#chalk inconsistencies up to my lack of experience

[greaseonmymouth]

I’m meeting my D&D group on Sunday for session 0 and I still have NO IDEA what I’m doing and filling out this character sheet is TOO complicated goddamn

[hedghost]

hedge can we have your review on the season? Like for each player give us a summary sentence on ur ops on their performance

oh yes gladly i love shit like this. you said one sentence but it’s way more than that bc i have a lot of thoughts hehe:

Mary Earps: honestly didn’t have her best season, especially in the first half, which i think was a mental thing. around january she seemed back to her old self and she did have some great games. kept us in a lot, pulled off some mega saves - we all know how fucking good she is there’s no denying that. however people chat a lot about our defence but i definitely don’t think she’s entirely without blame for some goals/results. still love her tho, just not her best season. genuinely no idea if she’ll stay.

Phallon Tullis-Joyce: that’s my fucking marine biologist!!! i’m so in love with phallon. criminal that we didn’t see her in the league, but her conti cup performances were brilliant. seems to work so well with the defence in such a short time despite lack of minutes played with them. good with the ball at her feet, good distribution, and made some fucking incredible saves (the one v liverpool was save of the season for me.) i genuinely won’t be mad if mary leaves bc i think phallon is more than good enough to replace her. hope to see more of her.

Gabby George: one of our smartest signings imo, was sceptical at first but she impressed hugely in the short time we saw her. made a huge impact on attacks down the left. gutted she got injured, def prefer her over blundell and think she would’ve made a big difference in some of our results if she was able to play.

Maya Le Tissier: will defend her with my life. made a few mistakes this season that she didn’t make last year but people forget she’s still v young, and i firmly believe she has the potential to be one of the best. grew into a leadership role this season. would have loved to see her push up more into midfield, or play in rb but 🤷‍♀️. long balls remain elite. if i were skinner i’d be building the team around her and prepping her for the armband.

Aoife Mannion: Didn’t see much of her due to injury but she remains solid. a bit slower, def not a starter but with the limited options we have she’s our best (and only) cb cover so.

Hannah Blundell: listen i like hannah and i think she’s decent but i also think a new lb is our priority (maybe less so when gabbys back fit but still). she’s solid and consistent but i think the team has outgrown her. done dirty a lot this season by being shifted to the right as it definitely doesn’t favour her. has a good linkup with galton but we still need more of an attacking fb to replace her imo.

Jayde Riviere: my Queen. i get flashbacks to ona when i watch her play and fall in love with her a little more each time. still young and needs more experience but has the potential to grow and be one of the best fullbacks. i expect her to be getting a lot of assists in the near future. super speedy, good awareness and vision, gets stuck in. all i can ask in an fb. only thing is she’s a bit too prone to injury but i’m chalking that down to inconsistent game time and being chucked back in by skinner before she’s fully healed.

Millie Turner: millie was consistent and great this season. glad she’s finally getting her flowers. times where she’s struggled have been when she’s had to deal with gemma evans next to her so i don’t blame her too much. she’s also less of a physical cb than maya is, which we saw a lot especially against ramirez, but that’s why i think the two compliment each other well.

Gemma Evans: hate this woman with a passion i didn’t see a single good thing all year. most baffling signing of all time. done dirty by being put as lb instead of cb but she’s still pretty crap as a cb. stunts all attacks as soon as she’s on the pitch because she continuously passes backwards even when there’s options, but also impacts attacks down our right bc blundell gets moved over and she can’t attack as well down the right as jayde, and we all know our midfield is too shit to go down the middle. gets beaten easily and loses her man constantly, impacts millie and maya bc they have to come over and cover often, and gives away too many fouls in bad positions bc she can’t compete with players so just takes them out dirty. shit as fuck.

Evie Rabjohn: gutted we didn’t see much of her, exciting prospect for the future.

Ella Toone: despite many lacklustre performances has had one of her best seasons statistically, however (controversial) she’s still not a starter. when she’s in the right space and gets the right ball she’s magic, but a lot of the time she spends 60 minutes completely invisible, then gets one banger of a goal and everyone pretends she’s had the game of her life. could be down to a shit midfield but im not fully sold. especially w/ the talent we have in the midfield she should be our super sub if you ask me. elite gamechanger, but not a starter.

Irene Guerrero: will never forgive skinner for what he did to her. the 8 minutes she was on the pitch were the best 8 minutes i’ve seen our midfield play. criminally underused, baffling as to why you would play zelem over her. hope she gets the chance bc she’ll storm the wsl.

Katie Zelem: when will we be free of a zelem midfield. i genuinely don’t understand why people think she’s good enough. loses the ball, and passes back wayyy too much, invisible half the time, not a good cam, not a good cdm, what’s the point? impossible for us to launch anything through the middle. great set pieces but we’ve seen multiple players who can do that too. a good captain and a good leader however, which i reckon is the only reason she stays, which is why i would be prepping maya for captaincy asap.

Hayley Ladd: while i don’t think she’s a starter i think we under-utilised her too much this season. she’s really our only strong cdm who can take control of the midfield and we needed her against teams like arsenal and chelsea who have v good midfields. when she has played she’s been v strong, and consistent.

Lisa Naalsund: my norwegian queen. she walked through the fiery pits of skinnerhell last season and came out the other side with a vengeance. has proved herself and firmly earned that starting position. really good on the ball, great vision, and scored quite a few screamers too. suffers a bit when she’s played with toone and zelem because she’s kind of the only one doing anything. dominates the right side more than the left - her link ups with jayde, geyse and lucia are brilliant. hope she stays.

Hinata Miyazawa: again, criminally underused. yes she was injured for a while but she should be a consistent starter if you ask me. so good on the ball, so good with pockets of space. i call her my tiny terrier bc she’s absolutely relentless with winning the ball back. never intimidated by any player. love her. hasn’t had the time to integrate fully with the forwards but when the cohesion is there it’ll be mega. i believe she can play on the wing too so i’d like to see some of that.

Emma Watson: another player i’m gutted was injured. so so excited to see her play as i believe she’ll be one of the best.

Grace Clinton: yes she was on loan but i’m still gonna include her. what a fucking season, and what a fucking player. i do think the loan to spurs was the best thing for her as she needed minutes which she wouldn’t have gotten here so i’m not criticising skinner for that, but we now have to do everything we can to keep her, not just the summer but the next. unreal. we’ve seen what she can do so i can’t wait to see her in a united shirt (fingers crossed)

Melvine Malard: if we don’t trigger the to-buy option we’re fucking stupid but my hopes aren’t high with skinner. should’ve got way more game time but hey ho. i don’t know why we don’t play her in the 9 when it’s clearly her best position. just love her energy, her connections, the way she moves the ball and gives everything. just need her to bag a few more goals.

Leah Galton: i love her sm but i think she’s kind of past her best now. she shouldn’t start bc she just gets tired too easily but she has had good moments so there’s still a space for her as a sub. has definitely suffered from not having a good fb behind her, but i think it’s time to move beyond her. still a clinical player with good skills, and hella agile but doesn’t have the connection with new forwards to make a real impact.

Lucia Garcia: i fucking love this girl. god i hope she stays but i do think she’s going unfortunately. our best and most consistent winger, fast as shit, moves the ball well, holds the ball up well, beats players, clinical on goal, commits to the ball but also so good at getting back to defend. player of the season for me, not a bad thing to say about her. just incredible we should be throwing the kitchen sink at her.

Nikita Parris: had a great season, def our most clinical finisher. i kind of prefer when she’s on the wing but she’s good in both positions. quick, relentless, good finishes, yeah she’s good. can def see her leaving though and i’m not up in arms about that as i feel we should be buying new strikers this summer. not so much of a ball carrier than our other forwards so mostly relies on service from others, but has good positioning and good finish.

Geyse: example of a brilliant player who’s suffering under poor coaching. mad skills but needs coaching to improve her decision making and finishing, which is what will make her a great player. she’s so fun to watch that sometimes i don’t even care when she loses the ball, but she def does way too much. shoots when she shouldn’t and doesn’t when she should. skinner can’t coach which is the problem, bc if she could finish she’d be immense. i’ve seen a lot of growth from her this season as she’s become more integrated in the team so i have hope.

Rachel Williams: had a great season but we really shouldn’t be relying on a 36 year old to win us games. just has that strikers instinct that you can’t teach but she’s ancient and so we desperately need a replacement. can’t deny that she’s saved us multiple times this season though.

[toxxsystem]

I was explaining to a singlet friend of mine how it can be possible to not know who's fronting and it got VERY long but I thought I'd post the ramble here!

TL;Dr: being a system involves experiencing a lot of selves whilst you think you're still just one, so it's kind of hard to tell who's who and sometimes you feel blurry and like you have no defining features like a name, gender, favourite colour or sense of how you look! And sometimes systemwide and individual dissociation makes that even more complicated.

Long rambly personal version from a message to a friend:

"Honestly it's understandable that you don't understand how it might feel to not know who's fronting! I'll try to explain as best I can because I can't sleep lol.

So the way being a system is explained to singlets is being multiple people in one body, so naturally you'd imagine multiple fully formed identities who are as sure of themselves as a singlet would be. Seeing as a singlet has never had to be like "hmm, am I still the same person I was yesterday?" There's a certain sense of sureness that comes along with identity, and never having to question it. But, as a system, there's the aspect of being multiple people yes, but there's also the historic experience of being a system whilst not knowing what a system is, and especially if you're a trauma based system there's probably a lot of dissociation and amnesia that's not specific to just who's fronting. So for example, we've spent a lot of our life having really inconsistent gender feelings, and chalked that up to being genderfluid. Now we know it's because we're a system, we use gender feelings to know who's fronting. But we weren't always aware of being a system so there was a long time we were just kind of vibing like that.

I'd say it's a very common system experience to sometimes have really clearly defined states of yes, absolutely, this is Chris fronting, I am sure of my name and gender feelings and how I have felt in the past when I've been fronting. But sometimes, we won't have any specific feelings or memories. In cases like how we've been currently, we might be so dissociated and blurry that we can hardly remember meeting new people or one day to the next, and it makes it really hard to figure out how many people are fronting, if we've switched at all, etc.

Also, if one person is fronting, but they're experiencing a heavy amount of depersonalisation or derealization, they might have the same feeling of a lack of identity that a singlet might get if they were feeling the same depersonalisation!

Sorry that this got long but I think it's a really interesting idea that once you realise a "self" is not always as simple as one person in one body, is raises questions of what even is a distinct self? Is it made up of current feelings about who you are, and what you remember about the past? For systems, that might get very inconsistent. And also, there's something called being "monoconcious". So, many systems ARENT monoconcious which means each headmate has their own conciousness, and might be able to remember their time in the inner world/headspace, and feel like they're waking up when they switch to the front. But some systems, like us are monoconcious, which means we all share the same conciousness. Switching to the front can feel much more like "becoming" a headmate rather than being someone who's switching in, because there's an almost constant linear awareness and shared memory whilst it's happening. So especially if memories are shared between headmates, it can be hard to distinguish if that's your memory or someone else's, your feelings or someone else's, and you might have defining features that help you figure out you are you, a specific headmate. But those defining features, like gender feelings, favourite colour, or a sense of how you look, will vary in how aware you are of them. Especially if you think about how a lot of did systems say what their system status achieved for much of their life was hiding past trauma from them, it makes sense that they have a blurry and messily-defined existence instead of a clean cut, definitely knowing who's fronting one— otherwise they'd probably notice they were multiple people a lot faster haha

I'm sorry this got so so long!!!"

Disclaimer: I might not have defined monoconcious properly, this is all based on my personal understanding and me trying to explain stuff to a singlet pal who's a great ally!

[eggy-tea]

Story time:

The thing about growing up in the 80s and 90s in a small, conservative place is that for the longest time I literally didn’t know there were options outside of straight or gay.

Like a lot of people my age, I heard the words “gay” and “lesbian” as slurs and playground insults long before I knew what they actually meant. That there were real people who actually identified that way.

It wasn’t until I went to university that I met my first out gay person. Of course there were people in my junior high, my high school, who were obviously not straight, but you didn’t dare admit it. Hell, the majority of my high school friend group has since come to identify as some flavour of queer, but at the time we were all of us “straight.”

I was female, attracted to guys, and it was easy enough to leave it at that. I’d already realized pretty early in life that I was a weirdo and I was fine with that, so anything I ever felt that didn’t mesh with “straight woman” I just sort of chalked up to me once again not quite fitting in. After all, I liked men. I found them attractive. I wanted to kiss them. So what if I sometimes felt the impulse to kiss some of my female friends? It was fleeting, and I clearly wasn’t gay; I literally didn’t know enough to think to question it beyond that.

(Was there also repression going on? Hell yes, of course there was. It was a conservative place 25+ years ago. Everyone was repressed.)

I met my husband at 23 and got married at 25. I have no regrets on that front. He makes me happy and I love him a lot. There are very few people in this world it doesn’t exhaust me to be around, and he’s first among them.

The thing is, it means I never really explored. When you’re happy in a committed, monogamous, heterosexual relationship, there are far more disincentives than incentives to questioning whether you might fit into other categories as well.

But the world has changed since I was a kid. Western society is a lot more open about a lot of things than it used to be. The internet has made it so much easier to compare my experiences to those of millions of other people.

When you’re growing up in a small place and you don’t quite fit in, you kind of internalize that it’s because there’s something uniquely off about you. It doesn’t occur that you might just be the victim of an insufficient sample size.

It’s thanks to the shared stories of strangers on the internet that I can say that I fall somewhere toward the ace end of the spectrum, instead of just being hopelessly confused and frustrated by my inconsistent and frequently lacking sex drive, despite the fact that romantic attraction’s never been an issue. Learning about the diversity of experience among bi/pan folks has given me the confidence to look at my own reactions again and realize that I was never really straight. And while I guess I still identify as a woman, gender has never sat easy with me, so that one’s on thin fucking ice.

But the fact remains that I’m still fairly early on in my journey of self-discovery, and I may never get the chance to conclusively test some of these theories. Like I said, I love my husband. He makes me happy. I don’t think either of us are built for polyamory, and it’s worth letting other possibilities lie if it means I get to be with him. So I don’t yet feel comfortable declaring I’m bi. I don’t even think I understand the nuances of pan well enough to claim it as my identity. (Fantastic flag, though.)

But queer?

Yeah. I think I’ve always been queer. And even if I do ultimately decide another label feels right, I will always be queer. Because growing up, I didn’t quite fit in the way I was “supposed” to, and as an adult that’s still true. And that much, at least, has always felt right to me.

[vulturevanity]

Mid-season thoughts on Fresh Pretty Cure!:

This is the season with the most cohesive writing so far. The characters are consistent and the episodes flow almost seamlessly into each other, which is a breath of fresh air after my experience watching Yes! 5.

The cures are great! Love specifically is fascinating to me, with her borderline unhealthy selflessness and tendency to neglect her own needs; she could swap places with Steven Universe and the two would pretty much fill each others niches seamlessly. I am also thoroughly enjoying Setsuna so far, because she is very angsty and I am very predictable. I do feel that Inori and Miki get the side character treatment, but that was also an issue in Yes! 5 (specifically with Komachi), so I'm chalking it up to the writers having to juggle a bigger cast than the first two seasons.

