It makes me hear phones ringing at your local search marketing agency, with aspiring chefs and restaurateurs on the other end of the line, ready to bring experts aboard in the "sometimes difficult" quest for online visibility. Is your team ready for these clients? How comfortable do you feel talking restaurant Local SEO when such calls come in? When was the last time you took a broad survey of what's really ranking in this specialized industry? Allow me to be your prep cook today, and I'll dice up "best restaurant" local packs for major cities in all 50 US states. We'll julienne Google Posts usage, rough chop DA, make chiffonade of reviews, owner responses, categories, and a host of other ingredients to determine which characteristics are shared by establishments winning this most superlative of local search phrases.

If you observe Lent, which began this past week, this mightn't be the best time to read stories about excellent California wine or new restaurants with elaborate menus. On the other hand, you'll need to live vicariously -- and plan for all the food and drink you'll be able to enjoy again soon. So we have a story about the lovely Cabernets of the Alexander Valley and a new restaurant featuring Middle Eastern-ish cuisine. Of course, if you're not the sort of person who gives up anything, that's all the more reason to head to Kismet, the subject of Jonathan Gold's latest review. Although, really, who gives up vegetable-intensive small plates or plates of crispy rice anyway?

U .S. military officers watched grainy video feeds at a small operations center in Baghdad on Tuesday as Predator drones tracked and killed three reputed Islamic State leaders -- one after another -- in the offensive on Mosul. The targeted air strikes were due in large part to intelligence extracted from cellphones, computer hard drives, memory cards and hand-written ledgers recovered from battlefields and towns taken from Islamic State fighters. Recently captured intelligence also has proved useful in providing clues to detecting potential terrorist plots, tracking foreign fighters and identifying Islamic State supporters around the globe, U.S. officials said. The largest data trove was recovered when U.S.-backed Syrian rebel forces recaptured Manbij, an Islamic State stronghold in northern Syria, in mid-August. Intelligence agencies recovered more than 120,000 documents, nearly 1,200 devices and more than 20 terabytes of digital information, officials said. Islamic State militants came early in the morning, riding atop trucks that lumbered into this northern Iraqi oil town.