As an in-house SEO for Marriott.com for the past six years, I've been an avid SEOmoz blog reader, yet this is my first post. I've chosen to cover something near and dear to my heart – Google Maps. While there have been countless blog posts and articles written about the accuracy and accountability of Google Maps, I want to add another voice to the conversation – the one from the business community, which relies on Google to deliver accurate information to our customers.
In short, the visible failures of Google search results have had such an unwanted impact on Marriott's business—one of the top 10 eCommerce sites on the web—that I felt compelled to reach out to the SEO community and to Google directly.
Google Maps has had spectacular, and very public, failures before. They've been documented in painstaking detail, from the Google Maps-based border disputes between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and Spain and Morocco, to the disappearance of the town of Sunrise, Florida. This is not an attempt to pile on, but it is a call to action: Google has a responsibility to ensure local data is accurate because local data is the bridge between search and the real world. And when information is wrong in local, it leads to real world consequences.
Organic Web Search vs. Local
My plea: Treat organic search results and local search results differently, because users do.
Organic search results are the world's information, indexed and ranked by Google's algorithm. There is an understanding that the information found here runs the entire spectrum of possibilities, from low quality information to high quality, accurate to inaccurate, articles written by the New York Times, and blog posts by illogical ranters. People take this digital data with a grain of salt and apply their own critical thinking to differentiate the good from the bad.
Local data and local search results, however, are data that users rely on to be 100% accurate. It could be that they've been taught from a young age that maps are accurate. Think back to when you'd use an Atlas or Encyclopedia (I know...what's that?), and you'd analyze the specific details of a topographical map, or the exact scale used to measure distances. The thought never crossed your mind that much of this data could simply be wrong. Even in more recent digital history, when people enter in an address in their car's GPS unit, they don't assume it will be wrong some of the time.
I assume that Google allows for a certain amount of data inaccuracy as they "bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas", and scale those products up, but in my mind that just doesn't work in local.
People expect perfect data in maps. It's as simple as that.
Marriott's Google Campaign
So how does this relate to Marriott? Well just like any other brick and mortar business, Marriott relies on Google Maps to accurately display information about our 3,500+ hotels around the world to our customers.
To ensure accurate data is being provided to Google from the source, we centrally manage Google Places at the corporate level via a monthly bulk feed to Google Places, but often this is not enough to guarantee accuracy. I've seen every inaccuracy you can think of...some of which are detailed below. I'm sure you all have seen many of the same.
Google Maps Inaccuracies
1. Problem: Incorrect map location
Consequences: Customers physically go to the wrong location, sometimes miles away. In some cases they go to a competing hotel or an unrelated business. And sometimes it's a high crime area of a city. In the end, Marriott is responsible for irate customers, lost business, and putting customers in dangerous areas.
Example: Residence Inn Pittsburgh Airport Corapolis
2. Problem: Incorrect phone numbers
Consequences: I've seen phone numbers reach hotel general manager's private cell phones and land-lines, competing hotels, tour operators, unrelated businesses, and in the worst examples, random phone numbers of the general public.
Example: I wanted to showcase a live example of a number that reaches someone's home phone line, but didn't want them to get any more Marriott-related calls, so here's the Boston Marriott Copley Place's phone number that actually reaches Dollar Car Rental.
3. Problem: Google creates "Merged Listings" where Place Pages for two different hotels are combined, leading to unbounded confusion.
Consequences: Customers looking for information for one hotel find it for another, or can't find anything at all for their specific hotel. This can lead to wrong phone calls, reviews not related to the actual hotel they are researching, linking to the wrong content online, or having customers physically go to the wrong hotel.
Example: Cologne Marriott and Cologne Renaissance hotel information merged
4. Problem: Countries that don't support Place Pages still have listings
Consequences: There are various countries in which Marriott has a hotel presence, yet Place Pages are not supported. In these instances the hotel data that we provide to Google is rejected, and official Place Pages are not created.
While official Place Pages don't exist in these unsupported countries, much of the time hotels still have listings that appear in Google Maps - most likely automated.
These auto-generated listings frequently have errors with their data, link to competitors or third party websites, or are located miles away from the true hotel location. Even worse, we have no editorial control over these listings, so can't easily edit or remove them.
Its okay that Place Pages are not supported in every country – but rejecting Marriott data, and then auto-generating incorrect listings, seems counter intuitive and leads to a poor user experience.
Example: JW Marriott Costa Rica
5. Problem: Ghost Listings: We are correctly providing hotel information to Google Places, but the listing does not exist for some reason, or is stuck in "Pending" status limbo, for unspecified reasons.
Consequences: Frustrated customers get more frustrated looking for an invisible hotel.
Example: It's hard to show an example of something that's not showing up!
Google Place Pages in Universal Search Results – Oct. 2010
As we know, Google released a major shakeup in their search results in October 2010, which gave Place Pages more prominent visibility directly in main search results. Place Pages no longer existed as a separate entity from the organic listings (using the 3, 7 or 10 pack lists), but were instead merged with the natural results that Google found to be relevant. At that point, not only were mistake-riddled Place Pages MORE visible, but the pairing of organic result with Place Pages opened up a whole new can of worms.
Here's an example of hybrid listing inaccuracies (organic + places). The algorithm that combines natural listings with "relevant" Place Pages is frequently wrong. People trust it anyway.
Example: [Abilene Hotels] leads to an organic listing for the Fairfield Inn & Suites Abilene, which is incorrectly merged with the Courtyard Abilene's Place Page content.