The villains are super interesting! Labyrinth is a surprisingly dark depiction of a pseudofascist world (I can't really call it fascism because while it presents the authoritarianism, the obsession with the one figure in power, and the severe restriction of freedom, it mostly lacks the extreme nationalist obsession that keeps a fascist regimen together and I think that's a deliberate choice but that's a conversation i don't want to have). The fact that the powers that be can just say "yeah we have no use for you, you're done living" and end a person's life with a word is bone-chilling. And the fact that they chose computer imagery to depict such a society? A full 13 years before the virtual hell we're seeing today? The vision. The genius.

(Actually now that I think about it, Steven Universe shares quite a bit with this season. I think people who like one might enjoy the other.)

I'm... still not used to the animation style. It's a bit too inconsistent for me, not just in terms of still proportions but also in the quality of the animation itself; it would be one thing if it was either simple and economic throughout or if they saved the budget just for the action sequences, but there are also random straightforward scenes like the girls just talking which are animated a bit too well for no discernible reason, and that was kind of distracting. Hopefully I'll grow comfortable with it soon.

In conclusion: someone find Love a therapist before she has a mental breakdown so severe it turns her into a pink Godzilla clone

[dicyde-blog]

𝐈.

The Avatar is a kind person who cares deeply for the people they love and will come to the aid of anyone who should ask them for it, rapid-firing apologies if they do something to upset others, likely inheriting this habit from their father. Despite having been sheltered throughout all of their childhood, they are quite social and conversational, as well as persuasive to the point of convincing some enemy soldiers to join their cause. Aside from being unusually charismatic and attracting people to them, the Avatar is also mentioned to have a way with animals, as it is said the horses in the stables like them.

I always like to personalized and extract details from canon when I write muses, and Kamui, being very inconsistent in their writing, is a lot of fun for me! That being said, this paragraph from their wiki is how I heavily portray my Kamui as, someone who is nice, friendly, sociable, persuasive, very apologetic —— naive and very trusting to a fault. Throughout the actual game play, these traits hold relatively true, however, through some supports, they don’t.

In some supports, a lot of supports, Kamui comes across as. . . rude. We can chalk that up to his lack of social experience, not entirely knowing how to behave in conversations, however, I don’t see Kamui as being. . . rude? Perhaps ignorant and confused at times, which may slip up in how he reacts, but never rude and insulting as he at times does. I do believe they wrote that in for. . . comic relief in some cases, or to put it into better words, they used Kamui as a base to exemplify the traits of the other character in the supports since Kamui is a hollow player stand in. But I don’t like portraying them that way.

Admittedly though, I do think there are times where his reactions are inappropriate, showing his actual lack of social understanding given that they were sheltered most of their life. He is very used to playful rudeness among his siblings, but isn’t aware that that’s not how you talk to everyone.

That all aside —— my portrayal of Kamui in specific is someone who is kind, trusting, naive, very loving, and very ignorant of the real world and withholds childish ideals and makes very stubborn decisions. Kamui is a very amiable, sociable person, who sees the good in everyone, and believes in the good in everyone. A heart far too kind to lead a war, a heart far too blind to everything to see what lies ahead of their actions.

[antmrankingskd]

Tia

Place: 8th

My call-out average: 5.63

Panel call-out average: 7.63

Favorite Photo: Ice Lingerie Shot

Least Favorite Photo: Futuristic Sports Shot

Tia had a pretty tough ride on the show, I’m honestly surprised she lasted as long as she did since she was constantly dragged by the judges. Most of the panel’s critiques about her supposed bad attitude and inability to take direction seemed overblown; I think a lot of her behavior can be chalked up to immaturity and lack of experience. Overall I thought that Tia’s portfolio was strong, but definitely inconsistent. Her Promo and Ice shots were fantastic, the former earning her the FCO, and she also impressed me with Salon, TRESemmé, and Resort shots. She also missed the mark several times (Goddess, Sports, and Subaru), usually due to issues with her how her face photographed since her poses were almost always good. However, despite having some duds in her book I don’t think she deserved the five (!) bottom 2 placements from the judges; in fact, she never landed in my personal bottom 2 at all. Tia’s inconsistency was an issue, but I think she should’ve lasted longer in the competition since she had a ton of potential, her good shots outweighed the bad ones, and her final shot wasn’t even close to elimination worthy.

[whydidireadthis]

All-New X-Factor

In 2014, Marvel embarked on the All-New initiative, perhaps reasoning that novelty would bring and keep readers. There was, at least in some cases, an attempt to go back to the high-flying adventure at the heart of the superhero genre, with less of the soap opera angst and sophomoric antics that seemed to drag comics down more every year.

As usual in superhero comics, they looked for a name. This time, they got Peter David, who had done X-Factor work before and, in my reading experience, did a good job making his first run on the title compelling...at least, until editorial started interfering and promptly ruined it.

Peter David and the Fan Favorites

I’ll say this and get it out of the way: I don’t like Peter David that much, personally. He’s at least as much of an asshole as I am, and he’s a real internet troll, as well as petty. But I’ll also say this: pretty much 90% of all well-known popular figures in superhero comics are some brand of either “crazy” or “asshole” if they’re not just plain stupid. David is extremely overrated for having written Young Justice throughout its run, despite it not being all that good and nobody apparently being willing to read it again without nostalgia goggles glued to them.

But at least he’s not any one of the seemingly endless hordes of names overrated for outright garbage. He does decent work, even if most of the time I don’t find it that exceptional, and doesn’t seem to need a strong editorial influence to keep his work tolerable. His sense of humor can bring a quality of realism and believability to the characters and situations, which is a really good thing. Often, it’s the lack of any humor at all that makes stories seem artificial and stilted.

All-New X-Factor assembles a team of characters that are basically all “fan favorites”, often underrated or relegated to the background in larger casts, and introduces a couple of new characters as well. The team lineup is a solid one that really showed a lot of potential. And I’ll admit, starting at the next-to-last issue and then jumping back to the beginning to read through, that was potential that never really came to any fruition, which is a huge shame.

The thing is, when David joined up with the original run of X-Factor, way back in volume 1 issue #71, he also stayed for 20 issues. And similarly then as now, the stories he told were derailed by the scourge of everything: “events”.

These “events” continue to plague the superhero universes, with meaningless crossovers that accomplish nothing. Storylines are built up in individual titles, then events come along and force those storylines to stand still while the event introduces new ones...and then after the event, it’s forgotten along with everything started during it, and also everything before it. So the title inevitably is cancelled, or the creative team swapped out, because it can’t recover from the ground level it’s essentially been reduced to. It is, in a word, Sisyphean.

And that’s basically what happens here. The Axis event dominates more of the run than any single storyline, and it’s a crossover. And not a particularly good one. What is really the worst about it, though, is the fact that even though the most pressing problems are solved on-panel, much of the resolution of the story takes place between issues and is just obliquely referred to in the next issue.

This is really not an okay way to do things, unless you’re doing a flashback to deal with it for some reason. Remember, “show, don’t tell” is usually a good rule of thumb, especially with comics.

It kind of exemplifies this run, though. Nothing really amounts to anything or leads anywhere. All-New X-Factor is basically one huge plot cul-de-sac, consisting of characters that were treated like shit in previous writing, trading references to some of that bad treatment and commiserating. In that, it usually gets its best moments. That’s essentially what you can take out of it: moments, with incidental connecting plots that don’t really add up to much. You think things are going to go somewhere, but they basically stay where they are.

And it’s fine, setting and sticking to a status quo is fine, but it is also unfortunately paired with a seeming lack of exceptional quality to the writing and characterization. It’s remarkable that Peter David, who most famously wrote that twenty issues of the original X-Factor, shaking up the by-then-stale series and reacquainting us with newly-relevant characters, seems to have forgotten who these characters are, and has no real idea who the others are that he’s saddled with.

At least in his original run, he had things happen that were appreciable, like Polaris breaking her jaw and having to recover from that. There’s nothing to really work with in All-New X-Factor, because the overwhelming impression is that David doesn’t really understand most of the characters and doesn’t want to take any risks with them. Which I applaud, don’t get me wrong -- I’d rather see someone who doesn’t get the characters be more cautious, instead of throwing it to the wind and totally ruining them. But David, in most of his more ambitious turns in the title, ends up forcing some of the characters into situations that don’t really suit them and do them no favors as people.

The Team Lineup

I always thought trying to claim Polaris was related to Magneto...was stupid. It’s facile and obvious, and it does nothing to develop the character at all. But for a while, Marvel were bound and determined to not only tear down any sympathy for Magneto, but also seemingly wanted to find some replacement. Ideally with boobs, similar to their desperate need to make X-23 a thing. So not only is Polaris dealing with her adult half-siblings (which, I will tell you, is not at all how that works in real life), she’s also conveniently comic-book crazy. Meaning that she sometimes goes a little violence-happy and has to be talked down, but only when the story needs her to do so.

It amounts to basically nothing and vanishes pretty quickly. She’s supposedly the leader of the team, but functionally there really isn’t a leader. It’s more like she organizes them sometimes, and occasionally she has some advice on how to do things. She is mostly easy enough to like, and the good thing about having a character who’s been so chaotically inconsistent is that any coherent personality is an improvement. Lorna is basically the same Lorna, personality-wise, that she was in David’s first run, with a weird personality tic.

Quicksilver is basically how he’s always been: a less obviously gay, and significantly less interesting, Northstar. And yes, I know Jean-Paul was created later. It doesn’t matter; that’s how people always tend to write the both of them. Pietro’s entire character in All-New X-Factor is “mildly clashing with Gambit”. That’s it.

Doug, also known as Cypher, gets the most character-building, which is nice since Abnett and Lanning’s fairly crap tie-up for their run on the New Mutants series didn’t leave him much to work with. Of all the characters involved in the title, Doug benefits most from it and actually gets the most to do. It isn’t always good, but at least it’s not essentially rehashing old plots from the first run of New Mutants that were done far better then. It is pretty puzzling that the character still has yet to resolve significant issues with various other characters who were extremely prominent in his life before dying and coming back to life, and I just have to chalk it up to yet another missed opportunity with the potential of All-New X-Factor.

Gambit is one of my favorites, but he’s almost always written badly. Either he ends up a shitty caricature even of the outrageously exhausted trope he came from, or he’s a misremembering of the 90s X-Men cartoon, or he’s just a completely different person than he’s ever been.

Here, Remy is sort of okay, most of the time, but he does some stupid things that aren’t really suited to him, like his lame and uncharacteristic pick-up artist turn in one issue that literally never manifests again at all in the entire series. Not that he isn’t a flirt, but this was phoning it in where it counts, and really disturbing where it didn’t.

He constantly seems toned down from his usual wit and cheer, to the point where he feels almost nihilistic and embittered. There’s little distinctive about his speaking patterns, too, which makes it seem strange when compared to a character like Rogue, whom I am bringing up not because of their extremely unhealthy, often ignorantly-celebrated and stupidly-promoted past relationship, but because she speaks like she just fell off the turnip truck and Gambit barely shows any signs in accent or in syntax of being from the deep Louisiana bayou.

There’s also an on-again, off-again narration from him...at least, that’s what I managed to figure out, because it’s not really made clear and seems extremely questionable at several points. It only appears in a handful of issues, and it never adds anything to the story. It’s almost ironic, really, because if Remy’s focused on as a narrator, you’d think he’d get more of a personal examination and development.

Nope! He gets one issue that really doesn’t focus on him at all.

Danger is a character I’ve always thought was idiotic, but she ends up kind of amusing, mainly for occupying the “fish out of water” role in the group and because of other people’s reactions to her. She’s still a pretty stupid character, and her introduction in the series does her no favors, but she is one of the few to show any real development over the course of the series. Essentially though, she’s one of the series’ deus ex machina characters, because none of the stories really seem to be committed to any sort of resolution. It’s almost ironic, since the team is filled with extremely powerful, highly capable characters, but only a couple ever distinguish themselves in resolving a problem.

Harrison Snow, the head of Serval Industries, basically occupies the other deus ex machina slot in the title. He’s not interesting or likeable, or sympathetic or compelling in any way, and what little development he’s given -- which links him to the godawful 2099 stuff -- is too late and not anything anyone cares about.

Seriously, stop trying to make 2099 happen.

At Least They’re Committed

Remember how I said there was a lack of commitment? It’s the same with the tone of the whole series. There’s no real reason they should be affiliated with this corporation, but they are for some reason anyway. There’s opportunity for scathing satire of the corporate world, but it never really shows up, outside of a couple of throwaway lines. X-Factor being, for some reason, a corporate-sponsored team never factors into the series all that much.

And it starts to get frustrating after a while, especially given that David’s original run actually committed to something. At that time, X-Factor had become a government-sponsored team, and examining the relationship between the US government and the rest of the Marvel Universe was a pretty large part of the team’s arc. Here, the only compare and contrast we get is to the Avengers, which barely factor into anything.

That brings me to Alex, Havok, who is in the series for the first few issues and then vanishes, never to return. He’s now a member of the Avengers (and if you don’t know why, you’re one step ahead of the writers; AvX was the absolute bottom of the barrel, even for an “event”) and decided to get Pietro to join the team in order to keep him informed on Polaris. I wish I could say this went anywhere, or played with any development to make it seem creepy, or sad, or just plain obnoxious, but it doesn’t. Alex is written like Scott, when Scott’s written his worst: a bland yuppie who reminds you of that person you know’s forgettably boring dad.

Alex and Lorna had a long-running relationship that ended at one point and never really rekindled, and that was even further sidetracked by Marvel’s insistent retcons of Magneto and his family, with further ruin thanks to -- let’s all say it together now! -- events. Here, David could have introduced a tension between Alex and Lorna again and had the two advance...but they never really address it or even really talk directly. And when Alex is done with eavesdropping, Pietro decides not to return to the Avengers, and Alex disappears from All-New X-Factor.

When another Avenger shows up, it’s Wanda, of course, since there’s a half-assed need to address Lorna’s sudden investment in her just-as-sudden half-siblings. But trying to make a joke out of something so serious as to be unforgivable is a poor choice, and it’s one of many that David makes during the run. Wanda is, by this point, an irredeemably terrible character and a bad person, someone who would greatly benefit the world by not being in it. If the point hadn’t been brought up, it could have been forgotten...and for the betterment of the narrative. But as it was brought up, it can’t really be ignored. It doesn’t help that, throughout her appearance, Wanda is pretty hard to like, when she’s not being noncommittally boring.

But this brings us to our last members of the team, and they’re two I can’t really address without bringing up the story further.

Warlock is a familiar face to anyone who knows the New Mutants, especially Doug. He’s kind of fun to have around, but it’s a real disappointment having the once-potent Magus turned into...yet another corporation. But as with Serval Industries, there’s no real commentary or satire to this decision. It’s just there, as if the absurdity of it, in and of itself, is supposed to be funny or clever somehow.

Spoiler alert: it’s not.

The story does do some interesting and even fun things, though, and it’s nice to see Warlock, especially with Doug around for him to play off of, as the two are perfect together.

But this also dovetails nicely into one of my most significant problems with All-New X-Factor, which is the fact that David manages to fuck up Doug, Warlock, and Danger all at once. He does this by a probably accidental or incidental storytelling bias, but so much of the series revolves around it: I’ve heard it called, and accurately, “straight people baby daddy problems”. That’s it in a nutshell.

Straight People Baby Daddy Problems

Danger trying to score makes up a level half of the series, and it’s amusing for a small amount of that time. Some of the reactions she gets are genuinely funny, and her fixation on sex does bring up some questions that most comics would never, ever even think of presenting. It also makes her much more likeable as a character, and it humanizes her to an extent, enabling the audience to sympathize with her more effectively. I don’t have a problem with this direction for Danger, especially since she’s basically just the emotionless big gun. She needed something, anything, to make her more compelling, and having her be curious about sexual relations does add an interesting queer dynamic to the whole thing, which I like.

