from the desk of Matt Diamanté ' - Hey Tony Google just dropped some massive updates to their review guidelines… and people are pissed. TLDR: • you can’t give an incentive to leave a review • customers can’t leave staff names in reviews • you have to ask everyone for reviews. Not just happy customers • you can’t ask for reviews while someone is at your business • you can’t ask them to leave a specific review or mention a product or service Here’s what Google has to say: Contributions to Google Maps should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business. Rating Manipulation includes Incentivized or Biased Reviews, which are not allowed and will be removed from Maps. This includes: • Content that has been posted due to an incentive offered by a business - such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services. • This includes content posted following requests for revision or removal of a review or rating in exchange for an incentive. • Content exhibiting unusual volumes or patterns of review contributions that are indicative of efforts to manipulate a place’s rating • Content that is based on a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest may include current or former employment, a contractual or consultory relationship, or other professional or personal affiliations that demonstrate a conflict of interest (such as industry competitors, familial relationships, etc.). We do not allow merchants to: • Offer incentives – such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services - in exchange for posting any review or revision or removal of a negative review. • Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers • When soliciting reviews, merchants should not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises, nor should they request that specific content be included. This includes: • Merchants requesting that staff solicit a certain number of reviews • Merchants requesting that staff solicit reviews that include specific content, including content that identifies a staff member.

I am new to search analytics, and I do marketing for a small business. I am not sure which is the best investment. My research leans towards Atlas. Any thoughts?

So I'm not making it to Tomorrow's call, On the other hand and pulling together an ecommerce first AEO Quick guide, who would want to check it out as soon as it's ready? 🛒

We're toying with the idea of launching an AEO.co Certified Partner Program (Powered by Smart Marketer). There would definitely be an element of exclusivity so it would be limited. If we did that, would there be interested in it in our community? Chime in and let us know what you'd want that to look like! Thanks!!

Hey there, AEO Leaders! I’m reaching out with a quick update. Unfortunately, I had a minor accident yesterday—nothing too serious, but I need to take today off to recover. Because of this, we will be skipping today’s scheduled call. I apologize for the short notice! We were set to cover Brand Reputation in the AI Era, which is the closing chapter of our Brand Representation section in the The AEO Blueprint. 🗓️ Looking Ahead Don’t worry—I’ll make sure to cover this entire topic in depth during our next call. In the meantime, our main mission remains the same: sharing everything we know, learning from you, and helping everyone here become an AEO Expert. As we know, Answer Engine Optimization is the single biggest marketing opportunity of the next decade at least. When most of your clients are educating themselves and taking recommendations from AI there's a new and urgent need for your business to be found, understood and trusted by AI agents. That's what we're cracking the code on and will hope to keep you guys close so we can move faser and learn together! 💬 We Want Your Input! Since we have a little extra time before the next session, I want to make sure we are building exactly what you need. In the comments below, let us know: What are the top 3 things regarding AEO that you want us to: 1. Research deeper? 2. Expand on? 3. Build step-by-step guides for? 4. Thank you so much for your patience and for being such an incredible part of this community. I’ll see you all very soon!