Appeal to Enterprise SEOs
So this is our experience with local. I'd love to hear from SEOs in other industries who manage local search efforts, and specifically Google Maps, for enterprise level campaigns. Some general questions are:
- Are you seeing similar errors? If so, which industries are you in (travel, retail, health, etc.)?
- What model or structure do you use? Do you rely on your individual business units to create and manage their own Google Place Pages, or centrally manage it at the corporate level?
- How do you resolve these errors at the business level?
- What would you recommend to Google to improve their mapping product and the quality of local results in general?
Appeal to Google
As Google has stated, their #1 priority is "providing the best user experience possible". The same principles that improve the experience for Google users improve the experience of Marriott customers on Google – they are one and the same. But in the current environment the customers that have come to rely on Google Maps for accurate information are led astray. The way that Google addresses local data, versus how they address organic search quality, MUST be different. I realize it's easier said than done, but here are some suggestions on how I think the product can be improved:
1. Open up the Google Maps black box and assign businesses Google Maps account managers. Let us speak to product experts within the company. A product that promotes data which must be accurate should have open communication with the data owners. While Place Pages is not a monetized product like PPC (yet!), it contains downstream revenue for Google, via paid placements in Maps, Tags, Android and soon to be coupon content. Working with businesses in this space is just good business in itself.
2. Review the local algorithm because the current one is broken. Crawling and indexing local data from around the web is perfectly fine, but there needs to be a more rigorous verification process to actually display information.
3. Review the local algorithm, part 2...specifically data clustering. I realize the goal is to make the most "robust" local listing as possible, so you cluster data from multiple sources. But if a business has claimed its listings, why continue to add data from other sources? If a business claims each of their Place Pages, stop "clustering" data to their listings which they don't approve of, and that they can't edit or remove. Much of it is wrong anyway, so it doesn't lead to improved user experience.
4. Review the local algorithm, part 3….specifically the algorithm that creates organic +Place page hybrid listings. It doesn't work most of the time.
5. Don't allow for community-based, wiki style edits. While I love Wikipedia, the accuracy of its data can be hit or miss. Local doesn't have that luxury. Allowing for the community to add and edit local information does not lead to improved quality of content, it leads to inaccurate and hijacked listings. If you do allow this, then cultivate and incentivize a community of dedicated editors like Wikipedia has.
6. Less automation, more manual optimization. Yes I realize you're not in the business of manual anything, but the current automated process leads to mistakes only human intelligence can decipher and fix. In line with comment #1, it's just good business to treat the local product with more respect, because in the end it opens up new relationships with businesses, and a different revenue stream than simply PPC.
Hi Jeff,
Great post. There are many issues I would like to bring to Google's doorstep as well, but I will focus on your concerns not mine. You're absolutely correct that Google's system is not perfect and does need some major improvements, especially in the case of enterprise level management or in my case with Doctors & Dentists Google creates duplicate listings for every Dr in the practice (Very annoying, but I said I wouldn't focus on my issues).
Here are a few ideas to start off with.
1st. What are you doing to manage your business listing data across the web (Not just on Google)?
It sounds like to me that one of your major issues is an inconsistency of data related to your listings N.A.P. (Name, Address, Phone #). Making sure your N.A.P. matches across all web properties is a tedious time consuming job, so first make sure the major data providers have your information correct (Localeze, InfoUsa, & Axciom).
2nd. Spreadsheets - Document every (At minimum the priority sites) incorrect listings and fix them.
3rd. KML Sitempas - To address the incorrect marker location and give some additional "juice" to Google's trust factors, create a KML sitemaps that give the exact latitude & longitude of the listing location (You can also go in and manually adjust the marker location from Google places account).
Those are the first ideas that come to mind.
Hope it helps and good luck!
Kevin
Kevin,
I would love to hear about what you do with these maps.google.com dr listings. They are across the board in my verticals. And i report them to google and they never respond.
Thanks for the feedback Kevin! I'd be curious to hear more about the multiple listings created for doctors/dentists in the same practice, as we have similiar questions as they relate to bar/restaurant/spas etc. located within a hotel.
Re: point 1, I agree that citations should be consistent across the web. The strange thing is that we actually do ensure this by utilizing one data source that feeds online mapping products, as well as submitting the same data to local citation builders...which makes it more frustrating.
In terms of the 2nd point - we are trying to address as many of these open issues at once, but the frustrating part is that we can't fix a lot of them ourselves - we are reliant on Google to make the tweaks on their end. I love the KML sitemap solution too...will definitely look more into that.
great info guys, google need a site for maping, I has been tried that technique.
Kevin:
I feel your pain with the multiple docs quandary.
The advise I was been given by a Google Boost rep (formerly known as Boost, I guess) is to list the practice name then colon and then the doctor's name (Practice Name: Dr. So Andso) for each provider at the clinic.
But this is not consistent with Google's directions to have one listing per physical address. It also would seem to dilute the impact of reviews if they are spread across multiple Place pages. What has been your experience?
Kelly
Jeff, great article. I agree 100% with everything. I work in-house for a provider of care/nursing homes, with over 1,000 listings to manage, and Google is a major headache - albeit a headache partly borne of seeing it's immense potential.
Despite the new gadgets and functions Google keeps churning out for Local (Hotpot, Boost, apps etc), they are failing to do the thing that would benefit the customer most - provide support and data for advertisers. Of course i would say that as an advertiser, but the fact is that people are using Google to find information. If they instead end up 20 miles down the road from where they want to be, is that helping the customer? Of course not.
All we'd ask for is:
- Analytics integration (or at least a report export function, FFS!!)