But I’m not sure that was intentional. I’m not sure it was meant to be more than a throwaway joke that just kept coming up when David couldn’t think of anything else to punctuate a scene; sometimes it would work, sometimes it would just make me wonder if this was an attempt at a running gag that didn’t always fit.

The thing that made it not work was that Warlock and Doug were put at odds with each other because Danger approached Doug for sex, after Warlock and basically the entire rest of the team turned her down. It kind of feels creepy (but that’s not new territory in the series up to this point), but the part that doesn’t work is that David has Warlock coming off as jealous. Of Doug.

Maybe I’m not reading it the way it was intended, but if anyone in this situation, Warlock should be jealous of Danger. Warlock and Doug are not just friends, by any definition of the word. They have communed the very essences of their beings, basically mingled their souls, as well as their physical forms. Maybe David planned for the real target of jealousy to unfold, but he was aware that he had a certain number of issues left and kept writing as if he had unlimited time and space to address these things. After so much that amounted to nothing, why bring up something that is exactly the opposite of how these characters would act in that situation, then do nothing with it?

Even in this run, though, Warlock is very attached to Doug. For that to come out of nowhere makes it seem even more questionable. If that’s not what David intended and it was in fact supposed to be Warlock jealous of Danger and protective of Doug...he definitely didn’t present it very well.

I mean, it wasn’t well done by any means, but if he was aiming for that, he definitely missed and botched the shot.

But Doug constantly gets abuse heaped on him, and I really don’t like that. It was lazy, half-assed writing when it happened in New Mutants, and it’s lazy, half-assed writing here. At the very least, David has more respect for Doug than Abnett or Lanning seemed to (and certainly more than the patchwork of writers from New Mutants v1, least of all Louise Simonson), but at the same time, he’s only rarely allowed to be funny, strong, or compelling, much less actually do anything. He’s an immensely powerful character, as are all the members of the team, but they almost always end up playing second fiddle to Danger and Snow.

The last member of the team is Georgia, whose storyline is just...

Okay, I’ll be honest, I hated her. She was an annoying kid character who was fickle as anything and frankly came off as an obnoxious little twat. I didn’t care about her stupid story, her background of abusive, violent bigots, unlikely magic business, or her inane powers. She’s irritating all the time, she runs hot and cold and is utterly impossible to depend on, and there was no reason at all for them to basically make her part of the team instead of sending her to the X-school so she could actually learn to use her powers rather than being a danger to everyone around her.

She basically served no useful purpose and constantly derailed the stories to revolve around her, making her come off a lot like a Mary Sue type of character, a la Kitty Pryde, who is the Marvel Universe’s most painful Mary Sue. Once upon a time, Kitty was interesting and even sympathetic. That was a long time ago.

I suppose the thing that I disliked the most about having Georgia around was that when Luna finally showed up, she ended up basically pushed to the background in favor of Georgia. But if Luna had occupied that position instead of Georgia, then Pietro could have actually, you know, had some development during the series. Imagine the dynamic evolving between Pietro and Luna. The two haven’t had much opportunity to be together. I always thought Pietro and Crystal was a stupid relationship, and even worse that they were married and popped out a kid, but marriage was the big thing in comics at the time, and they often did that with characters they couldn’t think to do much else with.

(Not that they’ve changed much; nowadays, it’s just a method of killing characters off without really killing them off. They tried for years with Northstar, and then decided, hey, gay marriage is hot right now -- that’ll get him out of our hair. Subsequently, they had Iceman realize he himself was gay, but Jean-Paul had been shuffled off into the dead hell of comic-book marriage by then, essentially making useless the one “will they or won’t they?” storyline that gave both Bobby and Jean-Paul any meaning whatsoever in the past twenty-something years.)

Anyway, we’re stuck with Luna and Pietro has to live with his previous mistakes, which he does end up admitting. And I’ll admit myself, I have no idea what he’s talking about because my knowledge of and interest in Marvel from 2000 to now is minimal. It is nice to see him have to own up to his actions, though, and it is really great that he gets to connect with Luna again. But wouldn’t this have been even more meaningful if she had occupied the role of “clever young character learning about herself, her parent(s), and the world”? It would’ve required far less building of an ultimately useless character who basically tended to just shove the characters we know and actually like to the background or into some kind of fucked-up abuse. The elements were there, freely available, for David to use and create a close-knit, intimate group of characters who could develop richly between their party dynamic.

He just...missed it by that much.

Every time.

Dangling Threads

The Gambit story, close to the start of the run, brings up parts of Gambit’s backstory. Basically, the stupidest parts of his backstory, like the Thieves Guild and this floating island they somehow have now. And the aforementioned Danger, who behaves horribly during the story, which really should have added more pathos so that we could sympathize with her ordeal.

But it seemed to treat the people on the island as if they were nothing to be worried about, that it was okay that they were put in mortal danger by, uh, Danger. Everything was somehow resolved by one of the most awkward and frankly ludicrous non-resolutions ever, and it raised far more questions than it answered. And I mean, this is ludicrous even for a superhero comic. I could have got behind it even then, if it had been funny or witty or engaging, but...it really wasn’t.

Harrison Snow's 2099 shit doesn’t even show up until basically the last issue, but we’re treated to an ongoing saga of infidelity with his wife, which involves his secretary and then, later, Gambit. It’s very forced and awkward, but what makes it worse is that even after Remy is made aware of what happened and who she is -- which she was not honest about -- Snow abandons Gambit on a mission and he’s horribly abused and put in danger of his life. Which isn’t funny or amusing, and it’s nothing that anyone would just shrug off.

But that’s exactly what happens in the next issue, with a non-resolution to the subplot that addresses exactly none of the real concerns the characters, especially Gambit, should have. Especially given that he was shown to have concerns about even belonging on any team, least of all this one, in the issues up to then. He showed indications, and rightly, of being ready to leave the team over the debacle...and he should have, with an utter lack of any real dealing with the problem. Instead, he just apparently takes Snow at his casual handwave towards the whole situation. Sloppy writing.

The same can be said for Snow’s own subplot with his secretary and wife. The secretary basically drops out of the story early on, and the wife only pops up to be a hostage later. She’s kind of amusing for what of the story she factors into, but it feels like plot elements that were built up as being major are just dropped unceremoniously. Which is kind of a trend for this title.

But I said I didn’t hate the run, and I don’t. There are problems with it, but it’s not unenjoyable to read. It’s actually one of the more fun series that Marvel’s put out in a long time. It wasn’t perfect, or even close, but it at least didn’t nosedive into angst so deep that only teenagers wallowing in their own self-importance could tolerate it...like most X-titles unfortunately do. It tried to be more of an adventure title with interpersonal things, and that was why it was more enjoyable than not. It’s just too bad that David tended to revolve it around the “straight people baby daddy issues” and not anything more interesting or novel.

Gambit, especially, deserved better. He’s a well-loved character, even if he oddly sees comparatively little fanwork and merchandise. It’s unfortunate that most writers (and a good number of fans, for that matter) just don’t get him or what he’s about, tending to boil him down to just some “bad boy womanizer” type, which he really isn’t except superficially; he has a facade that he’s employed for so long that it’s second nature, but it’s all part of being a master thief. He’s not a simple character, which is probably why superhero comics tend to fail him; they simply don’t have the time, and often don’t have creators that care, to understand who he’s supposed to be.

There was even a bit of acknowledging the fact that Gambit is attractive, and he got to show a lot of skin, even appearing almost naked on a cover...at first. This vanished as the series went on. Even that would have been a refreshing change from most teams’ way of dealing with the character, who in All-New X-Factor became less and less prominent, and less and less relevant. We couldn’t even have eye candy Gambit, and we ended up with Remy in one of his dullest stretches, though mostly inoffensive.

It’s just disappointing that so often, the best and most meaningful traits of the character are overlooked or forgotten. Marjorie Liu’s run on X-23 -- my general dislike of the title character aside -- actually addressed a lot of things that most writers never touch upon or even notice. For example, some of the coded queer tones that come up repeatedly with Gambit and the fact that he’s a mature adult that often functions best when he occupies the role of an “older brother” type. Liu usually at least tried to write Remy believably and realistically, and that character was an interesting person with real feelings that were not easily pinned down.

I will say this, though: for all my disappointment in David’s portrayal of Gambit, he at least managed to avoid having Rogue make a guest appearance. It seems like a token inclusion anytime Gambit is anywhere, largely due to people bowdlerizing the characters and overblowing their relationship, and it always invariably makes Remy into barely an arm-warmer for Rogue. Everything about Gambit is cheapened by attaching him to Rogue so casually and easily, and every bit of development between the two is made even more puerile and obviously dysfunctional, rather than allowing the two to grow as people separately, accepting that they can one day possibly be friends, but they don’t really work together romantically.

If they ever did, if that all wasn’t just a convenient excuse for Remy’s well-hidden thoughts and feelings...but we won’t get into that here. That’s a discussion for another day.

Quicksilver came off well enough, mainly because there was so little done with him that what was done seemed even better. Doug saw some much-needed character improvement and building, though he didn’t get what he really deserved out of the run.

The rest was a mixed bag, mostly not much going on with them. Polaris seemed to stabilize remarkably fast, and that’s certainly a good thing for her. But there’s a plethora of issues waiting for her to address that might have been brought up, which were never really dealt with.

To the Future

I can only hope that whoever takes over the writing for any of these characters, they give it a little bit more thought than Peter David did when writing All-New X-Factor. I do hope that they keep the lighter tone, but even comedies have stakes. The tone in this series was insistently light despite the things that happened, and it wasn’t something that was really appropriate at all times, like dealing with Scarlet Witch.

Things don’t have to be relentlessly dark or oppressive in order to deal with serious problems, but you do have to actually deal with the problems, or else it can get as frustrating and feel as meaningless as a lot of this series did. David’s original run on X-Factor made its cast, who had largely been sidelined and neglected, feel new and interesting again, as well as realistically a group of friends. This run tries to recapture the same magic, but it falls short because of a lack of commitment all around. In some parts it’s overambitious, with its new characters it never develops or makes likeable or at least interesting. In others, it’s lazy and clumsy and fails to invest the effort it needs to realize and complete any of its concepts.

It is a pretty interesting series to read through, though. Would I recommend it? Sure! It isn’t a waste of time, and there are moments that made me laugh out loud, which is really not something most comics make me do anymore. At least, not intentionally. Straight people baby daddy problems notwithstanding, there’s some fun adventure to be had and a little character development that, thankfully, isn’t glacier movement that ruins the characters irreparably.

It just occasionally dents them and writes checks it can’t, or isn’t willing to, cash.

The art is splendid when it’s Carmine di Giandomenico, who did most of the interiors. He has a gorgeous style, and I love the very physical, tangible feel of the forms of the characters. In motion, they are graceful and spectacular, and there’s an obvious great knowledge and appreciation of anatomy. It’s especially nice to see that now, in comics, we have men that actually have genitals. And yes, this is an important thing in art and storytelling. It’s weird when men have smooth crotches that look like they’re made out of flat plastic.

Pop Mhan’s couple of issues are perfectly fine, but after getting used to Giandomenico, it seems almost jarring to have this different, perhaps more conventional, style presented, and it doesn’t quite feel suited to the story or the characters. The two issues Mhan does are two of the weakest, though, so that also doesn’t do the artist any favors.

Giandomenico’s bodies are really pleasing, and everything looks...right. There is also no shortage of amazing, luscious ass in the series, mostly Gambit’s, and it’s great to see for once. Pietro, at times, seems too bony, but he’s strangely not given much opportunity to show off at all; he’s either in costume or in casual clothes, rarely anywhere in-between.

My only complaint comes from Giandomenico’s portrayal of Remy, and while I do like seeing so much of him -- at least at first in the series -- the inveterate Gambit reader in me has to point out that Remy has body hair. Giandomenico only ever seems to put hair on Jean-Luc, which is cool, but Remy has always had it. It stands out especially when Kris Anka’s cover art has Remy with the hair, but the interiors don’t have it. Remy doesn’t depillate, he just trims.

I really wish I liked Anka’s work on the covers more, but it’s kind of uneven throughout. Sometimes I like what he does, sometimes I don’t care for it. I don’t hate his work, and I think he’s very expressive in his style and brings a lot of fun to the subjects. There’s life and liveliness and energy in what he does, which is what superheroes really need. He also doesn’t hesitate to “sexy up” male characters, which is nice. The cover to issue #3 is wonderful and adorable and everything it should be, whereas the cover to issue #9, naked Remy and all, just isn’t right. He’s too bulky, and the composition is uneven and strange.

I do appreciate Anka getting the full frontal sketch out there, though. Bravo! We need less body shame in general. This wave of puritanical bullshit is...well, bullshit. Honestly, maybe if All-New X-Factor had been a mature title and thrown some more adult dealing with things it brought up and danced around, it might have been better. Although the more adult-oriented Marvel titles tend to be up their own asses and filled with enough grimdark edgelord shit to make a high schooler tell them in embarrassment to take it down a few notches, David might have thrived in an environment where he could cut loose a bit more.

As it is, All-New X-Factor is something that is better than it probably deserved to be, but not as good as it could have, and should have, been. It’s something worth reading through at least once, but it may not hold up to repeated read-throughs. If you’re a big fan of any of the characters, at least give it a chance; they each have some moments to be in the spotlight, although not all of those are going to be good or necessarily even in-character for them. It’s just nice to see them, which unfortunately all of the team’s members suffer from not having happen enough.

But whoever was responsible for that Longshot redesign needs to be slapped. Whatever the shit garbage that was supposed to be...brush it under the rug with the rest of Axis and forget about it.

[barbosaasouza]

Review: PGA Tour 2K21 (Nintendo Switch)

If you’re looking to hit the virtual links, PGA Tour 2K21 mostly delivers. Despite some unfortunate bugs, this title still offers addictive fun.

While the Nintendo Switch is home to some great arcade and non-traditional golf games, PGA Tour 2K21 is the rare simulation on the hybrid console. I’ve been a series fan since PGA Tour 96 (on 3DO), even if my golf experiences on the last few Nintendo systems have been via Wii Sports or with Mario teeing off. Thankfully, this latest PGA entry takes me back while still moving forward.

True, it’s missing some of the features I remember, like practicing any hole and gimmes. The course fly-bys too, although those may be a relic of mid-’90s TV-style presentations. But it also has some of my favorite courses like TPC River Highlands in Connecticut, and TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas. The former has beautiful views overlooking the CT River and a famously tough final hole with a narrow fairway flanked by bunkers. The latter, a stadium course with great mountain views, has the desert looking better than ever. 

All told, you can choose from 15 available (and quite diverse) courses. The 11 Pros are slightly lower than I would have expected, but it’s the course count that will keep you busy. You can even tweak settings for the time of day and weather in local matches, though competing against pros is TOUR play only.

Want an even higher course count? You can design your own, which is both an overwhelming and exciting thought. I’ve only dabbled in this, so I can’t comment much beyond my intrigue. But I appreciate how the options are separated by layout, terrain, and theme to start. I may never fully dive into land sculpting, but it’s there should I ever choose to give the game extra legs. PGA 2K21 is for those who’ve always wanted to consult on course transformations.

I’m getting ahead of myself anyway because there are features that will attract your attention early. MYPLAYER might be a grammatically challenged mode, but its customization options are deep. Some may be for naught though, as a pair of shades hide my crow’s feet. Nonetheless, I appreciate the feature as I’ve taken digital Trev into the Career Mode.

