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Dominating Google Maps- The Most Effective Spam Ever And What You Can Learn From It

Local Search Hound — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:23:49 +0000

If you take a look at the image above at a Google Maps result you will find listings for 4 companies that don’t really exist, at least not with that name or at the address listed. I called and asked if they were licensed, they said no. All 4 phone numbers were answered by a person whose voice sounded remarkably similar to the others. The address doesn’t exist; And they dominate the search result for Garage Doors Danbury CT.

What’s amazing is that similar listings dominate the Maps’ search results for this query in the cities that surround Danbury as well; Plus hundreds of cities in Connecticut, New Jersey, California and their now moving into Pennsylvania.

With location being such an important factor how could a company rank in the Local 7-pack in so many cities across the country. Here’s how it works.

1. Set up a listing in Google Maps at an address that does not currently exist. For example, where there is a 60 Main St., Anytown and a 64 Main St, Anytown and these represent real addresses. Set up your listing at 62 Main St.

2. Name your business USKeyword-City, or Keyword-Pro-city or Ficticious name of person plus keyword for the personal touch.

3. Build citations to your listing. These listings contain citations from Yahoo Local, Hotfrog, Guidespot, local.newstimelive.com.

4. Create a blog on one of the sites for the purpose of creating a perfect citation for thousands of listings.

5. Link build

6. Give your new listing a sparkling review

7. Now find an adjacent town and repeat. Again and again and again again.

A search in Hotfrog for Overhead Garage Door CT turned up 88 separate listings belonging to this ring.

A search in Yahoo local for garage doors in Danbury returns their listings 16 times out of the first 30 results.

In Google Maps they take 4 spots in the Lucky 7-pack, and in the Other Places You Might Like on their Places Page their other listings show up as your only choices. Dominant.

Why Does It Work?

Because location is such a big part of the ranking algorithm in Maps the key to their success is the fact that they have a “location” in each of the cities.

They are obviously creating new listings which Google will allow you to verify by phone most of the time. Theoretically, they could be using the bulk upload system. I don’t use the bulk upload system so I’m not sure whether that’s possible or not. If you are… please let us know in the comments.

Once established, these “locations” need only trust to start ranking in Google Maps. This trust is established with citations and backlinks. As mentioned earlier they have only a few citations on each listing, so it got me wondering… Does it help that they use made up addresses?

Addresses that have never pointed at any other listing or place on the web? Is that why they chose a non-existent address, rather than a business park or an office building like many spammers of the past? Is their a sort of “citation-certainty” in the algorithm that takes into account not only the volume of citations but the percentage that point at a single listing.

Perhaps an 11th extreme local search optimization technique: New Construction.

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How Much Google Traffic Comes From Mobile Devices – A Quick Study

Local Search Hound — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:01:46 +0000

Most studies I’ve read regarding mobile seem to focus on statistics that may lead to conclusions that overstate the importance of mobile. I wanted to put together a study that would show the actual traffic from mobile devices to a local website in an industry that was traditionally driven by yellow page advertising. My goal is to create a resource that a small business owner making the transition from yellow pages advertising could use to put mobile search in perspective. A change to Google Adwords platform helped.

Back in February, Google added a feature that allows you to segment Adwords traffic by “device.”
It’s an option on the segment drop down menu… here’s a screenshot:

I decided to study this to determine how important mobile was to my clients. I wanted to find the answer to 2 questions:

What percentage of traffic came from mobile?
Does the percentage of traffic from Mobile vary in different parts of the country?

All of the companies in the study are of the same type, garage door companies, which provides an almost unique opportunity to study mobile patterns across different parts of the country without having to factor in for the type of company.

Here is a map that shows the traffic from Adwords on a smart phone as a percentage of all Adwords traffic to each of 7 garage door companies from around the Country.

Mobile Traffic By City For Garage Door Companies

This data was taken from February 16, 2010 – April 16, 2010. Impressions, rather than clicks were used, to eliminate click thru rate as a variable. I felt like this made a better comparison and each of these businesses had at least 3,000 impressions during this time interval.

San Jose 3.27%
Chicago 2.63%
Denver 2.38%
Pittsburgh 2.13%
Nashville 1.84%
Akron 1.43%
Westchester 1.10%

Conclusions And Areas For Further Study

Not a big surprise that San Jose, which falls in Silicon Valley is number 1
The small data set follows the general pattern that people in bigger cities (more population) are going to use mobile devices a higher percentage of the time
Westchester County NY surprised me. This is a high income area which I would thought would lead to higher mobile usage. Interestingly, Westchester County is the oldest population in this set. Could be that age trumps income when it comes to selecting a small business on a mobile handset.
For different types of businesses Mobile is going to be more or less important but overall it’s likely to be less than 5% of overall traffic. Again, this is a small study but Adwords and Google Analytics both provide easy segmentation of mobile traffic. Look in your analytics or call your PPC provider to see what percentage of your traffic is mobile.
Tip: Ask your PPC provider what your average position is when segmented for Mobile. I shoot for top 3 in computer devices and top 2 in Mobile (Google shows 2 ads on top on Mobil devices)

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Pay Per Call – The Conversation

Local Search Hound — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:42:13 +0000

Pay Per Call brings about a conversation like no other in local advertising. Small business owners, who normally deal in broad strokes, all of sudden are fighting tooth and nail each time their phone rings. And Yext, a technology that was created to alleviate this, by using transcription technology, may have amplified it judging by the comment section of Local Seo Guide’s old post on Yext which has spontaneously transformed into a Yext Review portal.

I would suggest heading over there and reading this if you have considered buying or selling advertising on a pay per call basis. It could save you lots of time and aggravation later on.

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