- Dedicated support teams, with a clear process for escalation of issues
- Greater advertiser control (the ability to remove false categories and de-merge listings, when verified)
That, surely, is not too much to ask? We, and many other organisations, would throw money into Local advertising if we could guarantee the quality of the system. Unfortunately, as it currently stands, I can't realistically advise companies to invest at any particularly substantial level.
PS. One of our care homes is now listed as a 'hotel', owing to a merge. Let me know if Marriot are interested in buying it...;)
best post of the month
This is a great post and great conversation. I've actually never used the Bulk Upload feature but have only heard about how problematic it is.
We have about 200 businesses as clients that are all much smaller than a Marriott Hotel. For each one of our clients we spend about an average of 1 hour on optimizing/claiming their Places Listing and maybe another .5 hours cleaning up rogue inaccuracies/discrepancies - on average. Sometimes it can take much longer. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes.
I would imagine that any single Marriott property would take much longer than this, and knowing the importance of each hotel's listing on Google - each Places listing deserves that kind of attention. (at least 1 hour each = 3500 hours) Every Marriott I've ever stayed at is a major operation grossing in the Millions, right? So rather than blaming Google for not having a perfect bulk upload system I would suggest giving each of your locations ample time to manually optimize each listing, then go exploring the problems that might be causing merged listings, wrong phone numbers, etc...
And why would you re-submit the same hotel monthly if the NAP does not change?
I would never simply do a bulk upload for any of our clients. I wouldn't trust it. With so much more at stake - why would Marriott do this? My guess is that Marriott is suffering from the same affliction that Google is suffering from - a lack of "attention to detail". We are all working with a flawed Google Places/Maps. Short cuts don't work for anyone that I know of.
Good luck!
Jeff, thanks for submitting this article to YouMoz. It is exceptionally detailed and so well put together. It mirrors the problems I see day-to-day in the small local business world. Fascinating to look at the scale of this on the big business level.
I think those merging errors are particularly indicative of a lack of sophistication in Google's algo. Not being able to tell the difference between the Cologne Marriott and Cologne Renaissance hotel (what, because they both have the town name Cologne in them?) is hardly acceptable, and while there could be other signals causing the merge, it looks like this issue of town names being used by more than one business is truly problematic for your client.
Many, many people are blogging about the issues you've covered here, but few have organized them into such a clean and compelling presentation. Way to go!
Trying to correct the data problems with Google is a band-aid. Fix it at the source with proper NAP that comes through InfoUSA, Acxiom, and other providers that feed into Google. There are several services that do this- not great, but it's something.
Consider your Facebook strategy, too-- Facebook Places is going to be quite important with the rise of mobile, so you'll want to get your bulk uploads there, too.
Looking forward to hearing what others are doing here. Great knowledge being shared here!
Excellent post on one of the Google's weaker areas. But we need to understand that Google is a successful business enterprise and introduces its features toward opening new revenue generating doors. Google may have such bugs even with some intention. If you need immediate fix from Google for your business, contacting through Paid search team is one of the options if you spend more in Google Adwords.
My Google AdWords team have never been able to help with our Google Places listings, nor can they direct us to someone who can. They are completely separate. I have had success calling about Google Tags - and asking about Places that way; 1-800-838-7971, https://www.google.com/local/add/tagSplashPage ...but the reps have not been extremely knowledgeable.
As a Local SEO now working almost exclusively with hotels I understand your concerns. However, in cases where the clustering of data has caused problems we have been able to identify the cause and correct it. Unfortunately as I went through your examples it looks like they have been corrected on Google, but here were a couple of observations...
Residence Inn Pittsburgh Airport Corapolis: I now see they correct place marker on Google Maps, but the address in Google Places and the Marriott website has been changed to Park Lane Drive. I'm not sure if Park Lane Rd was an error in your post or if correcting the address to Park Lane Drive resolved the problem for you. We often see hotels with addresses Google can't recognize (I-10 Connector Rd for example). This causes numerous problems for them until it is corrected.
Boston Marriott Copley Place: In this case not only is the Dollar Rent-A-Car in question inside the hotel, therefore sharing the same address, but its unclaimed Google Places listing has Marriott Copley Place in the name - "Dollar Rent a Car: Marriot At Copley Place". I suggest that you work with your tennant to claim that listing and remove "Marriott at Copley Place" from the name. It is better put in the description or in additional details. That should help resolve problems in the future.
Our biggest concern is with your bulk uploads. We work with hotel properties who are investing a lot of energy in legitimatily working to optimize their Google Places listing and improve their ranking. Each time a Brand like Marriott does a bulk upload it overwrites their information with the generic information provided by the brand. We scramble to reclaim the listings and correct all of the chaos the brand has caused.
Maybe you should save your bulk uploads for just the data service providers. Or just upload changed properties when you do. It is consistently proven that simply claiming a listing has no impact on local search ranking. If you feed your property data to trusted information sources that information will show up on Google. So what value does your bulk upload to Google provide?
Thanks for the feedback, some good thoughts about the Copley Place listing. Re: our strategy about a bulk feed; we do this so that we can ensure all 3,700 hotels have Place Pages, and that there is at least 1 trusted data source that we manage feeding Google. Some hotels are better than others at utilizing online touchpoints, so a bulk feed allows us to cover all bases. Additionally Google has told us that our feed and listings claimed at the individual hotel level can work together to provide an accurate listing, although we have not always seen that to be the case.
Thanks for the feedback; I'd love to have a richer discussion off-line. I understand your point, still have some questions that may be best handled outside this forum.
I haven't seen this from Marriott, but Hilton's tactics approach traffic hijacking. Their demands that Google Places listings point to the brand sites seems to signify their belief that, given the prominence of local results in hotel SERPS, the only way they can drive traffic is through the local listings of their properties.