Advancing past pros may seem intimidating to less seasoned players, but helpful tutorials teach how to start and improve play. I admit the user interface could be faster and friendlier – it’s a bit overly complicated trying to fine-tune with precision – but practice makes perfect. The opening tutorial will get you ready to start your career, as you aim to become the FedExCup Champion. As you grow as a golfer throughout the season, you’ll attract rivals and contract sponsors. 

In between, why not check out the online community? None of my friends own this game, so I was unable to set up a private match. Which is a shame, as playing with strangers essentially means going against existing leaderboard scores as I couldn’t find anyone online for head to head. It’s not a quick process, and I haven’t been able to find a way of learning the difficulty setting before joining. So I doubt I’ll be going online much. All the same, I’m creating a casual online society, Purely Trev’s Club, with no membership fee, so Pure Nintendo amateur golfers, look me up.

As you gain experience, you’ll appreciate how you can adjust the skill level. There’s a fair amount of choice in how you can do this. For instance, as someone used to the classic 3-click swing meter, some of these modern alterations – flicking the Joy-Con sticks – aren’t superior. But, even tweaking them to more forgiving settings, I’ve still ensured a good challenge by upping CPU difficulty, boosting wind, disabling Pro Vision settings, etc. These nuances help make learning each course oh so satisfying, while also raising XP for bragging rights. They also keep the continual temptation of the risk-reward element (trying to reach a Par 5 green in two, for instance) tempered by the desire for pinpoint accuracy.

Now it’s time to talk about the presentation, which is a mixed bag. The audio side is mostly well done, with ambient effects, occasional music, and commentary that grows on you. Only the voice of John McCarthy suffers, often being too soft to hear against the play-by-play and analyst commentators. He does fare better during local matches.

Visually, PGA Tour 2K21 can look quite lovely at times. But there are inconsistencies with lighting, and shadows move like time-lapse photography. Cutscenes have some stutter. Sometimes golfers will appear completely black like Shadow Link. Such variances remind me I’m playing on Switch, usually in handheld mode.

The biggest audio-visual blunder in my mind is the lack of crowds. You’ll see the clubhouse, gallery seats, cars, etc. But it’s all empty; there isn’t even any crowd audio to add insult to injury. I can grant a pass to the lack of visual crowds as a Switch sacrifice, but the lack of audio too? Unacceptable when I was spoiled by it 25 years ago. I must rightly call out such a choice as a triple bogey move.

Most other complaints are less significant. The number of legalese pages gives a poor first impression, but you won’t see them after the first day. While an actual game can be slow to start, once you’re ready to tee off, the game moves at a good pace. Seeing Ian Poulter more than Justin Thomas (the cover star) is odd, but more of a comical curiosity than anything. Not being able to record footage is a bummer, but you can save replays. Occasionally, replays freeze on a character’s face, so the shot isn’t viewable, but repeat viewings let you decide the angles. Spending up to $49.99 to buy in-game currency is eye-rolling, but easily ignored. Not having a physical version on day one is a mistake, but it’s arriving (better late than never) in September.

One complaint that’s not the least bit minor is the game closing “because an error occurred.” If it only happened once, I could chalk it up to the odd instance, but it’s not a solo situation by any means. So be warned, the bugs in PGA Tour 2K21 aren’t limited to aesthetics alone.

All the same, PGA Tour 2K21 presents many rewarding moments: having a rough start, only to rally on the backside for victory; learning I won a count-back to break my first-place tie; changing from Stoke to Match play so that a crummy couple holes that (under other conditions) would end my game let me remain competitive. And many more that space won’t allow me to mention.

As someone unlikely to play most of these courses in real-life, I relish the chance to visit them in video-game form. From driving off the tee, reading the green, and everything in between, this title offers a lot in spite of itself. If you’re someone who enjoys golf sims, please don’t let some careless glitches prevent you from checking out PGA Tour 2K21 on the Nintendo Switch. With practice, even a real-life duffer like myself can rack up his share of eagles

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Review: PGA Tour 2K21 (Nintendo Switch) published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/

[douglassmiith]

What do local SEOs really think of Google My Business support?

It’s already hard to remember a time when a local SEO Company’s priorities included having to deal with Google My Business’ various support teams across email, phone, live chat, and social media.

Earlier this year, though, it was a different story. So, inspired by serious issues with incorrect recommendations, errant listing suspensions and very long wait times for reinstatements earlier this year, I sought to find out what the local search experts (many of whom are GMB Product Experts) really thought of the quality of Google My Business’ support, and compiled the following reactions from a long list of local SEO Company pros, including Joy Hawkins, Ben Fisher, Greg Gifford, Dan Leibson, Dana DiTomaso, and more.

I have it on good authority that the quality of support isn’t likely to magically improve once the virus clears, so let’s consider this the “wayback machine” of GMB support gripes, and just hope that the future doesn’t so clearly reflect the past.

Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling will lead a Live with Search Engine Land discussion with two leaders in the local marketing agency space: Foursquare CEO David Shim and PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall. They will discuss how brands and marketers can use location intelligence as they plot a way forward at 2 p.m. ET May 15. Learn more here >>

Incorrect or misleading information and advice

One very common response from almost all sides was around the issues with incorrect information being presented as fact. While experienced SEO Companys may be able to see through the misinformation, any local business owner looking for help from GMB support runs the risk of being told to do something that either won’t help with their problem at all or will actively damage their business’ visibility.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): Phone support is a gamble: if you get someone untrained, they will destroy you with the wrong information. On the other hand, if you get someone who has some sympathy, they will not only help you but follow up to make sure all went okay.

My tip for phone support is to listen to their voice and see if it’s clear that they’re talking from a script. Interrupt them and ask them: “How are you doing?”, “What time is it there?” If they stick to the script, tell them you need to run because of an emergency or something.

I do love live chat, but it is severely understaffed. The staff they have added in the last six months or seem to be the same staff, experience-wise, as phone support.

The worst cases of misinformation I have experienced are where support is telling a user to create a new listing because of the actions of a previous manager. This problem can be overcome, but it’s really difficult and usually requires the involvement of a GMB Product Expert.

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): We avoid and dread support at GMB like it’s the DMV. It can be good for simple requests, like moving reviews or redirecting a closed page, but I pretty much never contact support. My clients occasionally  do, simply because that’s more efficient than my acting as a conduit, but that’s a big time-taker because it’s extremely tough to speak with a human at GMB.

When you do get through to someone, often there is a quasi-language barrier that leads to misunderstandings. Then there’s the conflicting advice: over the years, Google reps have claimed things like that keyword stuffing in the description helps rankings, call-tracking numbers aren’t allowed, and that clicks are a direct ranking factor.

I chalk that up to a lack of training, or a lack of clear SOPs from Google, or both. In any event, the time it takes to get help that may or may not help, and the confusion caused by well-meaning GMB support reps, often makes business owners wonder whether they’re too reliant on the “local map” and going about their local visibility all wrong.

Jason Brown (Sterling Sky): To say that the latest round of new hires is not properly trained is the understatement of the year. I know more about Google’s policies and procedures, and find myself having to train the support staff. It’s worse for the average user that doesn’t know any better.

We’re at Google’s mercy, and sadly, they don’t seem to care (at least, that’s the message that they’re conveying). I’ve had to point out countless flaws and issues when I contact support, and have had to contact another Google employee for assistance. The average user can’t do this, and so is left hanging.

Dana DiTomaso (Kick Point): The recommendations coming from official GMB support channels can definitely be misleading. For example, they have said that a listing was suspended because we updated the categories on the listing, yet egregious spam lives on.

There also seems to be a high number of suspended listings right now [this was in late February]: we have a client who has a suspended listing (one out of their several locations) with no reason given, and no response yet to our request for help.

Tom Waddington (tomwaddington.com): While I think GMB support wants to help users resolve their issues, I feel the overall priority, at least for a phone support agent, is to convince you that the issue is resolved or will be in a day or two, so that you leave positive feedback regarding your experience with them.

There is typically a survey you will be asked to complete at the end of a support call, but there have been times when my talk with support didn’t go well, the issue wasn’t resolved, and the call disconnected during the transfer to the survey.

GMB is a complex product and support agents aren’t going to have the training and experience to understand all issues. I think the desire for positive feedback along with genuinely wanting to help a user can lead to bad or incorrect advice from a support agent that is trying to placate the user.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): There seems to be a lot of inconsistency in the quality of support depending who happens to field your inquiry. Some of the GMB support folks seem knowledgeable about the platform and common issues, while others seem to lack even a basic understanding of GMB language and core concepts.

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Getting some odd advice from business support can be frustrating to businesses as well as the community, especially when said advice is broadcasted publicly: because people think it’s from Google, it must be legitimate advice.

On the contrary, business support is basically a call centre, with set procedures for set issues. They’re not in direct contact with Google My Business product managers, and equally, no single Googler knows or understands what are exact ranking factors are.

I can only surmise (having listened to countless hours of recordings from account managers for GMB listings during compliance auditing), that call handlers who feel confident with the product will offer their own advice whether they think it may help or have heard other agents offer similar advice.

Some particularly troubling pieces of misinformation I’ve heard are:

Adding keywords into your listings, shop code and labels will help your listing rank better (they won’t!)

Deleting a suspended listing and starting again will solve the suspension issue (it won’t!)

Edits made to your GMB listing will ‘reset’ the account’s authority (they won’t!)

A ‘permanently closed’ listing will go away eventually (it might not -– I have a business still showing ‘permanently closed’ after 12yrs and three different businesses at location later!)

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): Every once in a while, I’ve gotten some bad help. We had an issue with a duplicate listing, and got it fixed, and then a month later GMB support finally replied to the initial request we’d put in… and then a month later they answered again.

We’ve also seen the Twitter team send out a few questionable tweets, like saying that keywords in the description help in ranking. Some are more helpful than others, and i think that sometimes they just answer ‘off the cuff’ and don’t realize it’s bad information.

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Users need to exercise caution when taking advice from GMB support. I’ve actually written a piece detailing the questionable advice I’ve heard.

Dan Leibson (Local Search Guide): I think their support channels suck. I think there is no meaningful way to report systemic, broken things. Everything is treated like you want the secrets to their system or are trying to game the system when you just want them to fix their broken stuff. 

Advertisers get no benefit regardless of spending a ton on ads, despite the fact that they are disproportionately affected by these problems and are more trustworthy sources of reporting.

Speed and efficiency issues

Another commonly-raised issue was the speed efficiency of advice. When your GMB listing is suspended you’re likely to be losing a lot of money every day, and from my chats with the local search community, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

(It should obviously be noted that as of right now, Google has advised that GMB support is going to be slower than ever while they prioritise certain actions related to Covid-19, and social support has been entirely switched off.)

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): I had a years-long saga of trying to get Google to remove the “Dentist” category from my Local Visibility System GMB page. Why was it there? Well, as a local SEO Company, I tinker all the time, often using my own GMB page as a lab chimp.

In one experiment I changed the primary category to ‘Dentist,’ but I couldn’t change it back. I I contacted them through Twitter and email, and while the reps were helpful, after some back-and-forth they were stumped, and apparently kicked up the question to a supervisor. I never heard back. (In Google’s defence, I didn’t attempt to call them, but that’s because I didn’t have a business day to spare!)

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): GMB issues can have significant consequences for local businesses. When a listing is suspended, it can be really frustrating to get a response like:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Support channels all vary in efficiency, especially when there has been a large swath of suspensions. When these happen (and they’re happening more and more), support grinds to a halt. Last year we had an unprecedented 6-week delay in getting reinstatements getting looked at.

I’ve personally found Twitter support to have become swamped as it has become more popular and delays are occurring. You also have to DM details of the issue, which isn’t ideal when it’s a nuanced issue.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): According to those whom I talk to at Google, 90% of accounts have only one listing in them. This infers that the majority of listings that are on maps are single users with a single account. In other words, most of them are ‘mom and pop’-type businesses.

So, therefore, GMB builds things that address single account holders the most. Makes sense that support would acknowledge this, right? Heck, no! Have you ever tried to get a reinstatement completed? You get back this email telling you that they need more information, or they are not compliant, or there is a problem with the… whatever.

In the example below, they didn’t tell me the name of the business and supplied a generic response when I asked for it.

However, if you go elsewhere and submit a contact form, you get back this beautiful template that tells you the business name and address!

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): Personally, when I have an issue, I usually turn to Twitter DMs, but the support I’ve received there has been variable in terms of quality and timeliness.

It is frustrating to send a DM about a problem and then have to wait weeks to get an answer. By the time you get it, you’ve usually found a solution or the problem is no longer a problem!

Personally, I turn to an internal network of fellow GMB aficionados, and the forum, for insight. I just can’t wait two or three weeks for an answer from Twitter support. Also, if you have multiple questions about multiple accounts, it’s very hard to manage responses there.

It’s not all bad, though!

At the time, given the severe slowdown in GMB support responses, the misinformation being shared, and the backup in suspension investigations, I was fully prepared for an onslaught of rage towards the GMB support team. And while I did indeed get that in some quarters, I was really pleasantly surprised by the positive stories, understanding and empathy shown elsewhere.

Joy Hawkins (Sterling Sky): Bad advice is normally given out when users expect Google support to be able to answer questions about ranking tactics, like in this example.

Google My Business support is generally good at fixing issues with listings but there is a limit to what they’re able to do when technical issues and bugs are frequently a problem with the platform. If you’ve been told something by GMB support that you think is incorrect, it’s always fine to get a second opinion by posting on the GMB forum.

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): The support team is trying, but so often they’re completely overwhelmed by the volume of support requests that things don’t work out so well. Overall, I’ve had great experiences. You just have to wait a bit for your reply or solution.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): I’m really empathetic to folks working the GMB support channels. They’re regularly inundated with issues from all directions.

From my vantage point, Google just doesn’t allocate the resources needed to appropriately support GMB. That being said, they’ve definitely moved in the right direction. It wasn’t that long ago that support requests simply went unanswered into the Google abyss.

I’m extremely grateful for the ability to have some means to escalate issues. For example, in dealing with a particularly troublesome law firm listing suspension issue late last year, I got a response within thirty minutes that led to a rapid reinstatement:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): I really like the original ‘contact support’ form. You can give a pretty detailed report on the issue, then when you get the reply email, you can reply with additional screenshots to help the agent.

By providing the agent with all the details at once in the form, I normally get the issue resolved within 24hrs, with no ‘back-and-forth’ required.

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): My main point would be that, however frustrated one might be with lack of advice, quality of advice, or speed of advice, we need to remember that GMB is staffed by human beings who are doing their best given whatever resources or internal guidelines they have or do not have.

My tips would be to always be polite, not to be snarky, and to always thank people for their time – whether it’s Max, Flip, Brad, Liz, Mark, Dany, Zach, Matt, Tori or Jenny!

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Over the years, GMB support has evolved from being virtually non-existent to something that has become very useful for solving most types of GMB issues. Looking at the evolution of the ways that you can contact GMB support alone is a testament to the attention that the GMB product is getting and the progress that they have made.

The future of Google My Business support

While it’s hard for me, here in the spring of 2020, when nothing is as it should be or as any of us would have expected it to be, to summarise the current status of Google My Business support, I do have some closing thoughts on its future courtesy of some of those I spoke to.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): While I’m not very optimistic that it will happen, I’d like to see Google take more accountability for addressing GMB issues and providing support. Like other support contexts, it’s neither fair nor productive to attack the front-line support people. 

