re too reliant on the “local map” and going about their local visibility all wrong.

Jason Brown (Sterling Sky): To say that the latest round of new hires is not properly trained is the understatement of the year. I know more about Google’s policies and procedures, and find myself having to train the support staff. It’s worse for the average user that doesn’t know any better.

We’re at Google’s mercy, and sadly, they don’t seem to care (at least, that’s the message that they’re conveying). I’ve had to point out countless flaws and issues when I contact support, and have had to contact another Google employee for assistance. The average user can’t do this, and so is left hanging.

Dana DiTomaso (Kick Point): The recommendations coming from official GMB support channels can definitely be misleading. For example, they have said that a listing was suspended because we updated the categories on the listing, yet egregious spam lives on.

There also seems to be a high number of suspended listings right now [this was in late February]: we have a client who has a suspended listing (one out of their several locations) with no reason given, and no response yet to our request for help.

Tom Waddington (tomwaddington.com): While I think GMB support wants to help users resolve their issues, I feel the overall priority, at least for a phone support agent, is to convince you that the issue is resolved or will be in a day or two, so that you leave positive feedback regarding your experience with them.

There is typically a survey you will be asked to complete at the end of a support call, but there have been times when my talk with support didn’t go well, the issue wasn’t resolved, and the call disconnected during the transfer to the survey.

GMB is a complex product and support agents aren’t going to have the training and experience to understand all issues. I think the desire for positive feedback along with genuinely wanting to help a user can lead to bad or incorrect advice from a support agent that is trying to placate the user.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): There seems to be a lot of inconsistency in the quality of support depending who happens to field your inquiry. Some of the GMB support folks seem knowledgeable about the platform and common issues, while others seem to lack even a basic understanding of GMB language and core concepts.

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Getting some odd advice from business support can be frustrating to businesses as well as the community, especially when said advice is broadcasted publicly: because people think it’s from Google, it must be legitimate advice.

On the contrary, business support is basically a call centre, with set procedures for set issues. They’re not in direct contact with Google My Business product managers, and equally, no single Googler knows or understands what are exact ranking factors are.

I can only surmise (having listened to countless hours of recordings from account managers for GMB listings during compliance auditing), that call handlers who feel confident with the product will offer their own advice whether they think it may help or have heard other agents offer similar advice.

Some particularly troubling pieces of misinformation I’ve heard are:

Adding keywords into your listings, shop code and labels will help your listing rank better (they won’t!)

Deleting a suspended listing and starting again will solve the suspension issue (it won’t!)

Edits made to your GMB listing will ‘reset’ the account’s authority (they won’t!)

A ‘permanently closed’ listing will go away eventually (it might not -– I have a business still showing ‘permanently closed’ after 12yrs and three different businesses at location later!)

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): Every once in a while, I’ve gotten some bad help. We had an issue with a duplicate listing, and got it fixed, and then a month later GMB support finally replied to the initial request we’d put in… and then a month later they answered again.

We’ve also seen the Twitter team send out a few questionable tweets, like saying that keywords in the description help in ranking. Some are more helpful than others, and i think that sometimes they just answer ‘off the cuff’ and don’t realize it’s bad information.

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Users need to exercise caution when taking advice from GMB support. I’ve actually written a piece detailing the questionable advice I’ve heard.

Dan Leibson (Local Search Guide): I think their support channels suck. I think there is no meaningful way to report systemic, broken things. Everything is treated like you want the secrets to their system or are trying to game the system when you just want them to fix their broken stuff. 

Advertisers get no benefit regardless of spending a ton on ads, despite the fact that they are disproportionately affected by these problems and are more trustworthy sources of reporting.

Speed and efficiency issues

Another commonly-raised issue was the speed efficiency of advice. When your GMB listing is suspended you’re likely to be losing a lot of money every day, and from my chats with the local search community, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

(It should obviously be noted that as of right now, Google has advised that GMB support is going to be slower than ever while they prioritise certain actions related to Covid-19, and social support has been entirely switched off.)

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): I had a years-long saga of trying to get Google to remove the “Dentist” category from my Local Visibility System GMB page. Why was it there? Well, as a local SEO Company, I tinker all the time, often using my own GMB page as a lab chimp.

In one experiment I changed the primary category to ‘Dentist,’ but I couldn’t change it back. I I contacted them through Twitter and email, and while the reps were helpful, after some back-and-forth they were stumped, and apparently kicked up the question to a supervisor. I never heard back. (In Google’s defence, I didn’t attempt to call them, but that’s because I didn’t have a business day to spare!)

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): GMB issues can have significant consequences for local businesses. When a listing is suspended, it can be really frustrating to get a response like:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Support channels all vary in efficiency, especially when there has been a large swath of suspensions. When these happen (and they’re happening more and more), support grinds to a halt. Last year we had an unprecedented 6-week delay in getting reinstatements getting looked at.

I’ve personally found Twitter support to have become swamped as it has become more popular and delays are occurring. You also have to DM details of the issue, which isn’t ideal when it’s a nuanced issue.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): According to those whom I talk to at Google, 90% of accounts have only one listing in them. This infers that the majority of listings that are on maps are single users with a single account. In other words, most of them are ‘mom and pop’-type businesses.

So, therefore, GMB builds things that address single account holders the most. Makes sense that support would acknowledge this, right? Heck, no! Have you ever tried to get a reinstatement completed? You get back this email telling you that they need more information, or they are not compliant, or there is a problem with the… whatever.

In the example below, they didn’t tell me the name of the business and supplied a generic response when I asked for it.

However, if you go elsewhere and submit a contact form, you get back this beautiful template that tells you the business name and address!

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): Personally, when I have an issue, I usually turn to Twitter DMs, but the support I’ve received there has been variable in terms of quality and timeliness.

It is frustrating to send a DM about a problem and then have to wait weeks to get an answer. By the time you get it, you’ve usually found a solution or the problem is no longer a problem!

Personally, I turn to an internal network of fellow GMB aficionados, and the forum, for insight. I just can’t wait two or three weeks for an answer from Twitter support. Also, if you have multiple questions about multiple accounts, it’s very hard to manage responses there.

It’s not all bad, though!

At the time, given the severe slowdown in GMB support responses, the misinformation being shared, and the backup in suspension investigations, I was fully prepared for an onslaught of rage towards the GMB support team. And while I did indeed get that in some quarters, I was really pleasantly surprised by the positive stories, understanding and empathy shown elsewhere.

Joy Hawkins (Sterling Sky): Bad advice is normally given out when users expect Google support to be able to answer questions about ranking tactics, like in this example.

Google My Business support is generally good at fixing issues with listings but there is a limit to what they’re able to do when technical issues and bugs are frequently a problem with the platform. If you’ve been told something by GMB support that you think is incorrect, it’s always fine to get a second opinion by posting on the GMB forum.

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): The support team is trying, but so often they’re completely overwhelmed by the volume of support requests that things don’t work out so well. Overall, I’ve had great experiences. You just have to wait a bit for your reply or solution.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): I’m really empathetic to folks working the GMB support channels. They’re regularly inundated with issues from all directions.

From my vantage point, Google just doesn’t allocate the resources needed to appropriately support GMB. That being said, they’ve definitely moved in the right direction. It wasn’t that long ago that support requests simply went unanswered into the Google abyss.

I’m extremely grateful for the ability to have some means to escalate issues. For example, in dealing with a particularly troublesome law firm listing suspension issue late last year, I got a response within thirty minutes that led to a rapid reinstatement:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): I really like the original ‘contact support’ form. You can give a pretty detailed report on the issue, then when you get the reply email, you can reply with additional screenshots to help the agent.

By providing the agent with all the details at once in the form, I normally get the issue resolved within 24hrs, with no ‘back-and-forth’ required.

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): My main point would be that, however frustrated one might be with lack of advice, quality of advice, or speed of advice, we need to remember that GMB is staffed by human beings who are doing their best given whatever resources or internal guidelines they have or do not have.

My tips would be to always be polite, not to be snarky, and to always thank people for their time – whether it’s Max, Flip, Brad, Liz, Mark, Dany, Zach, Matt, Tori or Jenny!

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Over the years, GMB support has evolved from being virtually non-existent to something that has become very useful for solving most types of GMB issues. Looking at the evolution of the ways that you can contact GMB support alone is a testament to the attention that the GMB product is getting and the progress that they have made.

The future of Google My Business support

While it’s hard for me, here in the spring of 2020, when nothing is as it should be or as any of us would have expected it to be, to summarise the current status of Google My Business support, I do have some closing thoughts on its future courtesy of some of those I spoke to.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): While I’m not very optimistic that it will happen, I’d like to see Google take more accountability for addressing GMB issues and providing support. Like other support contexts, it’s neither fair nor productive to attack the front-line support people. 

