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5 Top Enterprise Local SEO Challenges & How To Solve Them

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5 Top Enterprise Local SEO Challenges & How To Solve Them

Local SEO can be challenging for enterprise brands because it means knowing how to do “national” SEO, Google Business Profile, and then learning how Google handles your priority search queries in various markets.

That means there are an infinite number of challenges in local SEO for enterprise search marketers. So what are the most common challenges in enterprise local SEO? Let’s find out.

1. Knowing When To Prioritize Local vs. National SEO

One of the biggest challenges enterprises face is knowing when to focus on a “local” SEO strategy instead of a “national” SEO strategy and vice versa.

This is understandable as it’s not always immediately apparent if your priorities are better served by one or the other. It can be challenging to tell if your target top keywords have local intent.

But, it’s vital to success with your overall strategy because it will significantly impact how well your initiatives serve your business goals.

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Understanding which terms Google regards as local can help you develop your keyword strategy and determine how to approach and support your SEO investment.

You could lose a lot of traffic due to poor site design or keyword strategy.

Understanding Local Search Intent

So, what do we mean by local search intent, exactly?

By understanding search intent, you know what kind of features will appear in search results and what content you should prioritize.

For this discussion, there are four main types of search intents to focus on:

  1. Search queries with national intent.
  2. Search queries with semi-national.
  3. Search queries with local intent.
  4. Search queries with hyper-local intent.

You can tell what type of intent your target search queries fall into by the features shown on the SERPs, for example:

Queries With National Search Intent

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SERPs feature no state/city-specific pages and no map pack (example).

Screenshot from search for [newspaper article], Google, September 2022

The fact that there are no “local’ results in this SERP probably means Google sees zero local intent for these queries.

The minute a large portion of searchers starts to redo this query with location info such as “Pleasanton newspaper article,” the SERPs will likely shift to results that have some local results, which brings us to…

Queries With Semi-National Search Intent

SERPs feature no state/city-specific pages but a map pack (example).

SERPs feature no state/city-specific pages but a map pack.Screenshot from search for [bank], Google, September 2022

Semi-national queries like [bank] might include a map pack because there’s an equal amount of local and national clicks. This could be because some users are looking for a bank branch close to them, but others are looking for the bank’s main home page.

Queries With Local Search Intent

SERPs feature partial to full state/city-specific pages and a map pack (example).

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SERPs feature partial to full state/city-specific pages and a map pack.Screenshot from search for [plumber], Google, September 2022

For a term like [plumber], Google will feature a map pack of nearby plumbers, and the remainder of the page one results are filled with location pages. Google predicts that the user intends to find a plumber near their location.

Queries With Hyper-Local Search Intent

Hyper-local keywords are where the searcher’s location is the most significant and significantly impacts SERP results (example).

Queries With Hyper-Local Search IntentScreenshot from search for [Auto insurance near me], Google, September 2022

In the case of hyper-local intent queries, the distance between the user and business matters most. You can see that the map pack dominates the SERP real estate for this query. So, Google likely thinks [Auto insurance near me] requires hyper-local results to be helpful for the user.

How To Identify Search Intent

  1. Analyze current SERP outcomes across different geos.
  2. Examine the SERP for a map element.
  3. Check for state or city-specific pages.
  4. Review the titles and URLs.
  5. Analyze consistency and make an intent determination.

How To Build A Strategy For Different Types Of Search Intent

National Strategy

Nationally focused strategies will need a ton of content and authority.

Your main website should be where you invest the most of your SEO budget if you’ve determined that your target keywords are in queries with little to no local intent. This will help you get that ranking by generating backlinks.

Semi-Local Strategy

Semi-local keywords will require the bulk of focus to build the content and authority of your main site with one additional point of focus. Because semi-local keywords generate a map pack, you must optimize your Google Business Profile listings.

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Local Strategy

Your site structure will become significantly more important if you’ve determined that Google treats your keyword as local. You can increase the volume of searches if you create a directory of state or city pages.

Hyper-Local Strategy

When your priority keywords are hyper-local, creating a directory of state and city-level pages is preferable and optimizing them for near-me keywords with special location pages is preferable.

The layers will likely look different depending on your vertical, but broadly, they might resemble this:

  • Locator index page.
  • State page.
  • City page.
  • Location page.

2. Having A Single Source Of Truth For Location Data

With the advent of local listings management companies such as Yext and Uberall, this is no longer a problem.

However, we still run into multi-location businesses that don’t have a “single source of truth” for all of their location information.

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If you don’t have this yet, put it in place.

3. Optimizing Store Locators

Many brands outsource their store locators to third-party vendors. There’s nothing wrong with this in theory, but there are a few ways we have seen this go wrong:

Search-Only Store Locators

For SEO, an effective store locator should be a basic linked set of state, city, and location pages that a bot or user can easily click around to get to every page. But many brands often build their store locators a locator page with a search box to find your location.

A few years ago, we looked at the locators for the top 100 U.S. retailers and found those with search-only locators ranked for ~50% fewer keywords than those with a linkable state > city > location architecture.

So, make sure your locator architecture is built this way.

Location Page Content

Often, brands budget for building a locator on their site but leave nothing for the content.

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There’s nothing wrong with a basic location page with the business name, address, phone number, product/service categories, etc. But a location page with unique, beefed-up content relevant to the location and topics you are trying to rank for can improve SEO performance.

This is where your location managers can come in handy. We often see successful brands use surveys of their location managers to get unique local content.

Other sources might include local customer reviews, syndicated local point of interest data, and popular products in the specific market.

Priority Categories

Most ecommerce queries show local results near the top of the SERPs these days.

We often see brands winning in Local Packs linking from their location pages to their key categories.