Instead, I’d suggest putting more pressure on Google to take Google My Business issues more seriously by allocating the necessary resources to properly support and address these issues. Lack of support is harmful to both businesses and their customers.

Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Company Guide): As is often the case with Google services, the scale of the problem must be in a way overwhelming. And while Google has been making incremental progress, it still feels like a drop in the bucket.

There has been a lot of speculation over the past year that Google is going to roll out a paid GMB service. While we all cringe at Google taking even more money from our collective pockets, if a pay model allows it to more effectively address some of the glaring problems with GMB, I imagine the majority of local businesses and agencies would hold their noses and willingly pay it.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jamie Pitman has worked in digital marketing agency for over a decade and is currently Head of Content at local SEO Company tool provider BrightLocal. He specializes in local marketing agency and the many factors that affect local search performance, from Google My Business and consumer reviews to branding, content marketing agency, and beyond.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

Via http://www.scpie.org/what-do-local-seos-really-think-of-google-my-business-support/

source https://scpie.weebly.com/blog/what-do-local-seos-really-think-of-google-my-business-support

[riichardwilson]

What do local SEOs really think of Google My Business support?

It’s already hard to remember a time when a local SEO Company’s priorities included having to deal with Google My Business’ various support teams across email, phone, live chat, and social media.

Earlier this year, though, it was a different story. So, inspired by serious issues with incorrect recommendations, errant listing suspensions and very long wait times for reinstatements earlier this year, I sought to find out what the local search experts (many of whom are GMB Product Experts) really thought of the quality of Google My Business’ support, and compiled the following reactions from a long list of local SEO Company pros, including Joy Hawkins, Ben Fisher, Greg Gifford, Dan Leibson, Dana DiTomaso, and more.

I have it on good authority that the quality of support isn’t likely to magically improve once the virus clears, so let’s consider this the “wayback machine” of GMB support gripes, and just hope that the future doesn’t so clearly reflect the past.

Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling will lead a Live with Search Engine Land discussion with two leaders in the local marketing agency space: Foursquare CEO David Shim and PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall. They will discuss how brands and marketers can use location intelligence as they plot a way forward at 2 p.m. ET May 15. Learn more here >>

Incorrect or misleading information and advice

One very common response from almost all sides was around the issues with incorrect information being presented as fact. While experienced SEO Companys may be able to see through the misinformation, any local business owner looking for help from GMB support runs the risk of being told to do something that either won’t help with their problem at all or will actively damage their business’ visibility.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): Phone support is a gamble: if you get someone untrained, they will destroy you with the wrong information. On the other hand, if you get someone who has some sympathy, they will not only help you but follow up to make sure all went okay.

My tip for phone support is to listen to their voice and see if it’s clear that they’re talking from a script. Interrupt them and ask them: “How are you doing?”, “What time is it there?” If they stick to the script, tell them you need to run because of an emergency or something.

I do love live chat, but it is severely understaffed. The staff they have added in the last six months or seem to be the same staff, experience-wise, as phone support.

The worst cases of misinformation I have experienced are where support is telling a user to create a new listing because of the actions of a previous manager. This problem can be overcome, but it’s really difficult and usually requires the involvement of a GMB Product Expert.

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): We avoid and dread support at GMB like it’s the DMV. It can be good for simple requests, like moving reviews or redirecting a closed page, but I pretty much never contact support. My clients occasionally  do, simply because that’s more efficient than my acting as a conduit, but that’s a big time-taker because it’s extremely tough to speak with a human at GMB.

When you do get through to someone, often there is a quasi-language barrier that leads to misunderstandings. Then there’s the conflicting advice: over the years, Google reps have claimed things like that keyword stuffing in the description helps rankings, call-tracking numbers aren’t allowed, and that clicks are a direct ranking factor.

I chalk that up to a lack of training, or a lack of clear SOPs from Google, or both. In any event, the time it takes to get help that may or may not help, and the confusion caused by well-meaning GMB support reps, often makes business owners wonder whether they’re too reliant on the “local map” and going about their local visibility all wrong.

Jason Brown (Sterling Sky): To say that the latest round of new hires is not properly trained is the understatement of the year. I know more about Google’s policies and procedures, and find myself having to train the support staff. It’s worse for the average user that doesn’t know any better.

We’re at Google’s mercy, and sadly, they don’t seem to care (at least, that’s the message that they’re conveying). I’ve had to point out countless flaws and issues when I contact support, and have had to contact another Google employee for assistance. The average user can’t do this, and so is left hanging.

Dana DiTomaso (Kick Point): The recommendations coming from official GMB support channels can definitely be misleading. For example, they have said that a listing was suspended because we updated the categories on the listing, yet egregious spam lives on.

There also seems to be a high number of suspended listings right now [this was in late February]: we have a client who has a suspended listing (one out of their several locations) with no reason given, and no response yet to our request for help.

Tom Waddington (tomwaddington.com): While I think GMB support wants to help users resolve their issues, I feel the overall priority, at least for a phone support agent, is to convince you that the issue is resolved or will be in a day or two, so that you leave positive feedback regarding your experience with them.

There is typically a survey you will be asked to complete at the end of a support call, but there have been times when my talk with support didn’t go well, the issue wasn’t resolved, and the call disconnected during the transfer to the survey.

GMB is a complex product and support agents aren’t going to have the training and experience to understand all issues. I think the desire for positive feedback along with genuinely wanting to help a user can lead to bad or incorrect advice from a support agent that is trying to placate the user.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): There seems to be a lot of inconsistency in the quality of support depending who happens to field your inquiry. Some of the GMB support folks seem knowledgeable about the platform and common issues, while others seem to lack even a basic understanding of GMB language and core concepts.

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Getting some odd advice from business support can be frustrating to businesses as well as the community, especially when said advice is broadcasted publicly: because people think it’s from Google, it must be legitimate advice.

On the contrary, business support is basically a call centre, with set procedures for set issues. They’re not in direct contact with Google My Business product managers, and equally, no single Googler knows or understands what are exact ranking factors are.

I can only surmise (having listened to countless hours of recordings from account managers for GMB listings during compliance auditing), that call handlers who feel confident with the product will offer their own advice whether they think it may help or have heard other agents offer similar advice.

Some particularly troubling pieces of misinformation I’ve heard are:

Adding keywords into your listings, shop code and labels will help your listing rank better (they won’t!)

Deleting a suspended listing and starting again will solve the suspension issue (it won’t!)

Edits made to your GMB listing will ‘reset’ the account’s authority (they won’t!)

A ‘permanently closed’ listing will go away eventually (it might not -– I have a business still showing ‘permanently closed’ after 12yrs and three different businesses at location later!)

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): Every once in a while, I’ve gotten some bad help. We had an issue with a duplicate listing, and got it fixed, and then a month later GMB support finally replied to the initial request we’d put in… and then a month later they answered again.

We’ve also seen the Twitter team send out a few questionable tweets, like saying that keywords in the description help in ranking. Some are more helpful than others, and i think that sometimes they just answer ‘off the cuff’ and don’t realize it’s bad information.

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Users need to exercise caution when taking advice from GMB support. I’ve actually written a piece detailing the questionable advice I’ve heard.

Dan Leibson (Local Search Guide): I think their support channels suck. I think there is no meaningful way to report systemic, broken things. Everything is treated like you want the secrets to their system or are trying to game the system when you just want them to fix their broken stuff. 

Advertisers get no benefit regardless of spending a ton on ads, despite the fact that they are disproportionately affected by these problems and are more trustworthy sources of reporting.

Speed and efficiency issues

Another commonly-raised issue was the speed efficiency of advice. When your GMB listing is suspended you’re likely to be losing a lot of money every day, and from my chats with the local search community, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

(It should obviously be noted that as of right now, Google has advised that GMB support is going to be slower than ever while they prioritise certain actions related to Covid-19, and social support has been entirely switched off.)

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): I had a years-long saga of trying to get Google to remove the “Dentist” category from my Local Visibility System GMB page. Why was it there? Well, as a local SEO Company, I tinker all the time, often using my own GMB page as a lab chimp.

In one experiment I changed the primary category to ‘Dentist,’ but I couldn’t change it back. I I contacted them through Twitter and email, and while the reps were helpful, after some back-and-forth they were stumped, and apparently kicked up the question to a supervisor. I never heard back. (In Google’s defence, I didn’t attempt to call them, but that’s because I didn’t have a business day to spare!)

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): GMB issues can have significant consequences for local businesses. When a listing is suspended, it can be really frustrating to get a response like:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Support channels all vary in efficiency, especially when there has been a large swath of suspensions. When these happen (and they’re happening more and more), support grinds to a halt. Last year we had an unprecedented 6-week delay in getting reinstatements getting looked at.

I’ve personally found Twitter support to have become swamped as it has become more popular and delays are occurring. You also have to DM details of the issue, which isn’t ideal when it’s a nuanced issue.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): According to those whom I talk to at Google, 90% of accounts have only one listing in them. This infers that the majority of listings that are on maps are single users with a single account. In other words, most of them are ‘mom and pop’-type businesses.

So, therefore, GMB builds things that address single account holders the most. Makes sense that support would acknowledge this, right? Heck, no! Have you ever tried to get a reinstatement completed? You get back this email telling you that they need more information, or they are not compliant, or there is a problem with the… whatever.

In the example below, they didn’t tell me the name of the business and supplied a generic response when I asked for it.

However, if you go elsewhere and submit a contact form, you get back this beautiful template that tells you the business name and address!

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): Personally, when I have an issue, I usually turn to Twitter DMs, but the support I’ve received there has been variable in terms of quality and timeliness.

It is frustrating to send a DM about a problem and then have to wait weeks to get an answer. By the time you get it, you’ve usually found a solution or the problem is no longer a problem!

Personally, I turn to an internal network of fellow GMB aficionados, and the forum, for insight. I just can’t wait two or three weeks for an answer from Twitter support. Also, if you have multiple questions about multiple accounts, it’s very hard to manage responses there.

It’s not all bad, though!

At the time, given the severe slowdown in GMB support responses, the misinformation being shared, and the backup in suspension investigations, I was fully prepared for an onslaught of rage towards the GMB support team. And while I did indeed get that in some quarters, I was really pleasantly surprised by the positive stories, understanding and empathy shown elsewhere.

Joy Hawkins (Sterling Sky): Bad advice is normally given out when users expect Google support to be able to answer questions about ranking tactics, like in this example.

Google My Business support is generally good at fixing issues with listings but there is a limit to what they’re able to do when technical issues and bugs are frequently a problem with the platform. If you’ve been told something by GMB support that you think is incorrect, it’s always fine to get a second opinion by posting on the GMB forum.

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): The support team is trying, but so often they’re completely overwhelmed by the volume of support requests that things don’t work out so well. Overall, I’ve had great experiences. You just have to wait a bit for your reply or solution.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): I’m really empathetic to folks working the GMB support channels. They’re regularly inundated with issues from all directions.

From my vantage point, Google just doesn’t allocate the resources needed to appropriately support GMB. That being said, they’ve definitely moved in the right direction. It wasn’t that long ago that support requests simply went unanswered into the Google abyss.

I’m extremely grateful for the ability to have some means to escalate issues. For example, in dealing with a particularly troublesome law firm listing suspension issue late last year, I got a response within thirty minutes that led to a rapid reinstatement:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): I really like the original ‘contact support’ form. You can give a pretty detailed report on the issue, then when you get the reply email, you can reply with additional screenshots to help the agent.

By providing the agent with all the details at once in the form, I normally get the issue resolved within 24hrs, with no ‘back-and-forth’ required.

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): My main point would be that, however frustrated one might be with lack of advice, quality of advice, or speed of advice, we need to remember that GMB is staffed by human beings who are doing their best given whatever resources or internal guidelines they have or do not have.

My tips would be to always be polite, not to be snarky, and to always thank people for their time – whether it’s Max, Flip, Brad, Liz, Mark, Dany, Zach, Matt, Tori or Jenny!

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Over the years, GMB support has evolved from being virtually non-existent to something that has become very useful for solving most types of GMB issues. Looking at the evolution of the ways that you can contact GMB support alone is a testament to the attention that the GMB product is getting and the progress that they have made.

The future of Google My Business support

While it’s hard for me, here in the spring of 2020, when nothing is as it should be or as any of us would have expected it to be, to summarise the current status of Google My Business support, I do have some closing thoughts on its future courtesy of some of those I spoke to.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): While I’m not very optimistic that it will happen, I’d like to see Google take more accountability for addressing GMB issues and providing support. Like other support contexts, it’s neither fair nor productive to attack the front-line support people. 

Instead, I’d suggest putting more pressure on Google to take Google My Business issues more seriously by allocating the necessary resources to properly support and address these issues. Lack of support is harmful to both businesses and their customers.

Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Company Guide): As is often the case with Google services, the scale of the problem must be in a way overwhelming. And while Google has been making incremental progress, it still feels like a drop in the bucket.

There has been a lot of speculation over the past year that Google is going to roll out a paid GMB service. While we all cringe at Google taking even more money from our collective pockets, if a pay model allows it to more effectively address some of the glaring problems with GMB, I imagine the majority of local businesses and agencies would hold their noses and willingly pay it.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jamie Pitman has worked in digital marketing agency for over a decade and is currently Head of Content at local SEO Company tool provider BrightLocal. He specializes in local marketing agency and the many factors that affect local search performance, from Google My Business and consumer reviews to branding, content marketing agency, and beyond.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/what-do-local-seos-really-think-of-google-my-business-support/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/618136337140367360

[scpie]

What do local SEOs really think of Google My Business support?

It’s already hard to remember a time when a local SEO Company’s priorities included having to deal with Google My Business’ various support teams across email, phone, live chat, and social media.

Earlier this year, though, it was a different story. So, inspired by serious issues with incorrect recommendations, errant listing suspensions and very long wait times for reinstatements earlier this year, I sought to find out what the local search experts (many of whom are GMB Product Experts) really thought of the quality of Google My Business’ support, and compiled the following reactions from a long list of local SEO Company pros, including Joy Hawkins, Ben Fisher, Greg Gifford, Dan Leibson, Dana DiTomaso, and more.

I have it on good authority that the quality of support isn’t likely to magically improve once the virus clears, so let’s consider this the “wayback machine” of GMB support gripes, and just hope that the future doesn’t so clearly reflect the past.

Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling will lead a Live with Search Engine Land discussion with two leaders in the local marketing agency space: Foursquare CEO David Shim and PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall. They will discuss how brands and marketers can use location intelligence as they plot a way forward at 2 p.m. ET May 15. Learn more here >>

Incorrect or misleading information and advice

One very common response from almost all sides was around the issues with incorrect information being presented as fact. While experienced SEO Companys may be able to see through the misinformation, any local business owner looking for help from GMB support runs the risk of being told to do something that either won’t help with their problem at all or will actively damage their business’ visibility.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): Phone support is a gamble: if you get someone untrained, they will destroy you with the wrong information. On the other hand, if you get someone who has some sympathy, they will not only help you but follow up to make sure all went okay.

My tip for phone support is to listen to their voice and see if it’s clear that they’re talking from a script. Interrupt them and ask them: “How are you doing?”, “What time is it there?” If they stick to the script, tell them you need to run because of an emergency or something.

I do love live chat, but it is severely understaffed. The staff they have added in the last six months or seem to be the same staff, experience-wise, as phone support.

