Darren Shaw

🔹 Founder of Whitespark.ca: local SEO software and services.
🔹 Local SEO educator with 45,000+ newsletter subscribers, 10,000+ YouTube subscribers, and 3,000+ email course sign-ups
🔹 In charge of the annual Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, one of the most cited resources in local SEO
🔹 Speaker at local search conferences around the globe and contributor to SEO publications
🔹 I've been doing web development and SEO for 27 years (yes, before Google existed)

Founder

Whitespark builds online tools and provides services that help businesses and agencies with local SEO. We're known for our Local Citation Finder, Local Rank Tracker, Citation Building & Audit Services, and Local SEO Consulting. Our team often collaborates with other industry leaders and frequently presents at top SEO & Marketing conferences in North America.

If you still haven’t connected your socials to your Google Business Profile, this is your sign. Google is pulling information from your social profiles directly into search results. Valentina Vasileva shared this on LinkedIn, and it’s pretty wild.

Google is adding a special tag that looks a lot like a justification. It says something like “Today: event” or “Tonight: event”, and it is pulled straight from a business’s social media posts.

This is so powerful! It’s yet another clear signal that Google is actively looking at the content on your social profiles and using it to understand your business better.

So yes, you need to connect your social profiles to your Google Business Profile. 

And yes, you actually need to be active on them.

If you’re not doing this yet, you should probably get on it.

Founder of Whitespark. I share local SEO tips and strategy. Lead researcher behind the annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey. Get everything you need for better local SEO at whitespark.ca

What if your local SEO strategy is working, but your grid rank tracker just doesn’t show it?

The whole point of rank tracking is to measure the impact of your local SEO work. So, if your rank tracker stops tracking at position 20, what are you really measuring?

Say you make some updates, and your rankings at all points move from positions 80 to 30. That's a huge win! But you wouldn’t know that if you’re using a rank tracker that displays all positions above 20 as “20+”.

That’s why Whitespark’s Local Ranking Grids tracks rankings all the way up to 100 positions. We are the only tool that tracks to 100. This is one of the biggest things that sets our software apart from other grid ranking tools.

Our local ranking grid tool is also the most beautiful on the market. It’s genuinely a delight to use, and it costs the same or less than anything else out there.

Google “Whitespark Local Ranking Grids” and try it free (no credit card required).

Worth a read: this brilliant comment that Mike Blumenthal left on one of my posts

Local SEO Tip you NEED to know: update your business description on your citations.

Most businesses wrote their business description years ago, when they first built their citations, and then never touched it again. And sometimes (most of the time) it's really poorly written.

You should rewrite your old description and update all your citations.

Think of it like a data set that search engines and AI use to understand your business. You want it to:

1. Be written in clear, structured statements, often called semantic triples:

Subject - predicate - object.

2. Clearly explain what your business is, what it does, and what it specializes in.

For example: [Acme Pest Control] [is a Dallas pest control company] [specializing in wasp removal].

What you say about yourself only goes so far. What really matters is what the broader web says about you. And your citation descriptions are a golden opportunity to fix outdated messaging and emphasize things you probably haven’t thought about in years.

I talked about this and more with Dan Leibrandt from the Local Marketing Secrets Podcast. Check out the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.

In 2026, your local SEO agency MUST diversify.
Joy showed this chart in a recent livestream we did together in December. It reflects a steady decline in clicks-to-call from Google Business Profiles over the last 2 years.

Businesses are now getting fewer leads from the local pack because:

- Local Services Ads look almost identical to organic local results, and they’re siphoning off leads
- AI Overviews are taking up more space at the top
- the local pack now appears lower on the page than it did before
- people increasingly use other channels for local searches (YouTube, ChatGPT, TikTok, etc.)

So, it’s high time local SEO agencies diversified their services beyond just website and GBP management.

In 2026 you need to help your clients drive leads through additional channels:

- Long form vidoes on YouTube
- Short form videos on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube
- Social media marketing
- Reddit/Quora engagement
- AI SEO
- Digital PR
- and I’m sorry, but you probably have to start offering PPC (especially Local Services Ads).

At the end of the day, businesses don’t really care about the Local Pack or Maps.

* They care about LEADS *

If your services aren’t generating leads, your clients will leave you for a different agency.

Are citations making a comeback? I’d say they never left.

Citations have always been important in traditional SEO. But now, with the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini, we are seeing citations increase in importance. In fact, three of the top five AI search visibility factors are citation-based.

While traditional search is heavily focused on links, with LLMs, it’s more about mentions - in other words, citations.

If you were doing SEO the right way in the past, you probably don't need to change your citation strategy much. But if you gave up on citations a long time ago and want to rank in AI search, now is the time to get your business listed on key citation sites like:

- Better Business Bureau
- Facebook, LinkedIn
- MapQuest
- Yelp
- Prominent industry-specific sites
- “Best of” lists

I recently talked about this, and a lot more, on the Local Marketing Secrets Podcast with Dan Leibrandt. Check out the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.

Andrew Gruver

Shangri-La Dispensaries

I lead the strategic vision and execution of our content marketing efforts across numerous channels. Additionally, I'm managing the creation of an house marketing team and helping to establish a fresh and cohesive brand voice.

Content Director

Tweedle Farms

At Tweedle Farms, I wear many hats. From the management of our packing and shipping center as well as our retail site and eCommerce platform, to purchasing and product development, to marketing (through e-mail, social media, on-site experiences, and programmatic advertising) and copy-writing.

Director of Ecommerce

Raindance

Although I specialized in experience curation, promotion, and on-site production management, this role encompassed every possible facet of event production. From talent buying and hospitality to graphic design, permitting, stage-building, and even consulting. 

I could quite often be found in a nightclub, but I was fortunate enough to spend many days and nights at music festivals in the United States, as well as abroad.

Event Producer

KindPeoples

Sought out, took meetings with, and helped to on-board new vendors during California's transition from medical to recreational cannabis. Once on-boarded, I wrote in-depth reviews of each product that were used on Kindpeoples' website, on Weedmaps, and on the company's social media accounts.

I am proud to say that unlike the majority of cannabis dispensaries in the state, our shelves were fully stocked with a wide variety of incredible, compliant, options on January 1st, 2018.

Product Manager

As a longtime advocate of the cannabis plant, I have an extensive history in the California legacy market. 

My greatest joy was outdoor cannabis cultivation, but it was my strength in purchasing, product development, and marketing that truly afforded me the opportunity to grow in the cannabis community.

Cannabis Entrepreneur

I’ve spent nearly 20 years in the cannabis industry. That time has spanned the traditional, medical, recreational, and hemp markets. During that time, I’ve occupied numerous roles; from cultivator (specializing in full-sun settings) and buyer, to product manager and, for lack of a better term, cannabis sommelier. Now, I specialize in product development, social media management, email marketing, and content marketing, with a focus on search engine optimization.

Thanks to the ever-expanding cannabis landscape, my attention has largely shifted from the plant-touching side of the cannabis industry to cpg-focused e-commerce and all of the marketing that goes along with it. 

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Darren Shaw's LinkedIn Performance

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