You can reach me on Twitter at @Matt_Grant or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattgrant
Thanks!
I missed this last week - great stuff here, Jeff. It's an important point that sometimes bad information is worse than NO information. Google tends to err on the side of all information being good. They also want to solve everything with the algorithm(s), and it's too clear at times that that's not about quality, it's about money. Customer service reps cost too much, and writing code is cheaper. That huge hole in Google's philosophy is much clearer in Google Maps and on the paid search side.
I definitely agree with that sentiment Pete....some products need more of that human touch than others. Hopefully this post helps promote that idea!
Great post Jeff!
I´m from Costa Rica and I know how hard is to manage a Local places when Google don’t support Place Pages listings.
Google´s quality search results are going badly since the Universal Search. I think they should be focus on more relevant organic results and as you said, try the local as a different because users DO.
But how hard is when you´re from small countries like mine, and really need to give your customer the best information you can when they search on Google.
On my experience I try to post comments, photos, videos, etc. on other big sites like TripAdvisor, Flickr, YouTube, local blogs; looking to catch something from the Universal Search results instead the organic listings. This action won´t fix the Google problems, but helps customers to get a better description of the places and the right direction, telephone numbers, etc.
When Google open the possibility to our countries for local places, it will be easy to take the right data. And don’t forget Bing; they have better mapping services J
These issues are certainly compounded in smaller countries that dont support Place Pages. I understand that countries have different level of maps support, but then there needs to be more safegaurds in place until they are supported. We are using Google Map Maker as an alternative in these countries...not sure if you have tried that. BTW...I was born in Costa Rica. Nice to hear from another tico SEO!
Hi,
First I want to say congrats on working in the hotel industry I have been working on a very large worldwide hotel group recently and I know how competitive this niche can be, especially for local/organic =)
Good post I share the problem too I work on several places accounts where we deal with 100's to 1000s of Google places listings. I know exactly what you mean by problems with phone numbers and wrong data been shown by Google. I have seen several instances where Google had created a duplicant copy of a listing with the wrong number and some one not realted to the busines is been called or even a competitor at worst.
I also find the bulk upload form to be very poor and provide not the correct level of detail you relly require too.
I agree with some comments been made too I think Google places is way too easy to offer, I see some smaller search companies offering too good to be true deals on places "reviews optimization" it is a complete joke, becuase they just make fake accounts and spam. I mean if you work on a big brand who had a huge spend you never can do these dodgy tactics.
Another big issues I have noted several times over the last year is the problem with Google places review data too, how Google picks up this data from forums and other websites and it is not correct. I actually blogged about this problem here -
https://jamesnorquay.com/massive-problem-with-google-local-search-places-reviews/ and had it featured on Search Engine Land and a few other sites but yeh I still see these problems with Google.
The problems go on and on but I hope Google does do something about it ASAP, becuase it just cheapens the whole index.
Regards
James.
Totally agree. Google combining local and organic results has resulted in poorer quality results generally being promoted higher up on page 1.
V. Good first post :)
I've also had a large amount of issues with Google Maps/Places and simply had to work hard to get the right text, numbers and links to show up for the right locations.
Great Post Jeff.
What has been your (or anyones on here) experience with similar issues with Yahoo and Bing bulk uploads and data issues.
Hey Cory - We have explored options with Bing, but as of yet we are not submitting our data directly to them. Bing and Yahoo mostly pick up our data from local citations across the web. I think this is a key point though - Google is actually advanced as it relates to Maps and submitting data, its just that the algo, weightings, and issue correction needs to be greatly improved.
The product is not well suited for bulk/enterprise level data, nor a company that not only has businesses across the world, but websites in various languages promoting those businesses (dont get me started on international Google Maps!).
I guess my point is my expectations are extremely high, because of the power of Google. While they may be advanced amongst search engines and local, their product needs to be better.
I would love to hear about your or others experiences working with Bing/Yahoo local data.
Where do I get started on Bing? To begin with, the Local Listing Center is down more often than not, and I frequently get an error message that they're having difficulty recognizing the address of my business. This is often the case where the business is placed incorrectly on the map, which is more than frustrating since anyone trying to get directions won't actually make it there. If anyone experiencing the same issues has a solution, direct contact at Bing or work-around, I would be oh so very grateful if you could please share.
I have experienced the same issues with Bing over the last month. They seem to be working on a new "Local Portal". I was finally able to update my listing yesterday 4/13.
There are several ways Marriott could help Google better understand the data about their hotels.
For example, there are issues with several of their UK telephone numbers.
The Cheshunt number is listed as 44 199-2451245 but should be +44 1992-451245.
The Cardiff number is listed as 44 2920-399 944 but should be +44 29-2039-9944.
The Huntingdon number is listed as 44 148-0446-000 but should be +44 1480-446000.
The Leicester number is listed as 44 1162-820100 but should be +44 116-282-0100.
The London County Hall number is listed as 44 207-928 5200 but should be +44 20-7928-5200.
The London Kensington number is listed as 44 207-973-1000 but should be +44 20-7973-1000.
The London Marble Arch number is listed as 44 207-723-1277 but should be +44 20-7723-1277.
The London Regents Park number is listed as 44 207-722 7711 but should be +44 20-7722-7711.
The London Grosvenor House number is listed as 44 207-499 6363 but should be +44 20-7499-6363.
The Renaissance London Chancery Court Hotel number is listed as 44 207-829-9888 but should be +44 20-7829-9888.
