For years, I've been saying that if you have a problem with spammers in local results, you can just wait it out. I mean, if Google cared about removing spam and punishing those who are regular spammers we'd see them removed fast and often, right?
While there are instances where spam has been removed, it seems these are not fast fixes, permanent fixes, or even very common. In fact, they seem few and far between. So today I’m changing my tune a bit to call more attention to the spam issues people employ that violate Google My Business terms and yet continue to win in the SERPs.
The problems are rampant and blatant. I've heard and seen many instances of legitimate businesses changing their names just to rank better and faster for their keywords.
Another problem is that Google is shutting down MapMaker at the end of March. Edits will still be allowed, but they'll need to be made through Google Maps.
If Google is serious about rewarding brands in local search, they need to encourage it through their local search algorithms.
For some people, it’s gotten so bad that they’re actually suing Google. On January 13, 2017, for instance, a group of fourteen locksmiths sued Google, Yahoo, and Bing over fake spam listings, as reported by Joy Hawkins.
While some changes — like the Possum update — seemed to have a positive impact overall, root problems (such as multiple business listings) and many other issues still exist in the local search ecosystem.
And there are other technically non-spammy ways that users are also manipulating Google results. Let's look at a couple of these examples.
It's not all spam. Businesses are going to great lengths to stay within the GMB guidelines & manipulate results.
Let’s look at an example of a personal injury attorney in the Denver market. Recently, I came across these results when doing a search for trial attorneys:
Look at the #2 result listing, entitled "Denver Trial Lawyers." I originally thought this was spam and wanted to report it, but I had to do my due diligence first.
To start, I needed to verify that the listing was actually spam by looking at the official business name. I pulled up their website and, to my surprise, the business name in the logo is actually "Denver Trial Lawyers."
This intrigued me, so I decided to see if they were using a deceptive logo to advertise the business name or if this was the actual business name.
I checked out the Colorado Secretary of State’s website and did a little digging around. After a few minutes I found the legally registered trade name through their online search portal. The formation date of this entity was 7/31/2008, so they appear to have been planning on using the name for some time.
I also reviewed their MapMaker listing history to see when this change was made and whether it reflected the trade name registration. I saw that on October 10, 2016 the business updated their MapMaker listing to reflect the new business name.
After all of this, I decided to take this one step further and called the business. When I did, the auto-attendant answered with "Thank you for calling Denver Trial Lawyers," indicating that this is their legitimate business name.
I guess that, according to the Google My Business Guidelines, this can be considered OK. They state:
"Your name should reflect your business’ real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers. Accurately representing your business name helps customers find your business online."
But what does that mean for everyone else?
Recently, Gyi Tsakalakis also shared this beautiful screenshot on Twitter of a SERP with three businesses using their keywords in the business name:
It seems they're becoming more and more prominent because people see they're working.
To play devil's advocate, there are also businesses that legitimately sport less-than-creative names, so where do you draw the line? (Note: I've been following some of above businesses for years; I can confirm they've changed their business names to include keywords).
Here's another example
If you look closely, you'll find more keyword- and location-stuffed business names popping up every day.
Here's an interesting case of a business (also located in Denver) that might have been trying to take advantage of Near Me searches, as pointed out by Matt Lacuesta:
Do you think this business wanted to rank for Near Me searches in Denver? Maybe it's just a coincidence. It's funny, nonetheless.
How are people actively manipulating local results?
While there are many ways to manipulate a Google My Business result, today we’re going to focus on several tactics and identify the steps you can take to help fight back.
Tactic #1: Spammy business names
Probably the biggest problem in Google’s algorithm is the amount of weight they put into a business name. At a high level, it makes sense that they would treat this with a lot of authority. After all, if I’m looking for a brand name, I want to find that specific brand when I'm doing a search.
The problem is that people quickly figured out that Google gives a massive priority to businesses with keywords or locations in their business names.
In the example below, I did a search for "Fresno Personal Injury Lawyers" and was given an exact match result, as you can see in the #2 position:
However, when I clicked through to the website, I found it was for a firm with a different name. In this case, they blatantly spammed their listing and have been floating by with nice rankings for quite some time.
I reported their listing a couple of times and nothing was done until I was able to escalate this. It’s important to note that the account I used to edit this listing didn't have a lot of authority. Once an authoritative account approved my edit, it went live.
