Part of GEOly's "GEO / AEO Expert Watch" series · meet **Mike Blumenthal**, a quick map of their public work and where to follow them — with links to the original sources.
Who is Mike Blumenthal
Mike Blumenthal is a co-founder and analyst at Near Media, where he researches reputation, reviews, and local search, and has been a leading local SEO voice for nearly two decades. He previously co-founded LocalU and GatherUp (GetFiveStars), and writes a widely read tactical newsletter on Google Business Profile and local search. Much of his current work involves recorded consumer-behavior research into how people actually search locally.
These experts put the entity at the center: AI is not matching keywords, it is understanding "who you are, what you relate to, and whether you can be trusted." Knowledge graphs, structured data and entity disambiguation are their shared language. Their recurring focus areas include: Local SEO, reviews, Google Business Profile.
What GEO / AEO practitioners can learn from Mike Blumenthal
- **Become a clear entity first**: keep brand, product and people consistent across Wikidata, your site and third-party sources so AI can merge scattered mentions into one "you." - **Feed the graph with structured data**: Schema.org, sameAs and explicit relationships help engines place you in the right knowledge neighborhood. - **Fact density beats rhetoric**: verifiable facts, numbers and relationships are recited by AI far more readily than flourish.
**GEOly angle**: A key reference for how reviews and local reputation signals shape AI-driven local recommendations.
What it means for brands going global
A hidden loss for global-facing brands is being split by AI into several fuzzy entities. Aligning names, categories and facts across your site, overseas socials, third-party directories and encyclopedic entries — so AI is sure "this is one trustworthy brand" — is where AEO begins.
Follow Mike Blumenthal: homepage & socials
- [Blog](https://blumenthals.com/blog/) - [Company](https://www.nearmedia.co/author/mike/) - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-blumenthal-4007a3/)
To meet more experts across GEO, AEO and agentic commerce, visit the [GEOly author hub](/blog/author).
*This profile is an editorial compilation of publicly available information, curated by the GEOly team for industry learning and reference. All links point to the expert's own public pages. Contact us for any correction or removal.*