The St. Pancras Renaissance London Hotel number is listed as 44 207-8413540 but should be +44 20-7841-3540.
The Grand Residences Mayfair London number is listed as 44 207-491 7282 but should be +44 20-7491-7282.
The Tudor Park number is listed as 44 162-2734334 but should be +44 1622-734334.
The London Twickenham number is listed as 44 208-891 8200 but should be +44 20-8891 8200.
Feeding fake area code data to Google may be confusing their system.
In addition, don't forget to change the 44 to +44 on all of the entries to clearly signify the country code.
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_the_United_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_dialling_codes
Similar comments apply to the data for many other countries.
Thanks Telecom, we try to ensure all of our phone numbers are formatted correctly per market, but this is a big undertaking. We dont try and feed fake area codes/phone number formats to Google, but this can get complicated very quickly when we are dealing with 3,700 hotels around the world. We'll keep trying to get it right however!
It is well known that corporate wheels turn slowly, but here we are nearly four months later and none of the errors highlighted above have been fixed.
Here's what I mean by the term "fake area code".
In the UK, "207" was the old area code for Consett.
London uses the "20" area code (and has done so for a decade), so printing "207" for the majority of your London numbers is incorrect.
See also: https://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/2009/08/phone-numbers/#video
Great post and to be completely honest I've never seen/noticed any errors as bad as the ones you have demonstrated. My biggest frustration with Places is that people do treat organic and Places differently - yet Google makes it incredibly difficult to rank on the front page for both Places and Organic on hybrid SERPs. I litterally get stopped dead at the top of page 2 on the organic listings if I have a Places results on P1 and vice versa.
And after reading your post it's pretty apparent that the whole thing is a sham!
I share your frustrations Jeff... and I can relate to example 1 with the high crime area, because I got robbed indirectly thanks to Google Maps past summer while on vacation in Italy!You see, me and my girlfriend wanted to go on vacation to Rome. Before going there we decided to find a couple of cool clubs and bars near our hotel. We found some websites of those clubs and bars and we double checked everything, because sometimes clubs and bars don't exist anymore while the websites are still online you know.So, most of the clubs and bars we found did still exist. We decided to print a couple of Google Maps so we could find our way there. The first club/bar we went to? It wasn't there. It took half an hour by bus and half an hour of walking to get there. People (Roman citizens) told us that club was never there and that they had never heard of it before.Found out months later that this particular club was so far away (more than 20 miles) from where Maps said it was that the people in that neighborhood of Rome had never heard of it. And guess what? We decided to go back to our hotel because it was 2 AM already, but the last bus left at like 1.50 AM so we had to walk. It took us 2 hours to get back to the hotel in the middle of the night, in a foreign country, in a high crime area. And I got robbed of a piece of jewelry worth $600. I consider myself lucky that I ONLY got robbed and that I managed to get the hell away from there and protect my girlfriend from being raped or other nightmare scenario´s.Sorry for this long story, but I just wanted to say that I usually don´t use Google Maps for navigation anymore. Sometimes people still beat machines: asking for directions never hurts :-)
Yikes, sorry to hear that! (but another example of the trust people place in Maps)
That is quite shocking. I was also let down by Google Maps when trying to find a hotel in Spain a few years ago. We had printed the directions from the official website so assumed the location would be correct - however after driving around for some time, we concluded it was highly unlikely there was a hotel hidden anywhere in the dusty industrial estate Google had sent us to and resorted to the old-fashioned method of looking at signposts and trying our luck from there. The town we found our hotel in was much nicer than the one we had spent so long driving around, and quite a distance away. Fortunately we had a hire car - if we had been relying on a rural bus service we would have been in a much worse situation - but it has led me to double-check unfamiliar locations especially in Europe. Sorry to hear you had such a terrible experience.
Wow! I was going to complain that maps being wrong has made me late for stuff a couple of times but that's nothing compared to getting robbed... Google seriously need to either fix it, or at the very least put warnings that data may be innaccurate and should therefore be doublechecked elsewhere. Like you said you were lucky to only get robbed, the next person who trusts maps might end up worse off.
The bulk feed feature has been abandoned by Google for months, at least it feels this way to me. I have around 100 clients I used to update using the bulk feed. Realtors most of them. A lot of hand work was needed everytime after doing so (fixing problems you describe here). So just decided 2 weeks ago to skip the feed from now on, create an instruction series and outsource (working on those instruction series as we speak). Maybe it's a solution for 3000+ listings too.
Jeff,
Thank you thank you thank you!! You're thoughts are right in line with mine. There needs to be some serious review of some of these errors. I think that allowing a business to claim their information, and the information they put there should be weighted very heavily. Too often Google is trying to reverse my information or do something else strange with it. I also agree that users are looking at the local information as being, well maybe not 100% accurate, but 98% for sure. I personally have been frustrated when looking up a business on my phone, and then driving to an empty field! Sheesh! Let me help you guys out...somehow!!
Great post, thanks again!
Josh
Excellent post, thanks for laying it out clearly and articulately. Google is lucky to have you helping with QA.
Great Post Jeff...I think the folks over at 'The Google' must have read your post.
Check out this vid where Google introduces crowdsourcing fof Google Maps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znCPgldRWTc&feature=player_embedded
Exactly very important point grasp! I appreciate this disappointed especially for the local search different results though it's very critical views in online local business issue. By the way I agree with you a lot for the local search optimization. In my opinion, I totally like these assortments from being competent to make local business goal. I actually believe this contribution for the SEO marketing consequent. Thanks mate for this education segment. :)
<link removed>
Thanks for sharing
One of my clients is law firm with multiple locations... So easy local optimization via local search...Wrong! The clients most metropolitan listing had at one point 4 locations showing in Gplaces, some were exact duplicates. I took the proper steps to delete the duplicates and wrong addresses, which resulted in increased Gplaces traffic. With in a month there we more duplicates. I went through this process multiple times.
