Will Fired Google Raters Be Replaced with AI? Last week Google terminated their relationship with one of the companies responsible for rating the quality of websites. Certainly Google has been on a cost cutting rampage of late with layoffs and product cancellations. But is the ending of one of their relationships with one of the companies responsible for quality rating just a cost cutting measure or a foreshadowing of Google using AI to perform this important task? SEO Tools are just tools and should be used with care: In a recent consulting gig, in analyzing a client’s ranking history, it appeared that their on-line Google presence had gone south. The rankings on all of their keywords in Google Maps were were disappearing and it had been getting worse since the second week of November. But the reality was much more subtle. They and their rank tracking tool had been bitten by a local Google algo update.  Hidden Gems and the Decline of Big Social: Google and the internet are going through big changes. the large social sites are becoming less attractive and the SERPS are becoming more …. annoying? Google in an effort to address this changing reality has elevated niche forum sites. Will the same things happen to these forums now that Google is focusing on them as happened to a lot of the Google search results? Is Google just shifting the responsibility for moderating content off to the sites? How does this change affect your content strategies. All good questions we grapple with in this segment The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands. near memo ep 143 Subscribe to our 3x per week newsletter at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/