Is the quality of traffic different today for local businesses?

Local pack ads grew from 1% to 22% of tracked searches. Joy Hawkins, owner and president of Sterling Sky, brings nearly two decades studying local results and over 1,000 local SEO tests to explain why traffic and lead quality no longer move together. The conversation covers redefining lead qualification through call tracking and duration thresholds, the growing penalty risk of scaled content and link building for small businesses, and building authority through reviews, awards, and social signals rather than links. Hawkins also makes the data-backed case for YouTube over LLM optimization and the physical location requirements behind local pack visibility. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.