Google needs a customer service department ASAP!
Oh the horror stories I could tell.
I'm an online marketer for a cluster of electronics repair shops in Manhattan, and we've been doing battle with The Goog here since I started in December. I've actually come to dread coming in to work on Thursdays, since it seems Google likes to push major rearangements of their code on Wednesday nights, just to make the last two days of my work week interesting. At least i can be thanful it's not on Fridays, right?
Our major issue is that we have 5 separate divisions working out of either the same office or the same floor. Since each division is technically it's own business unit, with a unique phone number and focus, each one needs a Places page to be competitive (Oh, did I mention roughly half of our customer base comes from Google?). So what does Google do? Endlessly shuffles the listings around, merging and unmerging them without rhyme and reason.
And the worst thing is there is nothing we can really do. All the listings are claimed. All are under different google accounts. All contain different content, different information, different media, etc. The only thing in common is the address.
The standard approach of verifying NAP has been taken to absurd lengths (I currently have a spread sheet open with over 200 local portals and directories, almost all of which have been slowly and painstaikingly checked, verified, claimed, and color-coded from red to green.) We've followed every single one of Google's policies to the letter, not even venturing so much as a toe over the line.
It's frustrating painstainkingly following the rules and seeing your work come crashing down on a weekly basis. Google needs to get their stuff together on local.
Jeff,
Great 1st post. As with many other guys on here, I have also experienced similar issues. We are still adding Places listings for a UK franchise for each of their 100+ franchisees. Our problems range from inconsistent results once live (some show with the merged web result, some drag the logo from the Places whilst others show very basic info), listings taking months to go live, and some listings merging with non-related businesses in a similar location!
Contacting anyone within Places is impossible, and the only joy I have had is speaking with a rep from Adwords. Although she did help as much as possible, I wasn't sure if she actually had contact with anyone in Places.
As Places is now such a prominent feature on the SERPs, I also question the ability to claim other businesses' listings. I think that this could be done very easily.
I'd be interested to see if Rand could organinse a WBF with someone from Places to address some of these queries.
Liam
Love that idea! It'd be great to have a Google rep on WBF talking about this issue
Hi Jeff,
Great post and perfect timing. We are also experiencing more and more frustrations with Google Places, Maps and hybrid listings.
For example with one of our clients, a very well respected Kilimanjaro operator. The ranking of the listing was performing very well but for a long time the URL was linking to the competitor! Eventhough in the admin panel everything looked alright and there were numerous directories with the correct details in it to support the listing.
Google also seems to move the pack of local places around the SERPs. For this reason we have disabled some listings so that the organic listing returns back to its original position, above the pack. Thank you very much Google.
Oh and finally, we have moved our Cape Town office a couple streets according to Google.
Hopefully someone at Google will read our comments and will take action quickly. But I'm sure they will if they want to compete with Foursquare and their good friends at Facebook.
Thanks for this post Jeff!
Wow! I feel your pain. Google Places is frequently the cause of absolute distress in daily work life. Which is silly, true. But feeling powerless is stressful.
I do internet marketing for a vacation rental company, which I should mention right away, is barred in the Google Places guidelines. In our ski resorts, like Steamboat Springs, we manage homeowner assocations, and all of the vacation rentals in each 'resort' building. We function just like high-end, luxury hotels & resorts, it's just that each condominium is privately owned.
I understand that Google does not want 100 vacation rental listings for one property. But, they do want one listing, and as the association manager and lodging marketer, we are the logical - and only - company empowered to do this. But Google has blocked our attempts at maintaining our listings. The wrong photos, phone numbers, reviews and entire hotels show up on our hotel's Places listings which must be enormously frustrating for our customers.
The Google Places reps have not been very helpful. They have told me silly things like 'You have too many listings on one account, so try creating mutliple email addresses' (Good one!) And when I show them examples of other resorts in our towns that are just like ours where the homeowner has rightfully claimed the listing and manages the data for accuracy... Instead of trying to understand our business better, and recognize that I am trying to help Google deliver better results, Google tells me that 'when Google works out that these other hotels are vaction rentals that they will all be penalized'! Ha. So I guess we should wait to see every single hotel/lodging place page in the ski resort industry to have their Local account disabled. Basically, we are being penalized because we categorized our hotel as a 'vacation rental' from Google's category list and now cannot evolved from this stigma, and Google does not understand our business.
There are many more issues we face, but one more classic one is when we try to verify the listings, we are only ever given the Postcard option, and Google will not deliver to PO Boxes. In Breckenridge & Steamboat, the postal service does not deliver to physical addresses. We get over 350" of snow a year and it would be practicallly impossible to deliver mail. Google knows a lot, but they don't know how our postal system works, therefore it is impossible to verify our listings.
We haven't tried bulk upload. That is my next step! We have been working on updating our place listings across as many other websites as possible, includinig Bing, Yahoo, YP.com etc. Facebook places has worked well and they have a good system to verify the listings. Best of all, they have a rep that we can email back and forth with in the process if need be. They ask for Official Business Documents.
Google definitely needs to improve their customer service and help us help them deliver better results.
Hi Jeff... Excellent article. Locationary.com is the solution you describe nicely in #5 and #6.
We'd be delighted to help Google improve... And thus help you.