Instead, I’d suggest putting more pressure on Google to take Google My Business issues more seriously by allocating the necessary resources to properly support and address these issues. Lack of support is harmful to both businesses and their customers.

Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Company Guide): As is often the case with Google services, the scale of the problem must be in a way overwhelming. And while Google has been making incremental progress, it still feels like a drop in the bucket.

There has been a lot of speculation over the past year that Google is going to roll out a paid GMB service. While we all cringe at Google taking even more money from our collective pockets, if a pay model allows it to more effectively address some of the glaring problems with GMB, I imagine the majority of local businesses and agencies would hold their noses and willingly pay it.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jamie Pitman has worked in digital marketing agency for over a decade and is currently Head of Content at local SEO Company tool provider BrightLocal. He specializes in local marketing agency and the many factors that affect local search performance, from Google My Business and consumer reviews to branding, content marketing agency, and beyond.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

Via http://www.scpie.org/what-do-local-seos-really-think-of-google-my-business-support/

source https://scpie.weebly.com/blog/what-do-local-seos-really-think-of-google-my-business-support

[riichardwilson]

What do local SEOs really think of Google My Business support?

It’s already hard to remember a time when a local SEO Company’s priorities included having to deal with Google My Business’ various support teams across email, phone, live chat, and social media.

Earlier this year, though, it was a different story. So, inspired by serious issues with incorrect recommendations, errant listing suspensions and very long wait times for reinstatements earlier this year, I sought to find out what the local search experts (many of whom are GMB Product Experts) really thought of the quality of Google My Business’ support, and compiled the following reactions from a long list of local SEO Company pros, including Joy Hawkins, Ben Fisher, Greg Gifford, Dan Leibson, Dana DiTomaso, and more.

I have it on good authority that the quality of support isn’t likely to magically improve once the virus clears, so let’s consider this the “wayback machine” of GMB support gripes, and just hope that the future doesn’t so clearly reflect the past.

Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling will lead a Live with Search Engine Land discussion with two leaders in the local marketing agency space: Foursquare CEO David Shim and PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall. They will discuss how brands and marketers can use location intelligence as they plot a way forward at 2 p.m. ET May 15. Learn more here >>

Incorrect or misleading information and advice

One very common response from almost all sides was around the issues with incorrect information being presented as fact. While experienced SEO Companys may be able to see through the misinformation, any local business owner looking for help from GMB support runs the risk of being told to do something that either won’t help with their problem at all or will actively damage their business’ visibility.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): Phone support is a gamble: if you get someone untrained, they will destroy you with the wrong information. On the other hand, if you get someone who has some sympathy, they will not only help you but follow up to make sure all went okay.

My tip for phone support is to listen to their voice and see if it’s clear that they’re talking from a script. Interrupt them and ask them: “How are you doing?”, “What time is it there?” If they stick to the script, tell them you need to run because of an emergency or something.

I do love live chat, but it is severely understaffed. The staff they have added in the last six months or seem to be the same staff, experience-wise, as phone support.

The worst cases of misinformation I have experienced are where support is telling a user to create a new listing because of the actions of a previous manager. This problem can be overcome, but it’s really difficult and usually requires the involvement of a GMB Product Expert.

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): We avoid and dread support at GMB like it’s the DMV. It can be good for simple requests, like moving reviews or redirecting a closed page, but I pretty much never contact support. My clients occasionally  do, simply because that’s more efficient than my acting as a conduit, but that’s a big time-taker because it’s extremely tough to speak with a human at GMB.

When you do get through to someone, often there is a quasi-language barrier that leads to misunderstandings. Then there’s the conflicting advice: over the years, Google reps have claimed things like that keyword stuffing in the description helps rankings, call-tracking numbers aren’t allowed, and that clicks are a direct ranking factor.

I chalk that up to a lack of training, or a lack of clear SOPs from Google, or both. In any event, the time it takes to get help that may or may not help, and the confusion caused by well-meaning GMB support reps, often makes business owners wonder whether they’re too reliant on the “local map” and going about their local visibility all wrong.

Jason Brown (Sterling Sky): To say that the latest round of new hires is not properly trained is the understatement of the year. I know more about Google’s policies and procedures, and find myself having to train the support staff. It’s worse for the average user that doesn’t know any better.

We’re at Google’s mercy, and sadly, they don’t seem to care (at least, that’s the message that they’re conveying). I’ve had to point out countless flaws and issues when I contact support, and have had to contact another Google employee for assistance. The average user can’t do this, and so is left hanging.

Dana DiTomaso (Kick Point): The recommendations coming from official GMB support channels can definitely be misleading. For example, they have said that a listing was suspended because we updated the categories on the listing, yet egregious spam lives on.

There also seems to be a high number of suspended listings right now [this was in late February]: we have a client who has a suspended listing (one out of their several locations) with no reason given, and no response yet to our request for help.

Tom Waddington (tomwaddington.com): While I think GMB support wants to help users resolve their issues, I feel the overall priority, at least for a phone support agent, is to convince you that the issue is resolved or will be in a day or two, so that you leave positive feedback regarding your experience with them.

There is typically a survey you will be asked to complete at the end of a support call, but there have been times when my talk with support didn’t go well, the issue wasn’t resolved, and the call disconnected during the transfer to the survey.

GMB is a complex product and support agents aren’t going to have the training and experience to understand all issues. I think the desire for positive feedback along with genuinely wanting to help a user can lead to bad or incorrect advice from a support agent that is trying to placate the user.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): There seems to be a lot of inconsistency in the quality of support depending who happens to field your inquiry. Some of the GMB support folks seem knowledgeable about the platform and common issues, while others seem to lack even a basic understanding of GMB language and core concepts.

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Getting some odd advice from business support can be frustrating to businesses as well as the community, especially when said advice is broadcasted publicly: because people think it’s from Google, it must be legitimate advice.

On the contrary, business support is basically a call centre, with set procedures for set issues. They’re not in direct contact with Google My Business product managers, and equally, no single Googler knows or understands what are exact ranking factors are.

I can only surmise (having listened to countless hours of recordings from account managers for GMB listings during compliance auditing), that call handlers who feel confident with the product will offer their own advice whether they think it may help or have heard other agents offer similar advice.

Some particularly troubling pieces of misinformation I’ve heard are:

Adding keywords into your listings, shop code and labels will help your listing rank better (they won’t!)

Deleting a suspended listing and starting again will solve the suspension issue (it won’t!)

Edits made to your GMB listing will ‘reset’ the account’s authority (they won’t!)

A ‘permanently closed’ listing will go away eventually (it might not -– I have a business still showing ‘permanently closed’ after 12yrs and three different businesses at location later!)

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): Every once in a while, I’ve gotten some bad help. We had an issue with a duplicate listing, and got it fixed, and then a month later GMB support finally replied to the initial request we’d put in… and then a month later they answered again.

We’ve also seen the Twitter team send out a few questionable tweets, like saying that keywords in the description help in ranking. Some are more helpful than others, and i think that sometimes they just answer ‘off the cuff’ and don’t realize it’s bad information.

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Users need to exercise caution when taking advice from GMB support. I’ve actually written a piece detailing the questionable advice I’ve heard.

Dan Leibson (Local Search Guide): I think their support channels suck. I think there is no meaningful way to report systemic, broken things. Everything is treated like you want the secrets to their system or are trying to game the system when you just want them to fix their broken stuff. 

Advertisers get no benefit regardless of spending a ton on ads, despite the fact that they are disproportionately affected by these problems and are more trustworthy sources of reporting.

Speed and efficiency issues

Another commonly-raised issue was the speed efficiency of advice. When your GMB listing is suspended you’re likely to be losing a lot of money every day, and from my chats with the local search community, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

(It should obviously be noted that as of right now, Google has advised that GMB support is going to be slower than ever while they prioritise certain actions related to Covid-19, and social support has been entirely switched off.)

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): I had a years-long saga of trying to get Google to remove the “Dentist” category from my Local Visibility System GMB page. Why was it there? Well, as a local SEO Company, I tinker all the time, often using my own GMB page as a lab chimp.

In one experiment I changed the primary category to ‘Dentist,’ but I couldn’t change it back. I I contacted them through Twitter and email, and while the reps were helpful, after some back-and-forth they were stumped, and apparently kicked up the question to a supervisor. I never heard back. (In Google’s defence, I didn’t attempt to call them, but that’s because I didn’t have a business day to spare!)