The worst cases of misinformation I have experienced are where support is telling a user to create a new listing because of the actions of a previous manager. This problem can be overcome, but it’s really difficult and usually requires the involvement of a GMB Product Expert.

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): We avoid and dread support at GMB like it’s the DMV. It can be good for simple requests, like moving reviews or redirecting a closed page, but I pretty much never contact support. My clients occasionally  do, simply because that’s more efficient than my acting as a conduit, but that’s a big time-taker because it’s extremely tough to speak with a human at GMB.

When you do get through to someone, often there is a quasi-language barrier that leads to misunderstandings. Then there’s the conflicting advice: over the years, Google reps have claimed things like that keyword stuffing in the description helps rankings, call-tracking numbers aren’t allowed, and that clicks are a direct ranking factor.

I chalk that up to a lack of training, or a lack of clear SOPs from Google, or both. In any event, the time it takes to get help that may or may not help, and the confusion caused by well-meaning GMB support reps, often makes business owners wonder whether they’re too reliant on the “local map” and going about their local visibility all wrong.

Jason Brown (Sterling Sky): To say that the latest round of new hires is not properly trained is the understatement of the year. I know more about Google’s policies and procedures, and find myself having to train the support staff. It’s worse for the average user that doesn’t know any better.

We’re at Google’s mercy, and sadly, they don’t seem to care (at least, that’s the message that they’re conveying). I’ve had to point out countless flaws and issues when I contact support, and have had to contact another Google employee for assistance. The average user can’t do this, and so is left hanging.

Dana DiTomaso (Kick Point): The recommendations coming from official GMB support channels can definitely be misleading. For example, they have said that a listing was suspended because we updated the categories on the listing, yet egregious spam lives on.

There also seems to be a high number of suspended listings right now [this was in late February]: we have a client who has a suspended listing (one out of their several locations) with no reason given, and no response yet to our request for help.

Tom Waddington (tomwaddington.com): While I think GMB support wants to help users resolve their issues, I feel the overall priority, at least for a phone support agent, is to convince you that the issue is resolved or will be in a day or two, so that you leave positive feedback regarding your experience with them.

There is typically a survey you will be asked to complete at the end of a support call, but there have been times when my talk with support didn’t go well, the issue wasn’t resolved, and the call disconnected during the transfer to the survey.

GMB is a complex product and support agents aren’t going to have the training and experience to understand all issues. I think the desire for positive feedback along with genuinely wanting to help a user can lead to bad or incorrect advice from a support agent that is trying to placate the user.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): There seems to be a lot of inconsistency in the quality of support depending who happens to field your inquiry. Some of the GMB support folks seem knowledgeable about the platform and common issues, while others seem to lack even a basic understanding of GMB language and core concepts.

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Getting some odd advice from business support can be frustrating to businesses as well as the community, especially when said advice is broadcasted publicly: because people think it’s from Google, it must be legitimate advice.

On the contrary, business support is basically a call centre, with set procedures for set issues. They’re not in direct contact with Google My Business product managers, and equally, no single Googler knows or understands what are exact ranking factors are.

I can only surmise (having listened to countless hours of recordings from account managers for GMB listings during compliance auditing), that call handlers who feel confident with the product will offer their own advice whether they think it may help or have heard other agents offer similar advice.

Some particularly troubling pieces of misinformation I’ve heard are:

Adding keywords into your listings, shop code and labels will help your listing rank better (they won’t!)

Deleting a suspended listing and starting again will solve the suspension issue (it won’t!)

Edits made to your GMB listing will ‘reset’ the account’s authority (they won’t!)

A ‘permanently closed’ listing will go away eventually (it might not -– I have a business still showing ‘permanently closed’ after 12yrs and three different businesses at location later!)

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): Every once in a while, I’ve gotten some bad help. We had an issue with a duplicate listing, and got it fixed, and then a month later GMB support finally replied to the initial request we’d put in… and then a month later they answered again.

We’ve also seen the Twitter team send out a few questionable tweets, like saying that keywords in the description help in ranking. Some are more helpful than others, and i think that sometimes they just answer ‘off the cuff’ and don’t realize it’s bad information.

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Users need to exercise caution when taking advice from GMB support. I’ve actually written a piece detailing the questionable advice I’ve heard.

Dan Leibson (Local Search Guide): I think their support channels suck. I think there is no meaningful way to report systemic, broken things. Everything is treated like you want the secrets to their system or are trying to game the system when you just want them to fix their broken stuff. 

Advertisers get no benefit regardless of spending a ton on ads, despite the fact that they are disproportionately affected by these problems and are more trustworthy sources of reporting.

Speed and efficiency issues

Another commonly-raised issue was the speed efficiency of advice. When your GMB listing is suspended you’re likely to be losing a lot of money every day, and from my chats with the local search community, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

(It should obviously be noted that as of right now, Google has advised that GMB support is going to be slower than ever while they prioritise certain actions related to Covid-19, and social support has been entirely switched off.)

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): I had a years-long saga of trying to get Google to remove the “Dentist” category from my Local Visibility System GMB page. Why was it there? Well, as a local SEO Company, I tinker all the time, often using my own GMB page as a lab chimp.

In one experiment I changed the primary category to ‘Dentist,’ but I couldn’t change it back. I I contacted them through Twitter and email, and while the reps were helpful, after some back-and-forth they were stumped, and apparently kicked up the question to a supervisor. I never heard back. (In Google’s defence, I didn’t attempt to call them, but that’s because I didn’t have a business day to spare!)

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): GMB issues can have significant consequences for local businesses. When a listing is suspended, it can be really frustrating to get a response like:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Support channels all vary in efficiency, especially when there has been a large swath of suspensions. When these happen (and they’re happening more and more), support grinds to a halt. Last year we had an unprecedented 6-week delay in getting reinstatements getting looked at.

I’ve personally found Twitter support to have become swamped as it has become more popular and delays are occurring. You also have to DM details of the issue, which isn’t ideal when it’s a nuanced issue.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): According to those whom I talk to at Google, 90% of accounts have only one listing in them. This infers that the majority of listings that are on maps are single users with a single account. In other words, most of them are ‘mom and pop’-type businesses.

So, therefore, GMB builds things that address single account holders the most. Makes sense that support would acknowledge this, right? Heck, no! Have you ever tried to get a reinstatement completed? You get back this email telling you that they need more information, or they are not compliant, or there is a problem with the… whatever.

In the example below, they didn’t tell me the name of the business and supplied a generic response when I asked for it.

However, if you go elsewhere and submit a contact form, you get back this beautiful template that tells you the business name and address!

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): Personally, when I have an issue, I usually turn to Twitter DMs, but the support I’ve received there has been variable in terms of quality and timeliness.

It is frustrating to send a DM about a problem and then have to wait weeks to get an answer. By the time you get it, you’ve usually found a solution or the problem is no longer a problem!

Personally, I turn to an internal network of fellow GMB aficionados, and the forum, for insight. I just can’t wait two or three weeks for an answer from Twitter support. Also, if you have multiple questions about multiple accounts, it’s very hard to manage responses there.

It’s not all bad, though!

At the time, given the severe slowdown in GMB support responses, the misinformation being shared, and the backup in suspension investigations, I was fully prepared for an onslaught of rage towards the GMB support team. And while I did indeed get that in some quarters, I was really pleasantly surprised by the positive stories, understanding and empathy shown elsewhere.

Joy Hawkins (Sterling Sky): Bad advice is normally given out when users expect Google support to be able to answer questions about ranking tactics, like in this example.

Google My Business support is generally good at fixing issues with listings but there is a limit to what they’re able to do when technical issues and bugs are frequently a problem with the platform. If you’ve been told something by GMB support that you think is incorrect, it’s always fine to get a second opinion by posting on the GMB forum.

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): The support team is trying, but so often they’re completely overwhelmed by the volume of support requests that things don’t work out so well. Overall, I’ve had great experiences. You just have to wait a bit for your reply or solution.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): I’m really empathetic to folks working the GMB support channels. They’re regularly inundated with issues from all directions.

From my vantage point, Google just doesn’t allocate the resources needed to appropriately support GMB. That being said, they’ve definitely moved in the right direction. It wasn’t that long ago that support requests simply went unanswered into the Google abyss.

I’m extremely grateful for the ability to have some means to escalate issues. For example, in dealing with a particularly troublesome law firm listing suspension issue late last year, I got a response within thirty minutes that led to a rapid reinstatement:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): I really like the original ‘contact support’ form. You can give a pretty detailed report on the issue, then when you get the reply email, you can reply with additional screenshots to help the agent.

By providing the agent with all the details at once in the form, I normally get the issue resolved within 24hrs, with no ‘back-and-forth’ required.

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): My main point would be that, however frustrated one might be with lack of advice, quality of advice, or speed of advice, we need to remember that GMB is staffed by human beings who are doing their best given whatever resources or internal guidelines they have or do not have.

My tips would be to always be polite, not to be snarky, and to always thank people for their time – whether it’s Max, Flip, Brad, Liz, Mark, Dany, Zach, Matt, Tori or Jenny!

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Over the years, GMB support has evolved from being virtually non-existent to something that has become very useful for solving most types of GMB issues. Looking at the evolution of the ways that you can contact GMB support alone is a testament to the attention that the GMB product is getting and the progress that they have made.

The future of Google My Business support

While it’s hard for me, here in the spring of 2020, when nothing is as it should be or as any of us would have expected it to be, to summarise the current status of Google My Business support, I do have some closing thoughts on its future courtesy of some of those I spoke to.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): While I’m not very optimistic that it will happen, I’d like to see Google take more accountability for addressing GMB issues and providing support. Like other support contexts, it’s neither fair nor productive to attack the front-line support people. 

Instead, I’d suggest putting more pressure on Google to take Google My Business issues more seriously by allocating the necessary resources to properly support and address these issues. Lack of support is harmful to both businesses and their customers.

Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Company Guide): As is often the case with Google services, the scale of the problem must be in a way overwhelming. And while Google has been making incremental progress, it still feels like a drop in the bucket.

There has been a lot of speculation over the past year that Google is going to roll out a paid GMB service. While we all cringe at Google taking even more money from our collective pockets, if a pay model allows it to more effectively address some of the glaring problems with GMB, I imagine the majority of local businesses and agencies would hold their noses and willingly pay it.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jamie Pitman has worked in digital marketing agency for over a decade and is currently Head of Content at local SEO Company tool provider BrightLocal. He specializes in local marketing agency and the many factors that affect local search performance, from Google My Business and consumer reviews to branding, content marketing agency, and beyond.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/what-do-local-seos-really-think-of-google-my-business-support/

[laurelkrugerr]

What do local SEOs really think of Google My Business support?

It’s already hard to remember a time when a local SEO Company’s priorities included having to deal with Google My Business’ various support teams across email, phone, live chat, and social media.

Earlier this year, though, it was a different story. So, inspired by serious issues with incorrect recommendations, errant listing suspensions and very long wait times for reinstatements earlier this year, I sought to find out what the local search experts (many of whom are GMB Product Experts) really thought of the quality of Google My Business’ support, and compiled the following reactions from a long list of local SEO Company pros, including Joy Hawkins, Ben Fisher, Greg Gifford, Dan Leibson, Dana DiTomaso, and more.

I have it on good authority that the quality of support isn’t likely to magically improve once the virus clears, so let’s consider this the “wayback machine” of GMB support gripes, and just hope that the future doesn’t so clearly reflect the past.

Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling will lead a Live with Search Engine Land discussion with two leaders in the local marketing agency space: Foursquare CEO David Shim and PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall. They will discuss how brands and marketers can use location intelligence as they plot a way forward at 2 p.m. ET May 15. Learn more here >>

Incorrect or misleading information and advice

One very common response from almost all sides was around the issues with incorrect information being presented as fact. While experienced SEO Companys may be able to see through the misinformation, any local business owner looking for help from GMB support runs the risk of being told to do something that either won’t help with their problem at all or will actively damage their business’ visibility.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): Phone support is a gamble: if you get someone untrained, they will destroy you with the wrong information. On the other hand, if you get someone who has some sympathy, they will not only help you but follow up to make sure all went okay.

My tip for phone support is to listen to their voice and see if it’s clear that they’re talking from a script. Interrupt them and ask them: “How are you doing?”, “What time is it there?” If they stick to the script, tell them you need to run because of an emergency or something.

I do love live chat, but it is severely understaffed. The staff they have added in the last six months or seem to be the same staff, experience-wise, as phone support.

The worst cases of misinformation I have experienced are where support is telling a user to create a new listing because of the actions of a previous manager. This problem can be overcome, but it’s really difficult and usually requires the involvement of a GMB Product Expert.

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): We avoid and dread support at GMB like it’s the DMV. It can be good for simple requests, like moving reviews or redirecting a closed page, but I pretty much never contact support. My clients occasionally  do, simply because that’s more efficient than my acting as a conduit, but that’s a big time-taker because it’s extremely tough to speak with a human at GMB.

When you do get through to someone, often there is a quasi-language barrier that leads to misunderstandings. Then there’s the conflicting advice: over the years, Google reps have claimed things like that keyword stuffing in the description helps rankings, call-tracking numbers aren’t allowed, and that clicks are a direct ranking factor.

I chalk that up to a lack of training, or a lack of clear SOPs from Google, or both. In any event, the time it takes to get help that may or may not help, and the confusion caused by well-meaning GMB support reps, often makes business owners wonder whether they’re too reliant on the “local map” and going about their local visibility all wrong.

Jason Brown (Sterling Sky): To say that the latest round of new hires is not properly trained is the understatement of the year. I know more about Google’s policies and procedures, and find myself having to train the support staff. It’s worse for the average user that doesn’t know any better.

We’re at Google’s mercy, and sadly, they don’t seem to care (at least, that’s the message that they’re conveying). I’ve had to point out countless flaws and issues when I contact support, and have had to contact another Google employee for assistance. The average user can’t do this, and so is left hanging.

Dana DiTomaso (Kick Point): The recommendations coming from official GMB support channels can definitely be misleading. For example, they have said that a listing was suspended because we updated the categories on the listing, yet egregious spam lives on.

There also seems to be a high number of suspended listings right now [this was in late February]: we have a client who has a suspended listing (one out of their several locations) with no reason given, and no response yet to our request for help.

Tom Waddington (tomwaddington.com): While I think GMB support wants to help users resolve their issues, I feel the overall priority, at least for a phone support agent, is to convince you that the issue is resolved or will be in a day or two, so that you leave positive feedback regarding your experience with them.

There is typically a survey you will be asked to complete at the end of a support call, but there have been times when my talk with support didn’t go well, the issue wasn’t resolved, and the call disconnected during the transfer to the survey.

GMB is a complex product and support agents aren’t going to have the training and experience to understand all issues. I think the desire for positive feedback along with genuinely wanting to help a user can lead to bad or incorrect advice from a support agent that is trying to placate the user.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): There seems to be a lot of inconsistency in the quality of support depending who happens to field your inquiry. Some of the GMB support folks seem knowledgeable about the platform and common issues, while others seem to lack even a basic understanding of GMB language and core concepts.

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Getting some odd advice from business support can be frustrating to businesses as well as the community, especially when said advice is broadcasted publicly: because people think it’s from Google, it must be legitimate advice.

On the contrary, business support is basically a call centre, with set procedures for set issues. They’re not in direct contact with Google My Business product managers, and equally, no single Googler knows or understands what are exact ranking factors are.

I can only surmise (having listened to countless hours of recordings from account managers for GMB listings during compliance auditing), that call handlers who feel confident with the product will offer their own advice whether they think it may help or have heard other agents offer similar advice.

