Here is today’s roundup of news related to local marketing and advertising, local media, technology, local commerce, consumer behavior and more.

Brandify Data Shows Lift in Google Search Counts (December 3, 2018)
LSA Insider: “Google My Business (GMB) users may have noticed an odd increase in the count of Direct Searches reported during the months of July and September. Direct Searches is the count of instances where a consumer searched for your business using your business name or address, like “Jenny’s Flowers San Francisco, CA,” as opposed to Discovery Searches, where the consumer typed in more general keywords like “florist near me.””

MomentFeed Announces ‘Events Manager’ for Multi-Location Brands to Create, Publish and Manage Events at Scale (December 3, 2018)
Business Wire: “MomentFeed today announced the availability of Events Manager – a new solution that enables brands to create, publish, and manage event information, including responses, at scale on Facebook Pages and Google My Business (GMB) Pages.”

2018 Ranking Factors Report Emphasizes GMB and Reviews (December 3, 2018)
Street Fight: “The report’s methodology has undergone numerous smaller and larger adjustments over the years, but the basic approach remains the same today as when it started. The report surveys several highly respected local SEOs about the tactics that work best for local ranking, aggregates the results, and then ranks those tactics according to their popularity.”

Google launches Q&A structured data for Question & Answer pages (December 3, 2018)
Search Engine Land: “Google announced it is expanding support for rich results within Question & Answer pages on the web. This is something Google tested a year ago and is now more widely expanding according to Google.”

LinkedIn’s new privacy setting prohibits marketers from exporting emails (November 30, 2018)
Marketing Land: “LinkedIn has introduced a new privacy setting that lets users choose whether or not their email address can be exported by connections. The default for the setting is “No” — meaning connections will be unable to download a user’s email via a data export unless the user manually switches the setting to “Yes.””

Facebook Explains How its Search Results Work (November 30, 2018)
Search Engine Journal: “Facebook has put together a short explainer video with details about how its search results work. The company says it wants to be more transparent about what’s happening when users search for content on Facebook.”