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): GMB issues can have significant consequences for local businesses. When a listing is suspended, it can be really frustrating to get a response like:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Support channels all vary in efficiency, especially when there has been a large swath of suspensions. When these happen (and they’re happening more and more), support grinds to a halt. Last year we had an unprecedented 6-week delay in getting reinstatements getting looked at.

I’ve personally found Twitter support to have become swamped as it has become more popular and delays are occurring. You also have to DM details of the issue, which isn’t ideal when it’s a nuanced issue.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): According to those whom I talk to at Google, 90% of accounts have only one listing in them. This infers that the majority of listings that are on maps are single users with a single account. In other words, most of them are ‘mom and pop’-type businesses.

So, therefore, GMB builds things that address single account holders the most. Makes sense that support would acknowledge this, right? Heck, no! Have you ever tried to get a reinstatement completed? You get back this email telling you that they need more information, or they are not compliant, or there is a problem with the… whatever.

In the example below, they didn’t tell me the name of the business and supplied a generic response when I asked for it.

However, if you go elsewhere and submit a contact form, you get back this beautiful template that tells you the business name and address!

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): Personally, when I have an issue, I usually turn to Twitter DMs, but the support I’ve received there has been variable in terms of quality and timeliness.

It is frustrating to send a DM about a problem and then have to wait weeks to get an answer. By the time you get it, you’ve usually found a solution or the problem is no longer a problem!

Personally, I turn to an internal network of fellow GMB aficionados, and the forum, for insight. I just can’t wait two or three weeks for an answer from Twitter support. Also, if you have multiple questions about multiple accounts, it’s very hard to manage responses there.

It’s not all bad, though!

At the time, given the severe slowdown in GMB support responses, the misinformation being shared, and the backup in suspension investigations, I was fully prepared for an onslaught of rage towards the GMB support team. And while I did indeed get that in some quarters, I was really pleasantly surprised by the positive stories, understanding and empathy shown elsewhere.

Joy Hawkins (Sterling Sky): Bad advice is normally given out when users expect Google support to be able to answer questions about ranking tactics, like in this example.

Google My Business support is generally good at fixing issues with listings but there is a limit to what they’re able to do when technical issues and bugs are frequently a problem with the platform. If you’ve been told something by GMB support that you think is incorrect, it’s always fine to get a second opinion by posting on the GMB forum.

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): The support team is trying, but so often they’re completely overwhelmed by the volume of support requests that things don’t work out so well. Overall, I’ve had great experiences. You just have to wait a bit for your reply or solution.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): I’m really empathetic to folks working the GMB support channels. They’re regularly inundated with issues from all directions.

From my vantage point, Google just doesn’t allocate the resources needed to appropriately support GMB. That being said, they’ve definitely moved in the right direction. It wasn’t that long ago that support requests simply went unanswered into the Google abyss.

I’m extremely grateful for the ability to have some means to escalate issues. For example, in dealing with a particularly troublesome law firm listing suspension issue late last year, I got a response within thirty minutes that led to a rapid reinstatement:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): I really like the original ‘contact support’ form. You can give a pretty detailed report on the issue, then when you get the reply email, you can reply with additional screenshots to help the agent.

By providing the agent with all the details at once in the form, I normally get the issue resolved within 24hrs, with no ‘back-and-forth’ required.

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): My main point would be that, however frustrated one might be with lack of advice, quality of advice, or speed of advice, we need to remember that GMB is staffed by human beings who are doing their best given whatever resources or internal guidelines they have or do not have.

My tips would be to always be polite, not to be snarky, and to always thank people for their time – whether it’s Max, Flip, Brad, Liz, Mark, Dany, Zach, Matt, Tori or Jenny!

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Over the years, GMB support has evolved from being virtually non-existent to something that has become very useful for solving most types of GMB issues. Looking at the evolution of the ways that you can contact GMB support alone is a testament to the attention that the GMB product is getting and the progress that they have made.

The future of Google My Business support

While it’s hard for me, here in the spring of 2020, when nothing is as it should be or as any of us would have expected it to be, to summarise the current status of Google My Business support, I do have some closing thoughts on its future courtesy of some of those I spoke to.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): While I’m not very optimistic that it will happen, I’d like to see Google take more accountability for addressing GMB issues and providing support. Like other support contexts, it’s neither fair nor productive to attack the front-line support people. 

Instead, I’d suggest putting more pressure on Google to take Google My Business issues more seriously by allocating the necessary resources to properly support and address these issues. Lack of support is harmful to both businesses and their customers.

Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Company Guide): As is often the case with Google services, the scale of the problem must be in a way overwhelming. And while Google has been making incremental progress, it still feels like a drop in the bucket.

There has been a lot of speculation over the past year that Google is going to roll out a paid GMB service. While we all cringe at Google taking even more money from our collective pockets, if a pay model allows it to more effectively address some of the glaring problems with GMB, I imagine the majority of local businesses and agencies would hold their noses and willingly pay it.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jamie Pitman has worked in digital marketing agency for over a decade and is currently Head of Content at local SEO Company tool provider BrightLocal. He specializes in local marketing agency and the many factors that affect local search performance, from Google My Business and consumer reviews to branding, content marketing agency, and beyond.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/what-do-local-seos-really-think-of-google-my-business-support/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/618136337140367360

[scpie]

What do local SEOs really think of Google My Business support?

It’s already hard to remember a time when a local SEO Company’s priorities included having to deal with Google My Business’ various support teams across email, phone, live chat, and social media.

Earlier this year, though, it was a different story. So, inspired by serious issues with incorrect recommendations, errant listing suspensions and very long wait times for reinstatements earlier this year, I sought to find out what the local search experts (many of whom are GMB Product Experts) really thought of the quality of Google My Business’ support, and compiled the following reactions from a long list of local SEO Company pros, including Joy Hawkins, Ben Fisher, Greg Gifford, Dan Leibson, Dana DiTomaso, and more.

I have it on good authority that the quality of support isn’t likely to magically improve once the virus clears, so let’s consider this the “wayback machine” of GMB support gripes, and just hope that the future doesn’t so clearly reflect the past.

Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling will lead a Live with Search Engine Land discussion with two leaders in the local marketing agency space: Foursquare CEO David Shim and PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall. They will discuss how brands and marketers can use location intelligence as they plot a way forward at 2 p.m. ET May 15. Learn more here >>

Incorrect or misleading information and advice

One very common response from almost all sides was around the issues with incorrect information being presented as fact. While experienced SEO Companys may be able to see through the misinformation, any local business owner looking for help from GMB support runs the risk of being told to do something that either won’t help with their problem at all or will actively damage their business’ visibility.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): Phone support is a gamble: if you get someone untrained, they will destroy you with the wrong information. On the other hand, if you get someone who has some sympathy, they will not only help you but follow up to make sure all went okay.

My tip for phone support is to listen to their voice and see if it’s clear that they’re talking from a script. Interrupt them and ask them: “How are you doing?”, “What time is it there?” If they stick to the script, tell them you need to run because of an emergency or something.

I do love live chat, but it is severely understaffed. The staff they have added in the last six months or seem to be the same staff, experience-wise, as phone support.

The worst cases of misinformation I have experienced are where support is telling a user to create a new listing because of the actions of a previous manager. This problem can be overcome, but it’s really difficult and usually requires the involvement of a GMB Product Expert.

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): We avoid and dread support at GMB like it’s the DMV. It can be good for simple requests, like moving reviews or redirecting a closed page, but I pretty much never contact support. My clients occasionally  do, simply because that’s more efficient than my acting as a conduit, but that’s a big time-taker because it’s extremely tough to speak with a human at GMB.

When you do get through to someone, often there is a quasi-language barrier that leads to misunderstandings. Then there’s the conflicting advice: over the years, Google reps have claimed things like that keyword stuffing in the description helps rankings, call-tracking numbers aren’t allowed, and that clicks are a direct ranking factor.

I chalk that up to a lack of training, or a lack of clear SOPs from Google, or both. In any event, the time it takes to get help that may or may not help, and the confusion caused by well-meaning GMB support reps, often makes business owners wonder whether they’re too reliant on the “local map” and going about their local visibility all wrong.

Jason Brown (Sterling Sky): To say that the latest round of new hires is not properly trained is the understatement of the year. I know more about Google’s policies and procedures, and find myself having to train the support staff. It’s worse for the average user that doesn’t know any better.

We’re at Google’s mercy, and sadly, they don’t seem to care (at least, that’s the message that they’re conveying). I’ve had to point out countless flaws and issues when I contact support, and have had to contact another Google employee for assistance. The average user can’t do this, and so is left hanging.