Some particularly troubling pieces of misinformation I’ve heard are:

Adding keywords into your listings, shop code and labels will help your listing rank better (they won’t!)

Deleting a suspended listing and starting again will solve the suspension issue (it won’t!)

Edits made to your GMB listing will ‘reset’ the account’s authority (they won’t!)

A ‘permanently closed’ listing will go away eventually (it might not -– I have a business still showing ‘permanently closed’ after 12yrs and three different businesses at location later!)

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): Every once in a while, I’ve gotten some bad help. We had an issue with a duplicate listing, and got it fixed, and then a month later GMB support finally replied to the initial request we’d put in… and then a month later they answered again.

We’ve also seen the Twitter team send out a few questionable tweets, like saying that keywords in the description help in ranking. Some are more helpful than others, and i think that sometimes they just answer ‘off the cuff’ and don’t realize it’s bad information.

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Users need to exercise caution when taking advice from GMB support. I’ve actually written a piece detailing the questionable advice I’ve heard.

Dan Leibson (Local Search Guide): I think their support channels suck. I think there is no meaningful way to report systemic, broken things. Everything is treated like you want the secrets to their system or are trying to game the system when you just want them to fix their broken stuff. 

Advertisers get no benefit regardless of spending a ton on ads, despite the fact that they are disproportionately affected by these problems and are more trustworthy sources of reporting.

Speed and efficiency issues

Another commonly-raised issue was the speed efficiency of advice. When your GMB listing is suspended you’re likely to be losing a lot of money every day, and from my chats with the local search community, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

(It should obviously be noted that as of right now, Google has advised that GMB support is going to be slower than ever while they prioritise certain actions related to Covid-19, and social support has been entirely switched off.)

Phil Rozek (Local Visibility System): I had a years-long saga of trying to get Google to remove the “Dentist” category from my Local Visibility System GMB page. Why was it there? Well, as a local SEO Company, I tinker all the time, often using my own GMB page as a lab chimp.

In one experiment I changed the primary category to ‘Dentist,’ but I couldn’t change it back. I I contacted them through Twitter and email, and while the reps were helpful, after some back-and-forth they were stumped, and apparently kicked up the question to a supervisor. I never heard back. (In Google’s defence, I didn’t attempt to call them, but that’s because I didn’t have a business day to spare!)

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): GMB issues can have significant consequences for local businesses. When a listing is suspended, it can be really frustrating to get a response like:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): Support channels all vary in efficiency, especially when there has been a large swath of suspensions. When these happen (and they’re happening more and more), support grinds to a halt. Last year we had an unprecedented 6-week delay in getting reinstatements getting looked at.

I’ve personally found Twitter support to have become swamped as it has become more popular and delays are occurring. You also have to DM details of the issue, which isn’t ideal when it’s a nuanced issue.

Ben Fisher (Steady Demand): According to those whom I talk to at Google, 90% of accounts have only one listing in them. This infers that the majority of listings that are on maps are single users with a single account. In other words, most of them are ‘mom and pop’-type businesses.

So, therefore, GMB builds things that address single account holders the most. Makes sense that support would acknowledge this, right? Heck, no! Have you ever tried to get a reinstatement completed? You get back this email telling you that they need more information, or they are not compliant, or there is a problem with the… whatever.

In the example below, they didn’t tell me the name of the business and supplied a generic response when I asked for it.

However, if you go elsewhere and submit a contact form, you get back this beautiful template that tells you the business name and address!

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): Personally, when I have an issue, I usually turn to Twitter DMs, but the support I’ve received there has been variable in terms of quality and timeliness.

It is frustrating to send a DM about a problem and then have to wait weeks to get an answer. By the time you get it, you’ve usually found a solution or the problem is no longer a problem!

Personally, I turn to an internal network of fellow GMB aficionados, and the forum, for insight. I just can’t wait two or three weeks for an answer from Twitter support. Also, if you have multiple questions about multiple accounts, it’s very hard to manage responses there.

It’s not all bad, though!

At the time, given the severe slowdown in GMB support responses, the misinformation being shared, and the backup in suspension investigations, I was fully prepared for an onslaught of rage towards the GMB support team. And while I did indeed get that in some quarters, I was really pleasantly surprised by the positive stories, understanding and empathy shown elsewhere.

Joy Hawkins (Sterling Sky): Bad advice is normally given out when users expect Google support to be able to answer questions about ranking tactics, like in this example.

Google My Business support is generally good at fixing issues with listings but there is a limit to what they’re able to do when technical issues and bugs are frequently a problem with the platform. If you’ve been told something by GMB support that you think is incorrect, it’s always fine to get a second opinion by posting on the GMB forum.

Greg Gifford (SearchLab): The support team is trying, but so often they’re completely overwhelmed by the volume of support requests that things don’t work out so well. Overall, I’ve had great experiences. You just have to wait a bit for your reply or solution.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): I’m really empathetic to folks working the GMB support channels. They’re regularly inundated with issues from all directions.

From my vantage point, Google just doesn’t allocate the resources needed to appropriately support GMB. That being said, they’ve definitely moved in the right direction. It wasn’t that long ago that support requests simply went unanswered into the Google abyss.

I’m extremely grateful for the ability to have some means to escalate issues. For example, in dealing with a particularly troublesome law firm listing suspension issue late last year, I got a response within thirty minutes that led to a rapid reinstatement:

Tim Capper (Online Ownership): I really like the original ‘contact support’ form. You can give a pretty detailed report on the issue, then when you get the reply email, you can reply with additional screenshots to help the agent.

By providing the agent with all the details at once in the form, I normally get the issue resolved within 24hrs, with no ‘back-and-forth’ required.

Claire Carlile (Claire Carlile marketing agency): My main point would be that, however frustrated one might be with lack of advice, quality of advice, or speed of advice, we need to remember that GMB is staffed by human beings who are doing their best given whatever resources or internal guidelines they have or do not have.

My tips would be to always be polite, not to be snarky, and to always thank people for their time – whether it’s Max, Flip, Brad, Liz, Mark, Dany, Zach, Matt, Tori or Jenny!

Colan Nielsen (Sterling Sky): Over the years, GMB support has evolved from being virtually non-existent to something that has become very useful for solving most types of GMB issues. Looking at the evolution of the ways that you can contact GMB support alone is a testament to the attention that the GMB product is getting and the progress that they have made.

The future of Google My Business support

While it’s hard for me, here in the spring of 2020, when nothing is as it should be or as any of us would have expected it to be, to summarise the current status of Google My Business support, I do have some closing thoughts on its future courtesy of some of those I spoke to.

Gyi Tsakalakis (AttorneySync): While I’m not very optimistic that it will happen, I’d like to see Google take more accountability for addressing GMB issues and providing support. Like other support contexts, it’s neither fair nor productive to attack the front-line support people. 

Instead, I’d suggest putting more pressure on Google to take Google My Business issues more seriously by allocating the necessary resources to properly support and address these issues. Lack of support is harmful to both businesses and their customers.

Andrew Shotland (Local SEO Company Guide): As is often the case with Google services, the scale of the problem must be in a way overwhelming. And while Google has been making incremental progress, it still feels like a drop in the bucket.

There has been a lot of speculation over the past year that Google is going to roll out a paid GMB service. While we all cringe at Google taking even more money from our collective pockets, if a pay model allows it to more effectively address some of the glaring problems with GMB, I imagine the majority of local businesses and agencies would hold their noses and willingly pay it.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jamie Pitman has worked in digital marketing agency for over a decade and is currently Head of Content at local SEO Company tool provider BrightLocal. He specializes in local marketing agency and the many factors that affect local search performance, from Google My Business and consumer reviews to branding, content marketing agency, and beyond.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/what-do-local-seos-really-think-of-google-my-business-support/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/05/what-do-local-seos-really-think-of.html

[lindyhunt]

15 Common Logical Fallacies and How to Spot Them

Logical fallacies -- those logical gaps that invalidate arguments -- aren't always easy to spot.

While some come in the form of loud, glaring inconsistencies, others can easily fly under the radar, sneaking into everyday meetings and conversations undetected.

Having an understanding of these basic logical fallacies can help you more confidently parse the arguments and claims you participate in and witness on a daily basis -- separating fact from sharply dressed fiction.

Our list is by no means an exhaustive guide to every formal and informal fallacy, but it should help you build better arguments and identify logical missteps. 

15 Common Logical Fallacies

1) The Straw Man Fallacy

This fallacy occurs when your opponent over-simplifies or misrepresents your argument (i.e., setting up a "straw man") to make it easier to attack or refute. Instead of fully addressing your actual argument, speakers relying on this fallacy present a superficially similar -- but ultimately not equal -- version of your real stance, helping them create the illusion of easily defeating you.

Example:

John: I think we should hire someone to redesign our website.

Lola: You're saying we should throw our money away on external resources instead of building up our in-house design team? That's going to hurt our company in the long run.

2) The Bandwagon Fallacy

Just because a significant population of people believe a proposition is true, doesn't automatically make it true. Popularity alone is not enough to validate an argument, though it's often used as a standalone justification of validity. Arguments in this style don't take into account whether or not the population validating the argument is actually qualified to do so, or if contrary evidence exists.

While most of us expect to see bandwagon arguments in advertising (e.g., "three out of four people think X brand toothpaste cleans teeth best"), this fallacy can easily sneak it's way into everyday meetings and conversations.

Example:

The majority of people believe advertisers should spend more money on billboards, so billboards are objectively the best form of advertisement.

3) The Appeal to Authority Fallacy

While appeals to authority are by no means always fallacious, they can quickly become dangerous when you rely too heavily on the opinion of a single person -- especially if that person is attempting to validate something outside of their expertise.

Getting an authority figure to back your proposition can be a powerful addition to an existing argument, but it can't be the pillar your entire argument rests on. Just because someone in a position of power believes something to be true, doesn't make it true.

Example:

Despite the fact that our Q4 numbers are much lower than usual, we should push forward using the same strategy because our CEO Barbara says this is the best approach.

4) The False Dilemma Fallacy

This common fallacy misleads by presenting complex issues in terms of two inherently opposed sides. Instead of acknowledging that most (if not all) issues can be thought of on a spectrum of possibilities and stances, the false dilemma fallacy asserts that there are only two mutually exclusive outcomes.

This fallacy is particularly problematic because it can lend false credence to extreme stances, ignoring opportunities for compromise or chances to re-frame the issue in a new way.

Example:

We can either agree with Barbara's plan, or just let the project fail. There is no other option.

5) The Hasty Generalization Fallacy

This fallacy occurs when someone draws expansive conclusions based on inadequate or insufficient evidence. In other words, they jump to conclusions about the validity of a proposition with some -- but not enough -- evidence to back it up, and overlook potential counterarguments. 

Example:

Two members of my team have become more engaged employees after taking public speaking classes. That proves we should have mandatory public speaking classes for the whole company to improve employee engagement.

6) The Slothful Induction Fallacy

Slothful induction is the exact inverse of the hasty generalization fallacy above. This fallacy occurs when sufficient logical evidence strongly indicates a particular conclusion is true, but someone fails to acknowledge it, instead attributing the outcome to coincidence or something unrelated entirely.

Example:

Even though every project Brad has managed in the last two years has run way behind schedule, I still think we can chalk it up to unfortunate circumstances, not his project management skills.

7) The Correlation/Causation Fallacy

If two things appear to be correlated, this doesn't necessarily indicate that one of those things irrefutably caused the other thing. This might seem like an obvious fallacy to spot, but it can be challenging to catch in practice -- particularly when you really want to find a correlation between two points of data to prove your point.

Example:

Our blog views were down in April. We also changed the color of our blog header in April. This means that changing the color of the blog header led to less views in April.

8) The Anecdotal Evidence Fallacy

In place of logical evidence, this fallacy substitutes examples from someone's personal experience. Arguments that rely heavily on anecdotal evidence tend to overlook the fact that one (possibly isolated) example can't stand alone as definitive proof of a greater premise.

Example:

One of our clients doubled their conversions after changing all their landing page text to bright red. Therefore, changing all text to red is a proven way to double conversions.

9) The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

This fallacy gets its colorful name from an anecdote about a Texan who fires his gun at a barn wall, and then proceeds to paint a target around the closest cluster of bullet holes. He then points at the bullet-riddled target as evidence of his expert marksmanship.

Speakers who rely on the Texas sharpshooter fallacy tend to cherry-pick data clusters based on a predetermined conclusion. Instead of letting a full spectrum of evidence lead them to a logical conclusion, they find patterns and correlations in support of their goals, and ignore evidence that contradicts them or suggests the clusters weren't actually statistically significant. 

Example:

Lisa sold her first startup to an influential tech company, so she must be a successful entrepreneur. (She ignores the fact that four of her startups have failed since then.)

10) The Middle Ground Fallacy

This fallacy assumes that a compromise between two extreme conflicting points is always true. Arguments of this style ignore the possibility that one or both of the extremes could be completely true or false -- rendering any form of compromise between the two invalid as well.

Example:

Lola thinks the best way to improve conversions is to redesign the entire company website, but John is firmly against making any changes to the website. Therefore, the best approach is to redesign some portions of the website.

11) The Burden of Proof Fallacy

If a person claims that X is true, it is their responsibility to provide evidence in support of that assertion. It is invalid to claim that X is true until someone else can prove that X is not true. Similarly, it is also invalid to claim that X is true because it's impossible to prove that X is false. In other words, just because there is no evidence presented against something, that doesn't automatically make that thing true.

Example:

Barbara believes the marketing agency's office is haunted, since no one has ever proven that it isn't haunted.

12) The Personal Incredulity Fallacy

If you have difficulty understanding how or why something is true, that doesn't automatically mean the thing in question is false. A personal or collective lack of understanding isn't enough to render a claim invalid.

Example:

I don't understand how redesigning our website resulted in more conversions, so there must have been another factor at play. 

13) The "No True Scotsman" Fallacy

Often used to protect assertions that rely on universal generalizations (like "all Marketers love pie") this fallacy inaccurately deflects counterexamples to a claim by changing the positioning or conditions of the original claim to exclude the counterexample.

In other words, instead of acknolwedging that a counterexample to their original claim exists, the speaker ammends the terms of the claim. In the example below, when Barabara presents a valid counterexample to John's claim, John changes the terms of his claim to exclude Barbara's counterexample.

Example:

John: No marketer would ever put two call-to-actions on a single landing page.

Barbara: Lola, a marketer, actually found great success putting two call-to-actions on a single landing page for our last campaign. 

John: Well, no true marketer would put two call-to-actions on a single landing page, so Lola must not be a true marketer. 

14) The Tu quoque Fallacy

The tu quoque fallacy (Latin for "you also") is an invalid attempt to discredit an opponent by answering criticism with criticism -- but never actually presenting a counterargument to the original disputed claim. 

In the example below, Lola makes a claim. Instead of presenting evidence against Lola's claim, John levels a claim against Lola. This attack doesn't actually help John succeed in proving Lola wrong, since he doesn't address her original claim in any capacity.

Example:

Lola: I don't think John would be a good fit to manage this project, because he doesn't have a lot of experience with project management.

John: But you don't have a lot of experience in project management either!

15) The Fallacy Fallacy

Here's something vital to keep in mind when sniffing out fallacies: just because someone's argument relies on a fallacy doesn't necessarily mean that their claim is inherently untrue.

Making a fallacy-riddled claim doesn't automatically invalidate the premise of the argument -- it just means the argument doesn't actually validate their premise. In other words, their argument sucks, but they aren't necessarily wrong. 