The spam listing below has the keyword and location in the business name.
We reported this listing using the process outlined below, but sadly the business owner noticed and changed it back within hours.
How can you fight back against spammy business names?
Figuring out how to fight back against people manipulating results is now your job as an SEO. In the past, some in the industry have given the acronym "SEO" a bad name due to the manipulative practices they performed. Now it’s our job to give us a better name by helping to police these issues.
Since Google MapMaker is now disappearing, you'll need to make edits in Google Maps directly. This is also a bit of a problem, as there's no room to leave comments for evidence.
Here are the steps you should take to report a listing with incorrect information:
- Make sure you’re signed into Google
- Locate the business on maps.google.com
- Once the business is located, open it up and look for the “Suggest an edit” option:
- Once you select it, you'll be able to choose the field you want to change:
- Make the necessary change and then hit submit! (Don't worry — I didn't make the change above.)
Now, don’t expect anything to happen right away. It can take time for changes to take place. Also, the trust level of your profile seems to play a big role in how Google evaluates these changes. Getting the approval by someone with a high level of trust can make your edits go live quickly.
Make sure you check out all of these great tips from Joy Hawkins on The Ultimate Guide to Fighting Spam on Google Maps, as well.
Tactic #2: Fake business listings
Another issue that we see commonly with maps spam is fake business listings. These listings are completely false businesses that black-hat SEOs build just to rank and get more leads.
Typically we see a lot of these in the locksmith niche — it’s full of people creating fake listings. This is one of the reasons Google started doing advanced verification for locksmiths and plumbers. You can read more about that on Mike Blumenthal's blog.
Joy Hawkins pointed out a handy tip for identifying these listings on her blog, saying:
"Many spammers who create tons of fake listings answer their phone with something generic like 'Hello, locksmith' or 'Hello, service.'"
I did a quick search in Denver for a plumber and it wasn’t long before I found a listing with an exact match name. Using Joy’s tips, I called the number and it was disconnected. This seemed like an illegitimate listing to me.
Thankfully, in this case, the business wasn't ranking highly in the search results:
When you run into these types of listings, you'll want to take a similar approach as we did above and report the issue.
Tactic #3: Review spam
Review spam can come in many different forms. It’s clear that Google's putting a lot of attention into reviews by adding sorting features and making stars more prominent. I think Google knows they can do a better job with their reviews overall, and I hope we see them take it a little bit more seriously.
Let’s look at a few different ways that review spam appears in search results.
Self-reviews & competitor shaming
Pretty much every business knows they need reviews, but they have trouble getting them. One way people get them is to leave them on their own business.
Recently, we saw a pretty blatant example where someone left a positive five-star review for a law firm and then five other one-star reviews for all of their competitors. You can see this below:
Although it’s very unethical for these types of reviews to show up, it happens everyday. According to Google’s review and photo policies, they want to:
“Make sure that the reviews and photos on your business listing, or those that you leave at a business you’ve visited, are honest representations of the customer experience. Those that aren’t may be removed.”
While I'd say that this does violate the policies, figuring out which rule applies best is a little tricky. It appears to be a conflict of interest, as defined by Google’s review guidelines below:
In this particular case, a member of our staff, Dillon Brickhouse, reached out to Google to see what they would say.
Unfortunately, Google told Dillon that since there was no text in the review, nothing could be done. They refused to edit the review.
And, of course, this is not an isolated case. Tim Capper recently wrote an article — “Are Google My Business Guidelines & Spam Algos Working?” — in which he identified similar situations and nothing had been done.
How can you fight against review stars?
Although there will still be cases where spammy reviews are ignored until Google steps up their game, there is something you can try to remove bad reviews. In fact, Google published the exact steps on their review guidelines page here.
You can view the steps and flag a review for removal using the method below:
![1. Navigate to Google Maps. 2. Search for your business using its name or address. 3. Select your business from the search results. 4. In the panel on the left, scroll to the “Review summary” section. 5. Under the average rating, click [number of] reviews. 6. Scroll to the review you’d like to flag and click the flag icon. 7. Complete the form in the window that appears and click Submit.](https://d2v4zi8pl64nxt.cloudfront.net/local-seo-spam-tactics-are-working-how-you-can-fight-back/58b6ee778681d9.22093253.png)
What can you do if the basics don't work?