Dana DiTomaso (Kick Point): The recommendations coming from official GMB support channels can definitely be misleading. For example, they have said that a listing was suspended because we updated the categories on the listing, yet egregious spam lives on.

There also seems to be a high number of suspended listings right now [this was in late February]: we have a client who has a suspended listing (one out of their several locations) with no reason given, and no response yet to our request for help.

Tom Waddington (tomwaddington.com): While I think GMB support wants to help users resolve their issues, I feel the overall priority, at least for a phone support agent, is to convince you that the issue is resolved or will be in a day or two, so that you leave positive feedback regarding your experience with them.

There is typically a survey you will be asked to complete at the end of a support call, but there have been times when my talk with support didn’t go well, the issue wasn’t resolved, and the call disconnected during the transfer to the survey.

GMB is a complex product and support agents aren’t going to have the training and experience to understand all issues. I think the desire for positive feedback along with genuinely wanting to help a user can lead to bad or incorrect advice from a support agent that is trying to placate the user.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): There seems to be a lot of inconsistency in the quality of support depending who happens to field your inquiry. Some of the GMB support folks seem knowledgeable about the platform and common issues, while others seem to lack even a basic understanding of GMB language and core concepts.

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Getting some odd advice from business support can be frustrating to businesses as well as the community, especially when said advice is broadcasted publicly: because people think it’s from Google, it must be legitimate advice.

On the contrary, business support is basically a call centre, with set procedures for set issues. They’re not in direct contact with Google My Business product managers, and equally, no single Googler knows or understands what are exact ranking factors are.

I can only surmise (having listened to countless hours of recordings from account managers for GMB listings during compliance auditing), that call handlers who feel confident with the product will offer their own advice whether they think it may help or have heard other agents offer similar advice.

Some particularly troubling pieces of misinformation I’ve heard are:

Adding keywords into your listings, shop code and labels will help your listing rank better (they won’t!)

Deleting a suspended listing and starting again will solve the suspension issue (it won’t!)

Edits made to your GMB listing will ‘reset’ the account’s authority (they won’t!)

A ‘permanently closed’ listing will go away eventually (it might not -– I have a business still showing ‘permanently closed’ after 12yrs and three different businesses at location later!)

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): Every once in a while, I’ve gotten some bad help. We had an issue with a duplicate listing, and got it fixed, and then a month later GMB support finally replied to the initial request we’d put in… and then a month later they answered again.

We’ve also seen the Twitter team send out a few questionable tweets, like saying that keywords in the description help in ranking. Some are more helpful than others, and i think that sometimes they just answer ‘off the cuff’ and don’t realize it’s bad information.

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Users need to exercise caution when taking advice from GMB support. I’ve actually written a piece detailing the questionable advice I’ve heard.

Dan Leibson (Local Search Guide): I think their support channels suck. I think there is no meaningful way to report systemic, broken things. Everything is treated like you want the secrets to their system or are trying to game the system when you just want them to fix their broken stuff. 

Advertisers get no benefit regardless of spending a ton on ads, despite the fact that they are disproportionately affected by these problems and are more trustworthy sources of reporting.

Speed and efficiency issues

Another commonly-raised issue was the speed efficiency of advice. When your GMB listing is suspended you’re likely to be losing a lot of money every day, and from my chats with the local search community, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

(It should obviously be noted that as of right now, Google has advised that GMB support is going to be slower than ever while they prioritise certain actions related to Covid-19, and social support has been entirely switched off.)

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): I had a years-long saga of trying to get Google to remove the “Dentist” category from my Local Visibility System GMB page. Why was it there? Well, as a local SEO Company, I tinker all the time, often using my own GMB page as a lab chimp.

In one experiment I changed the primary category to ‘Dentist,’ but I couldn’t change it back. I I contacted them through Twitter and email, and while the reps were helpful, after some back-and-forth they were stumped, and apparently kicked up the question to a supervisor. I never heard back. (In Google’s defence, I didn’t attempt to call them, but that’s because I didn’t have a business day to spare!)

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): GMB issues can have significant consequences for local businesses. When a listing is suspended, it can be really frustrating to get a response like:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Support channels all vary in efficiency, especially when there has been a large swath of suspensions. When these happen (and they’re happening more and more), support grinds to a halt. Last year we had an unprecedented 6-week delay in getting reinstatements getting looked at.

I’ve personally found Twitter support to have become swamped as it has become more popular and delays are occurring. You also have to DM details of the issue, which isn’t ideal when it’s a nuanced issue.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): According to those whom I talk to at Google, 90% of accounts have only one listing in them. This infers that the majority of listings that are on maps are single users with a single account. In other words, most of them are ‘mom and pop’-type businesses.

So, therefore, GMB builds things that address single account holders the most. Makes sense that support would acknowledge this, right? Heck, no! Have you ever tried to get a reinstatement completed? You get back this email telling you that they need more information, or they are not compliant, or there is a problem with the… whatever.

In the example below, they didn’t tell me the name of the business and supplied a generic response when I asked for it.

However, if you go elsewhere and submit a contact form, you get back this beautiful template that tells you the business name and address!

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): Personally, when I have an issue, I usually turn to Twitter DMs, but the support I’ve received there has been variable in terms of quality and timeliness.

It is frustrating to send a DM about a problem and then have to wait weeks to get an answer. By the time you get it, you’ve usually found a solution or the problem is no longer a problem!

Personally, I turn to an internal network of fellow GMB aficionados, and the forum, for insight. I just can’t wait two or three weeks for an answer from Twitter support. Also, if you have multiple questions about multiple accounts, it’s very hard to manage responses there.

It’s not all bad, though!

At the time, given the severe slowdown in GMB support responses, the misinformation being shared, and the backup in suspension investigations, I was fully prepared for an onslaught of rage towards the GMB support team. And while I did indeed get that in some quarters, I was really pleasantly surprised by the positive stories, understanding and empathy shown elsewhere.

Joy Hawkins (Sterling Sky): Bad advice is normally given out when users expect Google support to be able to answer questions about ranking tactics, like in this example.

Google My Business support is generally good at fixing issues with listings but there is a limit to what they’re able to do when technical issues and bugs are frequently a problem with the platform. If you’ve been told something by GMB support that you think is incorrect, it’s always fine to get a second opinion by posting on the GMB forum.

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): The support team is trying, but so often they’re completely overwhelmed by the volume of support requests that things don’t work out so well. Overall, I’ve had great experiences. You just have to wait a bit for your reply or solution.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): I’m really empathetic to folks working the GMB support channels. They’re regularly inundated with issues from all directions.

From my vantage point, Google just doesn’t allocate the resources needed to appropriately support GMB. That being said, they’ve definitely moved in the right direction. It wasn’t that long ago that support requests simply went unanswered into the Google abyss.

I’m extremely grateful for the ability to have some means to escalate issues. For example, in dealing with a particularly troublesome law firm listing suspension issue late last year, I got a response within thirty minutes that led to a rapid reinstatement:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): I really like the original ‘contact support’ form. You can give a pretty detailed report on the issue, then when you get the reply email, you can reply with additional screenshots to help the agent.

By providing the agent with all the details at once in the form, I normally get the issue resolved within 24hrs, with no ‘back-and-forth’ required.

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): My main point would be that, however frustrated one might be with lack of advice, quality of advice, or speed of advice, we need to remember that GMB is staffed by human beings who are doing their best given whatever resources or internal guidelines they have or do not have.

My tips would be to always be polite, not to be snarky, and to always thank people for their time – whether it’s Max, Flip, Brad, Liz, Mark, Dany, Zach, Matt, Tori or Jenny!

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Over the years, GMB support has evolved from being virtually non-existent to something that has become very useful for solving most types of GMB issues. Looking at the evolution of the ways that you can contact GMB support alone is a testament to the attention that the GMB product is getting and the progress that they have made.

The future of Google My Business support

While it’s hard for me, here in the spring of 2020, when nothing is as it should be or as any of us would have expected it to be, to summarise the current status of Google My Business support, I do have some closing thoughts on its future courtesy of some of those I spoke to.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): While I’m not very optimistic that it will happen, I’d like to see Google take more accountability for addressing GMB issues and providing support. Like other support contexts, it’s neither fair nor productive to attack the front-line support people. 

Instead, I’d suggest putting more pressure on Google to take Google My Business issues more seriously by allocating the necessary resources to properly support and address these issues. Lack of support is harmful to both businesses and their customers.

Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Company Guide): As is often the case with Google services, the scale of the problem must be in a way overwhelming. And while Google has been making incremental progress, it still feels like a drop in the bucket.

There has been a lot of speculation over the past year that Google is going to roll out a paid GMB service. While we all cringe at Google taking even more money from our collective pockets, if a pay model allows it to more effectively address some of the glaring problems with GMB, I imagine the majority of local businesses and agencies would hold their noses and willingly pay it.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jamie Pitman has worked in digital marketing agency for over a decade and is currently Head of Content at local SEO Company tool provider BrightLocal. He specializes in local marketing agency and the many factors that affect local search performance, from Google My Business and consumer reviews to branding, content marketing agency, and beyond.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/what-do-local-seos-really-think-of-google-my-business-support/

[laurelkrugerr]

What do local SEOs really think of Google My Business support?

It’s already hard to remember a time when a local SEO Company’s priorities included having to deal with Google My Business’ various support teams across email, phone, live chat, and social media.

Earlier this year, though, it was a different story. So, inspired by serious issues with incorrect recommendations, errant listing suspensions and very long wait times for reinstatements earlier this year, I sought to find out what the local search experts (many of whom are GMB Product Experts) really thought of the quality of Google My Business’ support, and compiled the following reactions from a long list of local SEO Company pros, including Joy Hawkins, Ben Fisher, Greg Gifford, Dan Leibson, Dana DiTomaso, and more.

I have it on good authority that the quality of support isn’t likely to magically improve once the virus clears, so let’s consider this the “wayback machine” of GMB support gripes, and just hope that the future doesn’t so clearly reflect the past.

Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling will lead a Live with Search Engine Land discussion with two leaders in the local marketing agency space: Foursquare CEO David Shim and PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall. They will discuss how brands and marketers can use location intelligence as they plot a way forward at 2 p.m. ET May 15. Learn more here >>

Incorrect or misleading information and advice

One very common response from almost all sides was around the issues with incorrect information being presented as fact. While experienced SEO Companys may be able to see through the misinformation, any local business owner looking for help from GMB support runs the risk of being told to do something that either won’t help with their problem at all or will actively damage their business’ visibility.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): Phone support is a gamble: if you get someone untrained, they will destroy you with the wrong information. On the other hand, if you get someone who has some sympathy, they will not only help you but follow up to make sure all went okay.

My tip for phone support is to listen to their voice and see if it’s clear that they’re talking from a script. Interrupt them and ask them: “How are you doing?”, “What time is it there?” If they stick to the script, tell them you need to run because of an emergency or something.

I do love live chat, but it is severely understaffed. The staff they have added in the last six months or seem to be the same staff, experience-wise, as phone support.

The worst cases of misinformation I have experienced are where support is telling a user to create a new listing because of the actions of a previous manager. This problem can be overcome, but it’s really difficult and usually requires the involvement of a GMB Product Expert.

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): We avoid and dread support at GMB like it’s the DMV. It can be good for simple requests, like moving reviews or redirecting a closed page, but I pretty much never contact support. My clients occasionally  do, simply because that’s more efficient than my acting as a conduit, but that’s a big time-taker because it’s extremely tough to speak with a human at GMB.

When you do get through to someone, often there is a quasi-language barrier that leads to misunderstandings. Then there’s the conflicting advice: over the years, Google reps have claimed things like that keyword stuffing in the description helps rankings, call-tracking numbers aren’t allowed, and that clicks are a direct ranking factor.

I chalk that up to a lack of training, or a lack of clear SOPs from Google, or both. In any event, the time it takes to get help that may or may not help, and the confusion caused by well-meaning GMB support reps, often makes business owners wonder whether they’re too reliant on the “local map” and going about their local visibility all wrong.

Jason Brown (Sterling Sky): To say that the latest round of new hires is not properly trained is the understatement of the year. I know more about Google’s policies and procedures, and find myself having to train the support staff. It’s worse for the average user that doesn’t know any better.

We’re at Google’s mercy, and sadly, they don’t seem to care (at least, that’s the message that they’re conveying). I’ve had to point out countless flaws and issues when I contact support, and have had to contact another Google employee for assistance. The average user can’t do this, and so is left hanging.

Dana DiTomaso (Kick Point): The recommendations coming from official GMB support channels can definitely be misleading. For example, they have said that a listing was suspended because we updated the categories on the listing, yet egregious spam lives on.

There also seems to be a high number of suspended listings right now [this was in late February]: we have a client who has a suspended listing (one out of their several locations) with no reason given, and no response yet to our request for help.

Tom Waddington (tomwaddington.com): While I think GMB support wants to help users resolve their issues, I feel the overall priority, at least for a phone support agent, is to convince you that the issue is resolved or will be in a day or two, so that you leave positive feedback regarding your experience with them.

There is typically a survey you will be asked to complete at the end of a support call, but there have been times when my talk with support didn’t go well, the issue wasn’t resolved, and the call disconnected during the transfer to the survey.

GMB is a complex product and support agents aren’t going to have the training and experience to understand all issues. I think the desire for positive feedback along with genuinely wanting to help a user can lead to bad or incorrect advice from a support agent that is trying to placate the user.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): There seems to be a lot of inconsistency in the quality of support depending who happens to field your inquiry. Some of the GMB support folks seem knowledgeable about the platform and common issues, while others seem to lack even a basic understanding of GMB language and core concepts.

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Getting some odd advice from business support can be frustrating to businesses as well as the community, especially when said advice is broadcasted publicly: because people think it’s from Google, it must be legitimate advice.

On the contrary, business support is basically a call centre, with set procedures for set issues. They’re not in direct contact with Google My Business product managers, and equally, no single Googler knows or understands what are exact ranking factors are.

I can only surmise (having listened to countless hours of recordings from account managers for GMB listings during compliance auditing), that call handlers who feel confident with the product will offer their own advice whether they think it may help or have heard other agents offer similar advice.

Some particularly troubling pieces of misinformation I’ve heard are:

Adding keywords into your listings, shop code and labels will help your listing rank better (they won’t!)

Deleting a suspended listing and starting again will solve the suspension issue (it won’t!)

Edits made to your GMB listing will ‘reset’ the account’s authority (they won’t!)

A ‘permanently closed’ listing will go away eventually (it might not -– I have a business still showing ‘permanently closed’ after 12yrs and three different businesses at location later!)

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): Every once in a while, I’ve gotten some bad help. We had an issue with a duplicate listing, and got it fixed, and then a month later GMB support finally replied to the initial request we’d put in… and then a month later they answered again.

We’ve also seen the Twitter team send out a few questionable tweets, like saying that keywords in the description help in ranking. Some are more helpful than others, and i think that sometimes they just answer ‘off the cuff’ and don’t realize it’s bad information.

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Users need to exercise caution when taking advice from GMB support. I’ve actually written a piece detailing the questionable advice I’ve heard.

Dan Leibson (Local Search Guide): I think their support channels suck. I think there is no meaningful way to report systemic, broken things. Everything is treated like you want the secrets to their system or are trying to game the system when you just want them to fix their broken stuff. 

Advertisers get no benefit regardless of spending a ton on ads, despite the fact that they are disproportionately affected by these problems and are more trustworthy sources of reporting.

Speed and efficiency issues

Another commonly-raised issue was the speed efficiency of advice. When your GMB listing is suspended you’re likely to be losing a lot of money every day, and from my chats with the local search community, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

(It should obviously be noted that as of right now, Google has advised that GMB support is going to be slower than ever while they prioritise certain actions related to Covid-19, and social support has been entirely switched off.)

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): I had a years-long saga of trying to get Google to remove the “Dentist” category from my Local Visibility System GMB page. Why was it there? Well, as a local SEO Company, I tinker all the time, often using my own GMB page as a lab chimp.

In one experiment I changed the primary category to ‘Dentist,’ but I couldn’t change it back. I I contacted them through Twitter and email, and while the reps were helpful, after some back-and-forth they were stumped, and apparently kicked up the question to a supervisor. I never heard back. (In Google’s defence, I didn’t attempt to call them, but that’s because I didn’t have a business day to spare!)

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): GMB issues can have significant consequences for local businesses. When a listing is suspended, it can be really frustrating to get a response like:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Support channels all vary in efficiency, especially when there has been a large swath of suspensions. When these happen (and they’re happening more and more), support grinds to a halt. Last year we had an unprecedented 6-week delay in getting reinstatements getting looked at.