Example: 

John's argument in favor of redesigning the company website clearly relied heavily on cherry-picked statistics in support of his claim, so Lola decided that redesigning the website must not be a good decision.  

[junker-town]

5 reasons the Cavaliers are trash right now, ranked in order of urgency

Cleveland’s lost to some bad teams, but its problems are fixable. It’s only a matter of time.

With a 3-5 record and no answer in sight, the Cavaliers find themselves in an awkward position. We all wrote them into at least the Eastern Conference Finals and probably the NBA Finals before the season, but Cleveland has never looked this bad this early with LeBron James on the roster.

After winning their first two games, the Cavs lost five of their next six: Ls to the Magic, the Nets, the Knicks, the Pelicans, and the Indiana friggin’ Pacers.

Of those five losses, four of them have been by at least 17 points, with 21- and 22-point blowout losses to Orlando (at home!) and New Orleans. Any time you lose by 21 points, you’ve got to pass the sticks.

Those are not teams the defending conference champs should lose to, and we’re not gonna chalk it up to playing down to the competition.

The Cavs have a few tangible issues that can be fixed. Some start with their leader, others are more widespread.

Here’s what’s wrong with Cleveland so early into the year:

1. What the point guard?

LeBron James is the point god. Let’s be clear about that.

But James has been at his best with a sidekick available to take the offensive pressure off him in spots. With Isaiah Thomas still nursing a hip injury and Derrick Rose finding his way in the latest chapter of his career, he has had no such luxury.

We knew Cleveland wasn’t going to be 100 percent until their All-Star point guard/Brinks truck slides-wearing scorer returns to action. But the Cavaliers haven’t even been close to good.

Rose needs to be better. Yes, he’s averaging 15 points on better than 50 percent shooting from the field, but he’s been inconsistent defensively and is averaging fewer than two assists per game.

Rose played excellent defense on Kyrie Irving in the final moments of the season opener:

Derrick Rose with the surprisingly great defense on Kyrie in the clutch http://pic.twitter.com/xA7Bv4CzAf

— The Render (@TheRenderNBA) October 18, 2017

But he hasn’t attacked every defensive possession the same way. That, and he’s only shooting 20 percent from downtown. When LeBron’s on the court, the worst thing you can be is a liability from three-point range.

Bottom line: Isaiah Thomas, please come back.

Will this keep up?

This is a lingering problem until IT4 returns. And even when he returns, he still has to be hidden on defense. It’s a byproduct of his stature, not his willingness to defend.

But what Thomas’s return will bring is All-Star caliber firepower to the backcourt, something Cleveland traded away and hasn’t yet reclaimed.

Let’s give this a 9 out of 10 on the urgency scale.

2. They aren’t trying... yet

LeBron James is the leader of this team. Yes, Tyronn Lue is head coach, but this is LeBron’s team, and there’s no question about that.

And as the leader of this team, it’s LeBron’s duty to make sure his guys show up and compete with fervor every night.

Here are videos of a team not competing with fervor:

Dark days for the #Cavs defense. No rotation from anybody http://pic.twitter.com/15a3qCyGyk

— BBALLBREAKDOWN (@bballbreakdown) November 2, 2017

Another transition score vs Cavs. Their defense might be worse this year than last http://pic.twitter.com/CCVTbYJD2m

— BBALLBREAKDOWN (@bballbreakdown) November 2, 2017

And here is video of LeBron, not complaining about his team not competing with fervor:

LeBron doesn’t want to hear it about the Cavs lackadaisical defense and play thus far. http://pic.twitter.com/0QdbQILwgS

— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) October 30, 2017

Sure, it’s early in the regular season. And sure, the Cavaliers will be much, much better in the playoffs than they are right now.

But Cleveland had similar defensive woes last season: they were a bottom 20 defensive team as recently as March, and those struggles trickled right into the postseason. Even though the Cavaliers almost swept through the Eastern Conference playoff picture, they were still not a great defensive team. They just managed to score enough that it didn’t matter.

They couldn’t do that against the Warriors, though, and ended up getting run through in the NBA Finals. If the Cavaliers don’t want a repeat of last year, they need to nip some of these issues in the bud early on. And that starts at the top.

Will it keep up?

Absolutely not. It’s all fun and games until LeBron gets mad, and nothing will make LeBron more upset than a lax approach to the game he takes serious. For now, the energy isn’t there. If that energy isn’t there in December, January or early February, LeBron will take out his second hat: the GM.

3. Dwyane Wade’s getting up there

And not in a good way, either. Wade is 35 years old and turns 36 in January. He’s averaging 7.7 points per game on a career-low 41 percent shooing. And his arrival moved Smith to the bench, only for Wade to volunteer to lead the second unit when his stint as a starter didn’t pan out.

Wade still has moments where he flashes his past brilliance:

Dwyane Wade's still got it. http://pic.twitter.com/1OSV6gvsBf

— Dime on UPROXX (@DimeUPROXX) October 29, 2017

But for the most part, he’s been a shell of the Hall of Fame player most know him to be:

Dwyane Wade can't shake off Frank Ntilikina's defense http://pic.twitter.com/nrRgnrip5L

— The Render (@TheRenderNBA) October 30, 2017

Wade’s defense hasn’t been any better, and how could you expect it to be? He’s in his mid-30s chasing around guys in their mid-20s.

Wade’s another guy who will raise his game when it matters most. Playoff Wade has always out-shined regular season Wade. It’s the stuff the greats are made of.

But if regular season Wade is only giving you 7.7 points on abominable field goal percentages while getting ripped up by Frank Ntilikina and ole’ing on the other end, it’s fair to question just how good Playoff Wade will be when it matters.

Bottom line: the Cavs need him to be better. LeBron needs him to be better.

Will this keep up?

Probably. At the end of the day, Father Time is undefeated, and Wade isn’t exempt from his wrath. While he likely won’t average 7.7 points all season long, Wade isn’t the same player he was during his prime in Miami. And that’s OK.

He’ll still have his moments of brilliance and hopefully some of those moments come in crunch time when it matters. Let’s give this a 7 out of 10 on the urgency scale.

4. Chemistry takes time

Eight new players is nothing to sneeze at, especially on a championship team that essentially took a stick of dynamite, lit the fuse, stuck it into its core, and watched it explode in the form of a Kyrie Irving trade. And without Thomas to fill that gap, the Cavs are left with debris until his return.

These things take time, and with the shortened training camp and preseason, the Cavaliers are learning on the fly. Playing with LeBron doesn’t make life much easier. Running with The King is unlike any other offense these guys have played in.

It doesn’t help that Ty Lue messed with the starting lineup early in the season, either.

He moved Tristan Thompson to the bench, Kevin Love to the center and Jae Crowder into the starting lineup with Rose filling in for an injured Isaiah Thomas. He began the season with Wade starting over J.R. Smith.

Then, the Wade experiment went south, so Lue put Smith back into the starting lineup. Then Rose got hurt, so James was moved to full-time point guard. Then Thompson was re-inserted into the starting lineup at center, and now he’s out for a month with a calf injury.

There have been way too many adjustments to the starting 5 for a team that has been to the Finals in each of the past three seasons. Much of that has to do with Thomas’s injury and the lack of a legitimate starting point guard, but Smith, LeBron, Love, and Thompson were four of the five starters who got Cleveland to the Finals year after year with regularity.

Bottom line: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Will this keep up?

Chemistry doesn’t form overnight. These things take time, especially when adding eight new players to the fold. But the Cavs’ chemistry will directly impact their success on the floor, and until they build it, they’ll have to talent their way to victories.

Without Isaiah Thomas, though, Cleveland really only has LeBron and Kevin Love to rely on for the offensive output. And when teams load up defensively on LeBron, and the chemistry isn’t there, his shooters won’t be ready.

Chemistry will develop at some point, that’s a given. But if it doesn’t come sooner than later, the Cavaliers could have some issues down the road. Let’s give this an 8.5 on the urgency scale, knowing how much it matters, but acknowledging sooner or later, it will come.

5. LeBron admits he has to be better

In Cleveland’s loss to Indiana, James coughed the ball up eight times. It was the second time this season he had that many turnovers. Through eight games, he’s averaging 4.5 giveaways a night.

LeBron admitted to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin he couldn’t continue to be as careless with the ball.

"Eight for myself, that's way too many," he said. "You know, [you accept] the three or four range, but you double that, it's not good ingredients for your team to be successful. So, I'll take [responsibility for] that for sure. I have the ball in my hands a lot, so I have to be very careful with my decision-making. So, I take full responsibility for all our turnovers tonight because it starts with me."

LeBron admitted after the first game that he was out of shape due to an ankle injury in training camp. He’s played 37 minutes a game to work his way back into tip-top condition.

James is averaging near a triple double on the season: 25.9 points, 8.9 assists and seven rebounds per game to be exact. But he has to — and will — be even better if he wants to demand excellence from his teammates. It was easy to say it’s only October, but it’s November now. It’s time to tighten up.

Will this keep up?

Nah. LeBron James is in the conversation as one of the greatest of all-time specifically because this does not keep up. He will turn it on, as he always does, and push his team to the promised land. On the urgency scale, this is about a negative-14 out of 10. That’s because LeBron knows what he wants, and that’s a championship. And the only way he’s getting one is if he sets the standard.

Even still, it’s only November

Cleveland has only played eight games. Yes, they have only won three of them, but the odds the Cavaliers finish 31-51 are slim-to-none.

History suggests Cleveland will be fine, especially once Thomas heals up and makes his return.

Three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and LeBron James in the NBA Finals. The King has been to the league’s biggest stage in each of the past seven seasons. Nobody else has run away in the East while the Cavaliers are struggling.

But LeBron doesn’t want to just make it to the Finals, he wants to win it all. And if he wants to win it all, he needs to tighten up his team — and that includes himself.

[barbosaasouza]

Review: PGA Tour 2K21 (Nintendo Switch)

If you’re looking to hit the virtual links, PGA Tour 2K21 mostly delivers. Despite some unfortunate bugs, this title still offers addictive fun.

While the Nintendo Switch is home to some great arcade and non-traditional golf games, PGA Tour 2K21 is the rare simulation on the hybrid console. I’ve been a series fan since PGA Tour 96 (on 3DO), even if my golf experiences on the last few Nintendo systems have been via Wii Sports or with Mario teeing off. Thankfully, this latest PGA entry takes me back while still moving forward.

True, it’s missing some of the features I remember, like practicing any hole and gimmes. The course fly-bys too, although those may be a relic of mid-’90s TV-style presentations. But it also has some of my favorite courses like TPC River Highlands in Connecticut, and TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas. The former has beautiful views overlooking the CT River and a famously tough final hole with a narrow fairway flanked by bunkers. The latter, a stadium course with great mountain views, has the desert looking better than ever. 

All told, you can choose from 15 available (and quite diverse) courses. The 11 Pros are slightly lower than I would have expected, but it’s the course count that will keep you busy. You can even tweak settings for the time of day and weather in local matches, though competing against pros is TOUR play only.

Want an even higher course count? You can design your own, which is both an overwhelming and exciting thought. I’ve only dabbled in this, so I can’t comment much beyond my intrigue. But I appreciate how the options are separated by layout, terrain, and theme to start. I may never fully dive into land sculpting, but it’s there should I ever choose to give the game extra legs. PGA 2K21 is for those who’ve always wanted to consult on course transformations.

I’m getting ahead of myself anyway because there are features that will attract your attention early. MYPLAYER might be a grammatically challenged mode, but its customization options are deep. Some may be for naught though, as a pair of shades hide my crow’s feet. Nonetheless, I appreciate the feature as I’ve taken digital Trev into the Career Mode.

Advancing past pros may seem intimidating to less seasoned players, but helpful tutorials teach how to start and improve play. I admit the user interface could be faster and friendlier – it’s a bit overly complicated trying to fine-tune with precision – but practice makes perfect. The opening tutorial will get you ready to start your career, as you aim to become the FedExCup Champion. As you grow as a golfer throughout the season, you’ll attract rivals and contract sponsors. 

In between, why not check out the online community? None of my friends own this game, so I was unable to set up a private match. Which is a shame, as playing with strangers essentially means going against existing leaderboard scores as I couldn’t find anyone online for head to head. It’s not a quick process, and I haven’t been able to find a way of learning the difficulty setting before joining. So I doubt I’ll be going online much. All the same, I’m creating a casual online society, Purely Trev’s Club, with no membership fee, so Pure Nintendo amateur golfers, look me up.

As you gain experience, you’ll appreciate how you can adjust the skill level. There’s a fair amount of choice in how you can do this. For instance, as someone used to the classic 3-click swing meter, some of these modern alterations – flicking the Joy-Con sticks – aren’t superior. But, even tweaking them to more forgiving settings, I’ve still ensured a good challenge by upping CPU difficulty, boosting wind, disabling Pro Vision settings, etc. These nuances help make learning each course oh so satisfying, while also raising XP for bragging rights. They also keep the continual temptation of the risk-reward element (trying to reach a Par 5 green in two, for instance) tempered by the desire for pinpoint accuracy.

Now it’s time to talk about the presentation, which is a mixed bag. The audio side is mostly well done, with ambient effects, occasional music, and commentary that grows on you. Only the voice of John McCarthy suffers, often being too soft to hear against the play-by-play and analyst commentators. He does fare better during local matches.

Visually, PGA Tour 2K21 can look quite lovely at times. But there are inconsistencies with lighting, and shadows move like time-lapse photography. Cutscenes have some stutter. Sometimes golfers will appear completely black like Shadow Link. Such variances remind me I’m playing on Switch, usually in handheld mode.

The biggest audio-visual blunder in my mind is the lack of crowds. You’ll see the clubhouse, gallery seats, cars, etc. But it’s all empty; there isn’t even any crowd audio to add insult to injury. I can grant a pass to the lack of visual crowds as a Switch sacrifice, but the lack of audio too? Unacceptable when I was spoiled by it 25 years ago. I must rightly call out such a choice as a triple bogey move.

Most other complaints are less significant. The number of legalese pages gives a poor first impression, but you won’t see them after the first day. While an actual game can be slow to start, once you’re ready to tee off, the game moves at a good pace. Seeing Ian Poulter more than Justin Thomas (the cover star) is odd, but more of a comical curiosity than anything. Not being able to record footage is a bummer, but you can save replays. Occasionally, replays freeze on a character’s face, so the shot isn’t viewable, but repeat viewings let you decide the angles. Spending up to $49.99 to buy in-game currency is eye-rolling, but easily ignored. Not having a physical version on day one is a mistake, but it’s arriving (better late than never) in September.

One complaint that’s not the least bit minor is the game closing “because an error occurred.” If it only happened once, I could chalk it up to the odd instance, but it’s not a solo situation by any means. So be warned, the bugs in PGA Tour 2K21 aren’t limited to aesthetics alone.

All the same, PGA Tour 2K21 presents many rewarding moments: having a rough start, only to rally on the backside for victory; learning I won a count-back to break my first-place tie; changing from Stoke to Match play so that a crummy couple holes that (under other conditions) would end my game let me remain competitive. And many more that space won’t allow me to mention.

As someone unlikely to play most of these courses in real-life, I relish the chance to visit them in video-game form. From driving off the tee, reading the green, and everything in between, this title offers a lot in spite of itself. If you’re someone who enjoys golf sims, please don’t let some careless glitches prevent you from checking out PGA Tour 2K21 on the Nintendo Switch. With practice, even a real-life duffer like myself can rack up his share of eagles

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