Regards,
Dan
What a great post! As SEO Manager for The Pain Center of Arizona, we have a love/hate relationship with Google Places. The most recent problem occured when a new office opened up, and as it's still in the process of being "Claimed" a competitor altered the business phone number to redirect patients to his own personal offices. We also have listings for offices that no longer are current, and yet they remain active on Places even while we've repeatedly attempted to alert Google. When it's good, it's very good. However, the bad is very bad.
There are lots of SEOs out there frustrated by this, its great to see someone writing about this.
But in all honesty every tool or changes Google brings there has always been a fault, erm except GMAIL or I might be missing something there :)
While in UK I saw major problems with Google places. I saw normal listings merge together with Google places for one week and then the next it was back to normal.
Google places is far more important in US than UK as because of the size of the country the users prefer searching locally. I have seen many of my client's Google places with correct business name but different URLs, its so FRUSTRATING but hugely important in US.
Our worst example is that a lot of attorneys tend to office near the courthouse and Google recently merged our listing with a competitor next door and now they get inquiries for areas of law they don't practice and it dropped some of their main categories out of their local listing, killing their ranks.
The issue appears to be that our firm specified a suite number, their firm didn't and Google assumed it was the same firm despite having different names and urls.
I have also shared similar frustrations with the inaccuracies of Google Places/Maps. And I think the clincher is that Google started placing them prominently in search results. It wouldn't even matter so much if people could just assume that Places might not be accurate and stick to the organic listings to find real verifiable data - but when your real web page is crowded out of the organic listings by a bunch of Places at the top of the screen, and when the Places at the top of the screen are frequently inaccurate, what can you do?
How timely. Expierancing the same probblems with a one address location. I hope this makes it to the Google places team!
Great article indeed, I have been also working on trying to fix all this errors by Google maps for the company I work for. It gets a little bit frustrating sometimes because there's things I just don't have access to modify, edit or delete.
Since Boost has been released, Google Maps is now monetized. However, that doesn't mean customer service has been improved (or even brought into existence) by Google...
Fantastic post! I hope that the people at Google do read this and make changes. We only have two brick-and-morter locations and both are in the same city and it has taken me 2 years to get our information right and duplicates deleted. I can't imagine the time and energy that Marriot puts into keeping their data correct online.
I have also taken to including micro formats wherever I can in my websites and making sure that name, address and phone numbers are 100% consistant across all of our websites as well as vendors websites.
This is a great article. I've been active in Local and within Google Places/ formerly maps for years. I've also been a frequent complainer, commenter on the issues you have described. Its astounding the problems have lasted as long as they have and the fixes have been so rare. This is the first time I've seen a complaint from a major corporate entity. Bravo!!!!!
Your points are well taken. Consumers want accurate information. The print maps industry simply put more bodies and quality control into data to ensure it was more accurate. Digital mapping simply doesn't put the bodies into the industry.
Similarly Google Places doesn't put enough bodies into its environment to fix problems. On top ot that its an astounding black box. You contact them and they don't respond. There is no customer service. I'm actually astounded that as big an entity as Marriott is you can't get responsiveness. Basically no other business would get away with that kind of non-responsiveness. Google has been getting away with living in another world.
Marriott has to be one of the larger spenders on Adwords. In any other environment its inconceivable that Google hasn't been responsive.
The issues you've brought up essentially run the gamut of problems that many businesses face. I know in my cases I am so reluctant to alter or adjust a record that is in good condition in any way whatsoever for fear it can get caught in one of the myriads of problems you have described.
I'm in complete agreement that the "cluster" element of the algo needs to be addressed. For whatever reasons the engineering elements within Google decided this was an appropriate way to go to determine data...it simply creates endless problems. It needs to be dumped, or as in many other cases with google's algo's it needs significant filters to eliminate the data that is either inaccurate or non consistent with other data. Its not only the cause of problems, but the problems it creates will increase in time.
Consider the following: Every time a retailer closes or vacates a location and a new retailer takes over that space, the cluster element of the algo is going to show inconsistent data with information from an old business mixed with information from a new business. I see it all the time.
Currently the Feds are reviewing the Google prospective purchase of ITA, the company that controls software used by so many travel search engines. If the Feds aren't aware of this the travel industry should raise the problems with inaccurate information from Google Places compounded by the problem that they either don't or are slow to fix things and they simply don't respond.
I'd suggst you raise the ante on this issue. Frankly, I'm sorry to see that your large company has the same problems as so many other businesses but happy to see that a business with clout can so articulately describe the issues. Hopefully this will create serious greater awareness of innate problems within Google Places that haunt so many businesses and so many searchers simply looking for accurate information.
Lastly, Yahoo and Bing Local have similar problems. The issue in my mind simply is that Google's market share control of Searches puts the onus of making corrections on their backs first.
The maps / places listings have been broken since inception. Problem is Goog doesn't make big money from them, hence very little resources are dedicated to fix it. Adwords has a customer service number hmmmmmm!
In-House SEO/SEM for a retailer with 500+ locations. I've had similar experiences and am currently in the process of RFPing several local search agencies to assist with providing locations to not only Google, but also Bing/Yahoo, IYPs and other directories. We have been sending a verified bulk feed for over a year now, but still have merged listings from time to time. The worst was when our phone number was merged with the malls main number. Unfortunately, a store was slammed with calls asking for movie times, directions, etc.
I resolve such issues when made aware by the field by reporting an error. The issues are typically resolved relatively quickly considering Google probably receives many reports daily.
I have heard that even though your listing is verified, Google is still pulling information from other resources, hence the merged and other inaccurate listings. That is probably the most frustrating thing of all, is that I take the time to send accurate information and yet we still have problems that inconvenience employees and worse, our customers.