I’ve personally found Twitter support to have become swamped as it has become more popular and delays are occurring. You also have to DM details of the issue, which isn’t ideal when it’s a nuanced issue.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): According to those whom I talk to at Google, 90% of accounts have only one listing in them. This infers that the majority of listings that are on maps are single users with a single account. In other words, most of them are ‘mom and pop’-type businesses.

So, therefore, GMB builds things that address single account holders the most. Makes sense that support would acknowledge this, right? Heck, no! Have you ever tried to get a reinstatement completed? You get back this email telling you that they need more information, or they are not compliant, or there is a problem with the… whatever.

In the example below, they didn’t tell me the name of the business and supplied a generic response when I asked for it.

However, if you go elsewhere and submit a contact form, you get back this beautiful template that tells you the business name and address!

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): Personally, when I have an issue, I usually turn to Twitter DMs, but the support I’ve received there has been variable in terms of quality and timeliness.

It is frustrating to send a DM about a problem and then have to wait weeks to get an answer. By the time you get it, you’ve usually found a solution or the problem is no longer a problem!

Personally, I turn to an internal network of fellow GMB aficionados, and the forum, for insight. I just can’t wait two or three weeks for an answer from Twitter support. Also, if you have multiple questions about multiple accounts, it’s very hard to manage responses there.

It’s not all bad, though!

At the time, given the severe slowdown in GMB support responses, the misinformation being shared, and the backup in suspension investigations, I was fully prepared for an onslaught of rage towards the GMB support team. And while I did indeed get that in some quarters, I was really pleasantly surprised by the positive stories, understanding and empathy shown elsewhere.

Joy Hawkins (Sterling Sky): Bad advice is normally given out when users expect Google support to be able to answer questions about ranking tactics, like in this example.

Google My Business support is generally good at fixing issues with listings but there is a limit to what they’re able to do when technical issues and bugs are frequently a problem with the platform. If you’ve been told something by GMB support that you think is incorrect, it’s always fine to get a second opinion by posting on the GMB forum.

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): The support team is trying, but so often they’re completely overwhelmed by the volume of support requests that things don’t work out so well. Overall, I’ve had great experiences. You just have to wait a bit for your reply or solution.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): I’m really empathetic to folks working the GMB support channels. They’re regularly inundated with issues from all directions.

From my vantage point, Google just doesn’t allocate the resources needed to appropriately support GMB. That being said, they’ve definitely moved in the right direction. It wasn’t that long ago that support requests simply went unanswered into the Google abyss.

I’m extremely grateful for the ability to have some means to escalate issues. For example, in dealing with a particularly troublesome law firm listing suspension issue late last year, I got a response within thirty minutes that led to a rapid reinstatement:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): I really like the original ‘contact support’ form. You can give a pretty detailed report on the issue, then when you get the reply email, you can reply with additional screenshots to help the agent.

By providing the agent with all the details at once in the form, I normally get the issue resolved within 24hrs, with no ‘back-and-forth’ required.

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): My main point would be that, however frustrated one might be with lack of advice, quality of advice, or speed of advice, we need to remember that GMB is staffed by human beings who are doing their best given whatever resources or internal guidelines they have or do not have.

My tips would be to always be polite, not to be snarky, and to always thank people for their time – whether it’s Max, Flip, Brad, Liz, Mark, Dany, Zach, Matt, Tori or Jenny!

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Over the years, GMB support has evolved from being virtually non-existent to something that has become very useful for solving most types of GMB issues. Looking at the evolution of the ways that you can contact GMB support alone is a testament to the attention that the GMB product is getting and the progress that they have made.

The future of Google My Business support

While it’s hard for me, here in the spring of 2020, when nothing is as it should be or as any of us would have expected it to be, to summarise the current status of Google My Business support, I do have some closing thoughts on its future courtesy of some of those I spoke to.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): While I’m not very optimistic that it will happen, I’d like to see Google take more accountability for addressing GMB issues and providing support. Like other support contexts, it’s neither fair nor productive to attack the front-line support people. 

Instead, I’d suggest putting more pressure on Google to take Google My Business issues more seriously by allocating the necessary resources to properly support and address these issues. Lack of support is harmful to both businesses and their customers.

Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Company Guide): As is often the case with Google services, the scale of the problem must be in a way overwhelming. And while Google has been making incremental progress, it still feels like a drop in the bucket.

There has been a lot of speculation over the past year that Google is going to roll out a paid GMB service. While we all cringe at Google taking even more money from our collective pockets, if a pay model allows it to more effectively address some of the glaring problems with GMB, I imagine the majority of local businesses and agencies would hold their noses and willingly pay it.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jamie Pitman has worked in digital marketing agency for over a decade and is currently Head of Content at local SEO Company tool provider BrightLocal. He specializes in local marketing agency and the many factors that affect local search performance, from Google My Business and consumer reviews to branding, content marketing agency, and beyond.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/what-do-local-seos-really-think-of-google-my-business-support/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/05/what-do-local-seos-really-think-of.html

[ronijashworth]

DA is the wrong metric for reporting on link-building

I decided to write this post when I saw, in late February, this poll on Twitter:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Femkepants/status/1100802355031928836

Twitter polls may not be the most scientific way that one could research the state of the industry, but it did remind me how common this is - I routinely receive outreach emails or see RFPs & case studies that discuss link-building in terms of Moz's DA (Domain Authority) metric - typically how many links of above a certain DA were or could be built.

Before we go any further: I am not objecting to DA as a useful SEO metric. There are plenty of applications it’s perfectly suited to. I'm also not writing here about the recent updates to DA, although I sadly probably do need to clarify that DA is only a third party metric, which is designed to reflect Google - it does not itself impact rankings.

Rather, it’s the specific use-case, of using DA to measure the success of link-building, that I’m ranting about in this post.

Why do we all use DA?

I think I get why DA has become popular in this space. In my opinion, it has a couple of really big advantages:

Timeliness - if a journalist writes an article about your brand or your piece, it’ll take a while for page-level metrics to exist. DA will be available instantly.

Critical mass - we’re all really familiar with this metric. A couple of years ago, my colleague Rob Ousbey and I were talking to a prospective client about their site. We’d only been looking at it for about 5 minutes. Rob challenged me to guess the DA, and he did the same. We both got within 5 of the real value. That’s how internalised DA is in the SEO industry - few other metrics come close. Importantly, this has now spread even beyond the SEO industry, too - non SEO-savvy stakeholders can often be expected to be familiar with DA.

So, if in the first week of coverage, you want to report on DA - fine, I guess I’ll forgive you. Similarly, further down the line, if you’re worried your clients will expect to see DA, maybe you can do what we do at Distilled - report it alongside some more useful metrics, and, over time, move expectations in a different direction.

What’s wrong with reporting on DA?

If you’re building links for SEO reasons, then you’re doing it because of PageRank - Google’s original groundbreaking algorithm, which used links as a proxy for the popularity & trustworthiness of a page on the web. (If this is news to you, I recommend this excellent explainer from Majestic’s Dixon Jones.)

Crucially, PageRank works at a page level. Google probably does use some domain-level (or “site”-level) metrics as shortcuts when assessing how a page should rank in its results, but when it comes to passing on value to other pages, via links, Google cares about the strength of a page.

Different pages on a domain can have very different strengths, impacting their ability to rank, and their ability to pass value onwards. This is the exact problem that much of technical SEO is built around. It is not at all simple, and it has significant implications for linkbuilding.

Many editorial sites now include backwater sections, where pages may be 5 or more clicks from the site’s homepage, or even unreachable within the internal navigation. This is admittedly an extreme case, but the fact that the page is on a DA 90+ site is now irrelevant - little strength is being conveyed to the linking page, and the link itself is practically worthless.

The cynic in me says this sort of scenario, where it exists, is intentional - editorial sites are taking SEOs for a ride, knowing we will provide them with content (and, in some cases, cash…) in return for something that is cheap for them to give, and does us no good anyway.

Either way, it makes DA look like a pretty daft metric for evaluating your shiny new links. In the words of Russ Jones, who, as the person who leads the ongoing development of  DA, probably knows what he’s talking about:

https://mobile.twitter.com/rjonesx/status/1101107023662497793

What should I use, then?

Here’s a few potential candidates you could move towards:

URL-level Majestic Citation Flow - this is the closest thing left to a third party approximation of PageRank itself.

Moz Page Authority (PA) - if you’re used to DA, this might be the easiest transition for you. However, Russ (mentioned above) warns that PA is designed to estimate the ability of a URL to rank, not the equity it will pass on.

Linking Root Domains to linking page - arguably, the most valuable links we could build are links from pages that themselves are well linked to (for example, multiple sites are referencing a noteworthy news article, which links to our client). Using this metric would push you towards building that kind of link. It’s also the metric in the Moz suite that Russ recommended for this purpose.

