Reporting Fake Local Places Listings Help

No one can help? Is this in the wrong forum?

@tigerbait....seem pretty heated. I don't really think there is much you can do. I would target some other keywords or try and rank organically.

Best of luck.

I don't believe in Hats. (White hat or Black hat)

I believe in what marketing channels work and levels of aggressiveness and risk. If you don't want to play their game, don't. It's not about being fair. It's about taking over the market.

You don't think Google is like, "Well, we have 70% search marketshare... we should back off and not monopolize the market so that Bing and Yahoo! can get their fair share of visitors too".

Nope.

If you want to keep, you just might have to play that game. Just know there are risks in being aggressiveness, so you need to protect yourself.

Art of War.

Found this on the "Google and Your Business" Google Products forum:

If you see a search result listing which appears to be fake you can report it through the Edit business details link and choose the appropriate option - Other and explain the problem

You'll actually get two reports. The only one that matters is the Action Taken report, which usually comes a few days to a few weeks after the initial report.

Tip #1: Use Other for the reason, rather than Place doesn't exist or is Private, or Place is Closed. You don't want to close the listing, you want to remove it. If you mark it for anything than the Other reason, a bug in Google Places can cause the listing to appear as Closed in Map Maker (where the report will show up).

Tip #2: Leave a detailed comment. Why is this spam? What reasons? Create shortlinks to websites that will help the reviewer reading the report sort it out. Locksmith licensing databases? Street view shows a different business? Any evidence you can compile (make it as short but as detailed as possible, preferably one paragraph or less).

Tip #3: Expect that no action will be taken. This can be for two reasons:
1) They don't believe you (a thorough investigation wasn't made);
2) They are unable to remove it for technical reasons (basically, there's a bug in the listing that prevents it from being deleted). It will be filed away for future action.
3) Backlog of reports, in which case you'll never get a report. Happened multiple times.

Tip #4: Try at least once more, if the first Action Taken (click on the link) report fails.

Tip #5: Wipe them all out in one sitting, star the locations so they show up on My Maps so that you can keep track of your progress.

Local listings are full of Fakes ... always have been. I'm afraid your site's in the lap of the almighty Google.

I stopped doing SEO long ago. You can't run a business when you always have to rely on third party = Google.

Hi
I am having the same problem. I have been trying to sell seo services to locksmiths. I know of only 2 in my town. Yahoo shows 73. There are 71 BOGUS listings. I will check Google tonight. This is very frustrating. One disgusted Florist has put together a very well thought out, reasearched website. floristdetective.com
Any suggestions other than giving up would be appreciated.
Joe

Thanks laird for sharing such valuable information.

Unfortunately, fake listings DO get through and Google seems to take anything but consistent action on such things. You hear stories of them making Google-life a living hell for some legit business, and then you hear stories of them completely ignoring obvious problems like the one above.

In the end, you have to decide how you're going to run your business. I dare say that if you make such decisions based on outside factors with little regard for your own ethics / internal compass, you're going to be about as stable as a wood shack in a tornado.

A good rule I learned years ago is to know your values and base your decisions on those.

Also consider that just being in the top 7 pack doesn't mean they're getting business. There are many ways to close more business than them... more reviews, a better converting website / business description, better photos.

There are definitely things you can do to purposefully HURT their rankings, and probably do a very thorough job of it, too, but I would wonder about the legalities of such a thing. You may find such tactics all over the internet, but I wouldn't recommend them.

Going through something similar right now. Seems there is like twenty incorrect listings of our companies places/maps/local blah blah floating around all with different numbers that are disconnected.

I have attempted to claim these listings and change the information (read telephone number) but am fearful that this is just going to make alot of work when all these damn cards come in mail to verify info...

Just have them sent to the attention of different people to help sort listings with similar addresses and avoid confusion. Lots of work, yes, but you need to do it. You should also be very quick and diligent in tracking down poor citations. Fixing those will help prevent other bad listings from popping up. Be sure NAP is nice and clear on the website, too. Doing the NAP in schema and submitting geositemaps to webmaster tools helps, too.

Try and do all that in a short period of time, too. Don't take months getting it done.

I guess Google will react faster if several people report the spam entries.

I think in general it is a bad method of doing business and as a fact duplicate listings do not enhance the search quality - so Google should fix this faster and more effective.

yeah, you're probably looking at several months before things get cleaned up. Google updates lag and it will take time to see corrected listings on some of the bigger sites if you don't have claimed listings.

I would also make sure you submit your business details to Localeze as they serve up info to many other sites.

If you email me or PM I would be happy to help you report them after close inspection of actually them being in violation of TOS thanks,
Nathan

It's also possible these are not Dentists scamming but Google scraping. Don't know without seeing. But those 2 sites usually only show up if the Dentist does not have his own site and Place page. SO if those listings were old listings with an old phone OR if doctorbase has a paid service that uses a tracking # then G would scrape those and since different number, put up a new page.

I'd be curious to see if they were claimed. If not then it's just a bad scrape.

There are several different ways to report bad listings. The way I do it they usually get fixed or pulled within a week. Unless they are bad enough I take right to G management, then it's pretty much instant but I only do that in special cases, where warranted.

You could also post the links and my forum and after researching if needed I'll escalate right to Google management or tell you other things to try. I'm kinda curious to see the listings and SERP anyway.