Unfortunately, I'm finding the only likely solution is to pay a company to bulk upload information to a variety of places for us, although I readily have an optimized store list already but Bing/Yahoo and IYPs and other directories don't accommodate that.
I've been doing Places Listings since early 2008. I've experienced many of the horror stories that you have including merged listings and Google unavailable to fix things. I've contacted Susan Moskawa of Google and basically got the, "We're working on it" sort of answer. Merged results have often taken Google a long time to fix and under current circumstances while Google will accept the listing they will not properly show it on Maps generating no traffic at all. So if you're a company with multiple businesses on location like every major building in the world you're probably sitting there pretty frustrated. I'm told that if you create different google accounts and ever so slightly write the location differently it will work properly. However, I've not tried this yet, and am looking for answers. Many companies have multiple businesses out of the same building suite/location and are unable to show more than one listing properly on Local Business. This is really frustrating and honestly hasn't changed in the last two years.
When I talked to Google on the phone a couple weeks ago I was informed that Google Analytics support is coming shortly when I asked if they fixed an exploit. Maybe this is the sign Google is starting to understand that customer service is important and that you can't run the world algorithmically without some feedback?
Places doesn't offer PPC but they do have paid solutions which I'm told don't fix the problem either. So basically Google's taking money regardless of the fact that it's busted. Offering no support on a system they're taking money for is going to get them sued. That seems to be the way things get done these days. I'm not saying that's necessary but it's unlikely we'll see any changes any time soon as it's been over 3 years now with little improvement.
If Google's auto results in countries where there's not supposed to be any listings is anything like Bing then they're using the Yellow Pages. Check to see that the Yellow Page information is updated, submitted, and corrected. It could be an old listing that never got updated when you renewed. Check any other citation sources to see that their information is also updated as you never know where Google could be pulling their data from.
I hear ya man.. places can be amazing but it can also be a nightmare for what should be a simple solution.
I used to work at one of the suppliers of data to Place Pages and now consult to a bank that has over 1500 entries for branches/ATMs and have seen all kinds of weird results.
The bank is known by an acronym, so when we have entries such as "XYZ ATM Suburbname", they get rejected for shouting. Google can set an exception rule, but this takes time to be effected. For a while a lot of the entries showed the description and URL of a rival bank. The solution was to delete all entries and resubmit. Then the submission goes into approval limbo, which wouldn't happen if we submitted each entry manually. Then there are the entries for defunct branches replete with user complaints asking for the listing to be removed. Yes, these were deleted and not present in the spreadsheet when re-uploaded, but voila - they reappear from somewhere.
Jeff, I generally share your frustatraton about the inaccuracies in Google Local results.
I wanted to point out one thing about relying only on information provided by owners of claimed listings. There are TOO many owners who resort to unethical tactics to boost their rankings in Google. You're doing SEO for a big brand, and you're careful with ensuring that the names of each hotel is exact and accurate.
I'm dealing with the opposite issue, where for example a mom and pop hair salon owner purposely adds the city name, and keywords "hair salon" to their business name to boost rankings. And guess what? It works, almost immediately. So now a salon named "Bubbles Chicago Hair Salon" as opposed to just "Bubbles Hair Studio" does far better in its overall visibility. And in turn pushes down the rankings of other business that aren't resorting to tactics that violate Google's TOS.
In this case, how is Google suppose to circumvent such issues? It seems that the "wiki" style editing, and the clustering are 2 such ways that help address this, albeit they aren't exactly the best, and they're really slow and correcting the inaccuracies.
One of our customers has a franchise of offices, one of these franchises made their own Google Places account and added themselves to the map. Things didn't work out and they went into doing something else, a while later another franchise office opened up in the same town and they've been there for a while now. The problem is that it's still the old listing that shows up in search (with now incorrect details), and nobody can change or remove it because the previous people can't be contacted to find out their log in details. Even contacting Google several times and speaking with various different people just leads you around in circles.
I had a similar expierence with a large nationwide client that had multiple locations. Some of the data was inaccurate including phone numbers that went to a dead line. As you can imagine this was an issue. After doing some research I found who supplied data to various websites IE Yahoo Local, Yelp, Yellow Pages, etc. From there I was able to find which single source I needed to update. The rest would then correct themselves. Unfortunately it is a highly manual process. The way around this issue is to use a company like localeze or UniversalBusinessListing. Most small to mid sized local sites come to their databases to update the information on each site.
I used both of them to update listings across all of my client's listings and found good results. It helped Google see that we have good citations and credible data. It also solved the issue of the bad phone numbers.
I'm not saying these services will fix everything, but it will certianly give you a good place to start. A few manual changes thereafter should suffice.
I couldn't agree with you more though. Google and Bing need to improve their maps listings in general.
For more on local seo check out david mihm. He has some great stuff.
Thanks bsommer - totally agree about the importance of local citations. We definitely use these services, but decide to individually manage the Google feed because of its importance. We've also seen inaccurate data on the sites these companies submit data to...so the local space is really messy.
Good post! I have a vacation rental business and have the same issue. The underlying issue I think is that google is giving the local data a lot of weight and ranking it high. Due to that many people are trying to get their information out there regardless if it is the correct data.
I'm so FRUSTRATED with this! I am so happy somebody is speaking out about it. I don't have the time to put my full comment in today, but tomorrow there will be words, and words, and words expressing how much I agree with you.
Thumbs up for now, look for my addendum tomorrow.
Glad to hear you share my frustrations, and that you also have a lot to say about the topic. I'll look forward to your words, and words, and words!
Bing.