Referral traffic through the link - I’ve written before about how the entire purpose of PageRank was to guess who was getting clicks, so why not optimise for what Google is optimising for? The chances are a genuine endorsement, and thus a trustworthy link, is one that is actually sending you traffic. If you use Google Analytics, you can use the Full Referrer secondary dimension in your “Referrals” or “Landing Pages” reports to get deeper insight on this.

For example, here’s the recent referral traffic to my blog post How to Rank for Head Terms:

I still might want to check that these links are followed & remain live, of course!

What about in-house / proprietary / agency metrics?

I’m sure plenty of people are using their own, calculated metrics, to take the best of all worlds. I think there’s merit to this approach, but it’s not one we use at Distilled. This is for two reasons:

"Worst of both" - There’s a potential for a calculated metric to use both domain and page-level metrics as part of its formula. The trouble with this is that you get the downsides of both - the measurement-lag of a page-level metric, with the inaccuracy of a domain-level metric.

Transparency - Our prospective clients should hopefully trust us, but this is still going to be harder for them to explain up their chain of command than a metric from a recognised third party. Given the inherent difficulties and causation fallacies in actually measuring the usefulness of a link, any formula we produce will internalise our own biases and suspicions.

Strongly, nay, VEHEMENTLY disagree?

Great! Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter ;)

from Digital Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/da-is-the-wrong-metric-for-reporting-on-link-building/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[dillenwaeraa]

DA is the wrong metric for reporting on link-building

I decided to write this post when I saw, in late February, this poll on Twitter:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Femkepants/status/1100802355031928836

Twitter polls may not be the most scientific way that one could research the state of the industry, but it did remind me how common this is - I routinely receive outreach emails or see RFPs & case studies that discuss link-building in terms of Moz's DA (Domain Authority) metric - typically how many links of above a certain DA were or could be built.

Before we go any further: I am not objecting to DA as a useful SEO metric. There are plenty of applications it’s perfectly suited to. I'm also not writing here about the recent updates to DA, although I sadly probably do need to clarify that DA is only a third party metric, which is designed to reflect Google - it does not itself impact rankings.

Rather, it’s the specific use-case, of using DA to measure the success of link-building, that I’m ranting about in this post.

Why do we all use DA?

I think I get why DA has become popular in this space. In my opinion, it has a couple of really big advantages:

Timeliness - if a journalist writes an article about your brand or your piece, it’ll take a while for page-level metrics to exist. DA will be available instantly.

Critical mass - we’re all really familiar with this metric. A couple of years ago, my colleague Rob Ousbey and I were talking to a prospective client about their site. We’d only been looking at it for about 5 minutes. Rob challenged me to guess the DA, and he did the same. We both got within 5 of the real value. That’s how internalised DA is in the SEO industry - few other metrics come close. Importantly, this has now spread even beyond the SEO industry, too - non SEO-savvy stakeholders can often be expected to be familiar with DA.

So, if in the first week of coverage, you want to report on DA - fine, I guess I’ll forgive you. Similarly, further down the line, if you’re worried your clients will expect to see DA, maybe you can do what we do at Distilled - report it alongside some more useful metrics, and, over time, move expectations in a different direction.

What’s wrong with reporting on DA?

If you’re building links for SEO reasons, then you’re doing it because of PageRank - Google’s original groundbreaking algorithm, which used links as a proxy for the popularity & trustworthiness of a page on the web. (If this is news to you, I recommend this excellent explainer from Majestic’s Dixon Jones.)

Crucially, PageRank works at a page level. Google probably does use some domain-level (or “site”-level) metrics as shortcuts when assessing how a page should rank in its results, but when it comes to passing on value to other pages, via links, Google cares about the strength of a page.

Different pages on a domain can have very different strengths, impacting their ability to rank, and their ability to pass value onwards. This is the exact problem that much of technical SEO is built around. It is not at all simple, and it has significant implications for linkbuilding.

Many editorial sites now include backwater sections, where pages may be 5 or more clicks from the site’s homepage, or even unreachable within the internal navigation. This is admittedly an extreme case, but the fact that the page is on a DA 90+ site is now irrelevant - little strength is being conveyed to the linking page, and the link itself is practically worthless.

The cynic in me says this sort of scenario, where it exists, is intentional - editorial sites are taking SEOs for a ride, knowing we will provide them with content (and, in some cases, cash…) in return for something that is cheap for them to give, and does us no good anyway.

Either way, it makes DA look like a pretty daft metric for evaluating your shiny new links. In the words of Russ Jones, who, as the person who leads the ongoing development of  DA, probably knows what he’s talking about:

https://mobile.twitter.com/rjonesx/status/1101107023662497793

What should I use, then?

Here’s a few potential candidates you could move towards:

URL-level Majestic Citation Flow - this is the closest thing left to a third party approximation of PageRank itself.

Moz Page Authority (PA) - if you’re used to DA, this might be the easiest transition for you. However, Russ (mentioned above) warns that PA is designed to estimate the ability of a URL to rank, not the equity it will pass on.

Linking Root Domains to linking page - arguably, the most valuable links we could build are links from pages that themselves are well linked to (for example, multiple sites are referencing a noteworthy news article, which links to our client). Using this metric would push you towards building that kind of link. It’s also the metric in the Moz suite that Russ recommended for this purpose.

Referral traffic through the link - I’ve written before about how the entire purpose of PageRank was to guess who was getting clicks, so why not optimise for what Google is optimising for? The chances are a genuine endorsement, and thus a trustworthy link, is one that is actually sending you traffic. If you use Google Analytics, you can use the Full Referrer secondary dimension in your “Referrals” or “Landing Pages” reports to get deeper insight on this.

For example, here’s the recent referral traffic to my blog post How to Rank for Head Terms:

I still might want to check that these links are followed & remain live, of course!

What about in-house / proprietary / agency metrics?

I’m sure plenty of people are using their own, calculated metrics, to take the best of all worlds. I think there’s merit to this approach, but it’s not one we use at Distilled. This is for two reasons:

"Worst of both" - There’s a potential for a calculated metric to use both domain and page-level metrics as part of its formula. The trouble with this is that you get the downsides of both - the measurement-lag of a page-level metric, with the inaccuracy of a domain-level metric.

Transparency - Our prospective clients should hopefully trust us, but this is still going to be harder for them to explain up their chain of command than a metric from a recognised third party. Given the inherent difficulties and causation fallacies in actually measuring the usefulness of a link, any formula we produce will internalise our own biases and suspicions.

Strongly, nay, VEHEMENTLY disagree?

Great! Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter ;)

from Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/da-is-the-wrong-metric-for-reporting-on-link-building/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[donnafmae]

DA is the wrong metric for reporting on link-building

I decided to write this post when I saw, in late February, this poll on Twitter:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Femkepants/status/1100802355031928836

Twitter polls may not be the most scientific way that one could research the state of the industry, but it did remind me how common this is - I routinely receive outreach emails or see RFPs & case studies that discuss link-building in terms of Moz's DA (Domain Authority) metric - typically how many links of above a certain DA were or could be built.

Before we go any further: I am not objecting to DA as a useful SEO metric. There are plenty of applications it’s perfectly suited to. I'm also not writing here about the recent updates to DA, although I sadly probably do need to clarify that DA is only a third party metric, which is designed to reflect Google - it does not itself impact rankings.

Rather, it’s the specific use-case, of using DA to measure the success of link-building, that I’m ranting about in this post.

Why do we all use DA?

I think I get why DA has become popular in this space. In my opinion, it has a couple of really big advantages:

Timeliness - if a journalist writes an article about your brand or your piece, it’ll take a while for page-level metrics to exist. DA will be available instantly.

Critical mass - we’re all really familiar with this metric. A couple of years ago, my colleague Rob Ousbey and I were talking to a prospective client about their site. We’d only been looking at it for about 5 minutes. Rob challenged me to guess the DA, and he did the same. We both got within 5 of the real value. That’s how internalised DA is in the SEO industry - few other metrics come close. Importantly, this has now spread even beyond the SEO industry, too - non SEO-savvy stakeholders can often be expected to be familiar with DA.

So, if in the first week of coverage, you want to report on DA - fine, I guess I’ll forgive you. Similarly, further down the line, if you’re worried your clients will expect to see DA, maybe you can do what we do at Distilled - report it alongside some more useful metrics, and, over time, move expectations in a different direction.

What’s wrong with reporting on DA?

