Too Many Donuts for the Google MapMaker Anti-Spam Cops?
Google’s finest aren’t throwing the book at spammers. I recently asked Dan Austin – a longtime buster-upper of MapMaker and other spam – to help with a project. One of my client’s competitors was...
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What’s Missing from the Google Places Quality Guidelines?
The rules governing Google Places (or “Google My Business”) have never quite done their job. They’re thick, short on examples, and wide open to (mis)interpretation. The Google Places Quality...
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Lipstick on a Pig: Google Places “Report a Problem” Requests Now Rejected...
A couple days ago, Colan of Imprezzio Marketing reported that the next-to-useless “Report a problem” feature in Google Places had been revamped. I was excited. After all, Google made it easier to...
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Interview with Bryan Seely: Google Maps Spam Fighter and Ethical Hacker for...
Try to guess which one of these things isn’t true of Bryan Seely: Created fake Google Places pages for the FBI and Secret Service, listed phone numbers he controlled, intercepted their phone calls,...
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I Wrote a Google Review of My Own Business. What Did Google Do?
Update 2/14/17: Google eventually removed the review, after keeping it up for 3-4 days. I suspect that, as I requested, enough readers flagged it down. Just to see if Google would do anything. Thanks...
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You Offer 10 Services and Serve 10 Cities, So You Create 100 City Pages? Why...
You want to rank for a bunch of keywords in a bunch of cities. You don’t have a physical location in each city – which makes you ineligible for Google My Business pages in all those places – but you...
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25 Hard Truths of Google Reviews
Google reviews can help your business for obvious reasons: They’re mighty visible in the Google Maps search results, and searchers pay attention to the reviews (and sometimes believe them). The big...
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Photos Now Allowed in Google Maps Spam-Reporting Feature
Pull up a Google My Business page that shouldn’t be on the map, click the “Suggest an edit” link, and you’ll see a new feature: the ability to upload a photo as evidence to back up your request. You...
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What Kinds of “Contacts at Google” Can Local SEO Companies Have?
Some local SEO companies tout “contacts” at Google who can straighten out problems (like competitors’ spam or a penalty you think you’ve received). Sometimes that suggestion is plain untrue, other...
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Scraping Gray SEO Barnacles off the Local Spam Flotilla
“Barnacle” SEO, or the process of getting a page other than a page on your site to rank well in Google’s local organic search results, can be a great way to grab extra local visibility. If your...
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