Think of it as signaling to Google that your locations are relevant for these categories.

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4. Google Business Profile Management And Optimization

Google Business Profile (GBP) really shouldn’t be a challenge – I mean, it’s just a simple set of yellow pages listings for your locations – but there are a million ways it can go wrong for businesses.

Here are just a few challenges and opportunities with GBP.

Beware Of Duplicate Listings

Amazingly, duplicate listings are still a thing with GBP, but I just talked to a service area business that was having problems ranking. It was pretty easy to see they had duplicate GBP listings.

The minute they deleted the duplicate listings, their rankings went up by 15 positions for the main keyword they were targeting. So, keep an eye on those.

Monitor Your GBP listings

Your GBP listings are in a constant state of flux. Users are adding photos and reviews.

Google can overwrite your data if it trusts data from another party more than it trusts you.

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GBP is not a “set it and forget it” thing. Create a system to monitor changes to your GBP pages regularly.

While you can see many changes via the GBP Dashboard, it won’t catch everything. That’s one of the reasons we built this free, open-source tool to monitor image changes to your GBP.

Scale GBP Posts

GBP Posts are short announcements you can attach to your GBP. These can be an inexpensive way to generate high-converting visits to your site. Posts can include text, photos, or videos.

The challenge we often see is that businesses are often not set up to produce content for each location. If you want to do GBP Posts for multiple locations, implement a system for creating GBP-ready marketing collateral for new promotions so they can be posted.

This often involves creating a GBP-sized version (400 x 300) of approved marketing images and copy for GBP as part of each new promotion.

You’ll also want to ensure you tag links from your GBP posts with tracking parameters to measure performance.

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5. Building A Local Search Presence For SABs And Marketplaces

Not every local enterprise brand has locations.

There are plenty of local marketplace brands like Yelp, DoorDash, and Zillow, and service area businesses (SABs) like plumbers and roofers that target local search queries but are not eligible to appear in Local Packs. This is because they have no physical locations in their target markets.

And this means they are missing out on many potential clicks and revenue.

This won’t work for every brand, but for those with a suitable business model, creating a “store within a store” at a partner brand’s location is a great way to get additional local pack visibility.

FedEx OnSite services located in Walgreens is a good example of how this can work:

Building A Local Search Presence For SABs And MarketplacesScreenshot from Google search, September 2022

And, of course, if the value of the leads is high enough, you may want to consider opening up physical locations in certain areas to try to rank well in the Local Packs.

As I said at the top, there are an infinite number of local SEO tactics enterprise brands can deploy.

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As you deploy new tactics, make sure you test, measure, and iterate like any other marketing channel.

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Featured Image: GaudiLab/Shutterstock



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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?

In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.

Price: Free

Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.

Most common reporting use case

GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.

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As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:

  • Total Impressions
  • Average CTR
  • Average Position
gsc-performance-overviewgsc-performance-overview

Tip

If you’ve signed up for AWT using Google Search Console, you can view your GSC performance data in Ahrefs by clicking “GSC Performance” from the main dashboard.

But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.

organic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-yearorganic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-year

Favorite feature

One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.

google-search-console-indexed-pages-reportgoogle-search-console-indexed-pages-report

If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.

Price: Free

Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.

Most common reporting use case

Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.

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Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.

Such as:

  • Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
  • Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
  • Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
  • Social media platformsFacebook, Reddit, and Twitter
  • Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage

Sidenote.

If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks

google-looker-studio-partner-connectorsgoogle-looker-studio-partner-connectors

Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:

ahrefs-seo-audit-dashboardahrefs-seo-audit-dashboard
Ahrefs Google Looker Studio integration

With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.

Favorite feature

The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.

Price: Free for 500 URLs

Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.

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Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.

screaming-frog-user-interface-screenshotscreaming-frog-user-interface-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.

Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.

Favorite feature

Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs. 

If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.

screaming-frog-api-accessscreaming-frog-api-access

Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.

Price: Free

Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.

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when-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustrationwhen-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustration

For example, you could use our:

Most common reporting use case

One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.

With AWT, you can:

  • Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
  • See the performance of your website
  • Check all known backlinks for your website
ahrefs-overviewahrefs-overview

Favorite feature

Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.

If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).

Price: Free

Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.

Most common reporting use case

For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.

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ahrefs-seo-toolbar-overviewahrefs-seo-toolbar-overview

With the free version, you get the following features:

  • On-page SEO report
  • Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
  • Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
  • SERP positions
  • Country changer for SERP

The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.

If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.

severity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbarseverity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Favorite feature

The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.

indexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbarindexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.

Price: Free

Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.

google-analytics-screenshotgoogle-analytics-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.

Favorite feature

You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.

Price: Free

Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.

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Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.

google-slides-screenshotgoogle-slides-screenshot

Most common reporting use cases

The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.

Favorite feature

One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.

share-video-chat-google-slidesshare-video-chat-google-slides

This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.

Price: Free

Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.

Most common reporting use cases

Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.

Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.

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Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.

bbq-google-trends-graphbbq-google-trends-graph

Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.

Favorite feature

Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.

google-trends-comparison-examplegoogle-trends-comparison-example

Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.

You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.

regional-trends-via-google-trendsregional-trends-via-google-trends

Final thoughts

These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.

The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.

Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.

These findings include:

  • When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
  • 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
  • Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.

Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.

As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.

High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects

The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.

The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.

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The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.

This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.

The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.

Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results

With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.

When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.

Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.

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New Competition From Unexpected Sources

The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.

On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.

An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.

Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search

The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.

Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:

“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”

Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.

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Methodology & Limitations

To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.

The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.

While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.

Why We Care

The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.

Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.

SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.

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As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.

How This Could Help You

While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.

Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:

  • As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
  • Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
  • Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
  • Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
  • Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.

Looking Ahead

While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.

By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.


Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

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