If you’re building links for SEO reasons, then you’re doing it because of PageRank - Google’s original groundbreaking algorithm, which used links as a proxy for the popularity & trustworthiness of a page on the web. (If this is news to you, I recommend this excellent explainer from Majestic’s Dixon Jones.)

Crucially, PageRank works at a page level. Google probably does use some domain-level (or “site”-level) metrics as shortcuts when assessing how a page should rank in its results, but when it comes to passing on value to other pages, via links, Google cares about the strength of a page.

Different pages on a domain can have very different strengths, impacting their ability to rank, and their ability to pass value onwards. This is the exact problem that much of technical SEO is built around. It is not at all simple, and it has significant implications for linkbuilding.

Many editorial sites now include backwater sections, where pages may be 5 or more clicks from the site’s homepage, or even unreachable within the internal navigation. This is admittedly an extreme case, but the fact that the page is on a DA 90+ site is now irrelevant - little strength is being conveyed to the linking page, and the link itself is practically worthless.

The cynic in me says this sort of scenario, where it exists, is intentional - editorial sites are taking SEOs for a ride, knowing we will provide them with content (and, in some cases, cash…) in return for something that is cheap for them to give, and does us no good anyway.

Either way, it makes DA look like a pretty daft metric for evaluating your shiny new links. In the words of Russ Jones, who, as the person who leads the ongoing development of  DA, probably knows what he’s talking about:

https://mobile.twitter.com/rjonesx/status/1101107023662497793

What should I use, then?

Here’s a few potential candidates you could move towards:

URL-level Majestic Citation Flow - this is the closest thing left to a third party approximation of PageRank itself.

Moz Page Authority (PA) - if you’re used to DA, this might be the easiest transition for you. However, Russ (mentioned above) warns that PA is designed to estimate the ability of a URL to rank, not the equity it will pass on.

Linking Root Domains to linking page - arguably, the most valuable links we could build are links from pages that themselves are well linked to (for example, multiple sites are referencing a noteworthy news article, which links to our client). Using this metric would push you towards building that kind of link. It’s also the metric in the Moz suite that Russ recommended for this purpose.

Referral traffic through the link - I’ve written before about how the entire purpose of PageRank was to guess who was getting clicks, so why not optimise for what Google is optimising for? The chances are a genuine endorsement, and thus a trustworthy link, is one that is actually sending you traffic. If you use Google Analytics, you can use the Full Referrer secondary dimension in your “Referrals” or “Landing Pages” reports to get deeper insight on this.

For example, here’s the recent referral traffic to my blog post How to Rank for Head Terms:

I still might want to check that these links are followed & remain live, of course!

What about in-house / proprietary / agency metrics?

I’m sure plenty of people are using their own, calculated metrics, to take the best of all worlds. I think there’s merit to this approach, but it’s not one we use at Distilled. This is for two reasons:

"Worst of both" - There’s a potential for a calculated metric to use both domain and page-level metrics as part of its formula. The trouble with this is that you get the downsides of both - the measurement-lag of a page-level metric, with the inaccuracy of a domain-level metric.

Transparency - Our prospective clients should hopefully trust us, but this is still going to be harder for them to explain up their chain of command than a metric from a recognised third party. Given the inherent difficulties and causation fallacies in actually measuring the usefulness of a link, any formula we produce will internalise our own biases and suspicions.

Strongly, nay, VEHEMENTLY disagree?

Great! Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter ;)

from Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/da-is-the-wrong-metric-for-reporting-on-link-building/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[davidrsmithlove]

DA is the wrong metric for reporting on link-building

I decided to write this post when I saw, in late February, this poll on Twitter:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Femkepants/status/1100802355031928836

Twitter polls may not be the most scientific way that one could research the state of the industry, but it did remind me how common this is - I routinely receive outreach emails or see RFPs & case studies that discuss link-building in terms of Moz's DA (Domain Authority) metric - typically how many links of above a certain DA were or could be built.

Before we go any further: I am not objecting to DA as a useful SEO metric. There are plenty of applications it’s perfectly suited to. I'm also not writing here about the recent updates to DA, although I sadly probably do need to clarify that DA is only a third party metric, which is designed to reflect Google - it does not itself impact rankings.

Rather, it’s the specific use-case, of using DA to measure the success of link-building, that I’m ranting about in this post.

Why do we all use DA?

I think I get why DA has become popular in this space. In my opinion, it has a couple of really big advantages:

Timeliness - if a journalist writes an article about your brand or your piece, it’ll take a while for page-level metrics to exist. DA will be available instantly.

Critical mass - we’re all really familiar with this metric. A couple of years ago, my colleague Rob Ousbey and I were talking to a prospective client about their site. We’d only been looking at it for about 5 minutes. Rob challenged me to guess the DA, and he did the same. We both got within 5 of the real value. That’s how internalised DA is in the SEO industry - few other metrics come close. Importantly, this has now spread even beyond the SEO industry, too - non SEO-savvy stakeholders can often be expected to be familiar with DA.

So, if in the first week of coverage, you want to report on DA - fine, I guess I’ll forgive you. Similarly, further down the line, if you’re worried your clients will expect to see DA, maybe you can do what we do at Distilled - report it alongside some more useful metrics, and, over time, move expectations in a different direction.

What’s wrong with reporting on DA?

If you’re building links for SEO reasons, then you’re doing it because of PageRank - Google’s original groundbreaking algorithm, which used links as a proxy for the popularity & trustworthiness of a page on the web. (If this is news to you, I recommend this excellent explainer from Majestic’s Dixon Jones.)

Crucially, PageRank works at a page level. Google probably does use some domain-level (or “site”-level) metrics as shortcuts when assessing how a page should rank in its results, but when it comes to passing on value to other pages, via links, Google cares about the strength of a page.

Different pages on a domain can have very different strengths, impacting their ability to rank, and their ability to pass value onwards. This is the exact problem that much of technical SEO is built around. It is not at all simple, and it has significant implications for linkbuilding.

Many editorial sites now include backwater sections, where pages may be 5 or more clicks from the site’s homepage, or even unreachable within the internal navigation. This is admittedly an extreme case, but the fact that the page is on a DA 90+ site is now irrelevant - little strength is being conveyed to the linking page, and the link itself is practically worthless.

The cynic in me says this sort of scenario, where it exists, is intentional - editorial sites are taking SEOs for a ride, knowing we will provide them with content (and, in some cases, cash…) in return for something that is cheap for them to give, and does us no good anyway.

Either way, it makes DA look like a pretty daft metric for evaluating your shiny new links. In the words of Russ Jones, who, as the person who leads the ongoing development of  DA, probably knows what he’s talking about:

https://mobile.twitter.com/rjonesx/status/1101107023662497793

What should I use, then?

Here’s a few potential candidates you could move towards:

URL-level Majestic Citation Flow - this is the closest thing left to a third party approximation of PageRank itself.

Moz Page Authority (PA) - if you’re used to DA, this might be the easiest transition for you. However, Russ (mentioned above) warns that PA is designed to estimate the ability of a URL to rank, not the equity it will pass on.

Linking Root Domains to linking page - arguably, the most valuable links we could build are links from pages that themselves are well linked to (for example, multiple sites are referencing a noteworthy news article, which links to our client). Using this metric would push you towards building that kind of link. It’s also the metric in the Moz suite that Russ recommended for this purpose.

Referral traffic through the link - I’ve written before about how the entire purpose of PageRank was to guess who was getting clicks, so why not optimise for what Google is optimising for? The chances are a genuine endorsement, and thus a trustworthy link, is one that is actually sending you traffic. If you use Google Analytics, you can use the Full Referrer secondary dimension in your “Referrals” or “Landing Pages” reports to get deeper insight on this.

For example, here’s the recent referral traffic to my blog post How to Rank for Head Terms:

I still might want to check that these links are followed & remain live, of course!

What about in-house / proprietary / agency metrics?

I’m sure plenty of people are using their own, calculated metrics, to take the best of all worlds. I think there’s merit to this approach, but it’s not one we use at Distilled. This is for two reasons:

"Worst of both" - There’s a potential for a calculated metric to use both domain and page-level metrics as part of its formula. The trouble with this is that you get the downsides of both - the measurement-lag of a page-level metric, with the inaccuracy of a domain-level metric.

Transparency - Our prospective clients should hopefully trust us, but this is still going to be harder for them to explain up their chain of command than a metric from a recognised third party. Given the inherent difficulties and causation fallacies in actually measuring the usefulness of a link, any formula we produce will internalise our own biases and suspicions.

Strongly, nay, VEHEMENTLY disagree?

Great! Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter ;)