There are a ton of different ways to spam local listings. What can you do if you've reported the issue and nothing changes?
While edits may take up to six weeks to go live, the next step involves you getting more public about the issue. The key to the success of this approach is documentation. Take screenshots, record dates, and keep a file for each issue you're fighting. That way you can address it head-on when you finally get the appropriate exposure.
Depending on whether or not the listing is verified, you'll want to try posting in different forums:
Verified listings
If the listing you're having trouble with is a verified listing, you'll want to make a public post about it in the Google My Business Community forum. When posting, make sure to provide all corresponding evidence, screenshots, etc. to make the case very clear to the moderators. There's a Spam and Policy section on the forum where you can do this.
Unverified listings
However, some spam listings are not verified listings. In these cases ,Joy Hawkins recommends that you engage with the Local Guides Connect Forum here.
Key takeaways
Sadly, there's not a lot we can do outside of the basics of reporting results, but hopefully being more proactive about it and making some noise will encourage Google to take steps in the right direction.
- Start being more proactive about reporting listings and reviews that are ignoring the guidelines. Be sure to record the screenshots and take evidence.
- If the listings still aren't being fixed after some time, escalate them to the Google My Business Community forum.
- Read Joy Hawkins' post from start to finish on The Ultimate Guide to Fighting Spam in Google Maps
- Don’t spam local results. Seriously. It’s annoying. Continually follow and stay up-to-date on the Google My Business guidelines.
- Lastly, don’t think the edit you made is the final say or that it'll stay around forever. The reality is that they could come back. During testing for this post, the listing for "Doug Allen Personal Injury Attorney Colorado Springs" came back within hours based on an owner edit.
In the future, I’m personally looking forward to seeing some major changes from Google with regards to how they rank local results and how they monitor reviews. I would love to see local penalties become as serious as manual penalties.
How do you think Google can fight this better? What are your suggestions? Let me know in the comments below.
Hey Casey!
Excellent read. I'd add one thing to your list of spam forms: competitive edits of your listing by third parties. This is a particularly malicious genre of spam, making it very important for business owners to regularly monitor their GMB listings for changes. I wrote about this here on the Moz Blog when I heard Map Maker was shutting down: https://moz.com/blog/map-maker-shutdown-google-nap... with a pro tip for Moz Local customers that Moz Local will alert you if anyone edits your listing.
I really appreciated your sharing the response you received from Google about 1 star ratings and this is something they seriously need to reconsider. Particularly in a case like the one you've cited, where a pattern of abusive spam is so obvious, Google needs to act on this. If they don't take their own guidelines seriously, why should anyone else? Until then, we'll all just have to keep documenting the spam we see, in hopes that Google will improve their handling of it in future, given the direct impact it has on the revenue of millions of local businesses.
Thanks Miriam! Edits from third parties are also a real problem. I think your advice to monitor the location is great so you'll be aware of any malicious edits made.
I would say 99% of the edits are SEO people trying to earn their check by knociking out a competitor.
Very interesting. I just checked out some spam from my local competitors and submitted an edit to a business name which was very clearly spam. I received an email from Google Maps within 10 minutes informing me that my edit had been made. The corrected name also appeared in Google's local pack, the local finder and on maps immediately. Not only that, their ranking was adjusted downwards for the query they were clearly spamming for (= SEO + Location).
Ewan, I' glad to see you have had a win! The problem we noticed when testing this is that if the business owner notices they have the ability to change it back quickly.
If only that worked every time! Totally depends on the strength of the listing and the trust of the reporting profile (Google Local Guides level, etc.). Also could depend if there is a Local Guide in the edit platform for your location at the time reviewing and verifying information.
I've just made about 15 more edits, including several deletions on grounds of being spam and nearly all have gone live immediately. The remainder are pending review.
Keep up the good work :)
Some consistency and follow through from Google would be helpful here. The sad fact is that business name + keyword ranks better than just business name. Considerably so. And often broadens geographic reach. At least in the UK for some of the industries we support.
So we have clients who we are preaching the good fight, reporting the bad guys, yet if they tweak the listing to add the keyword after the name then their local rankings just rocket - particularly in surrounding areas. It can be hard to say - hey, don't do that, even though I know it will impact your visibility which is exactly what you pay us to improve.
An industry in the UK that sees a lot of local spam is paintball venues. We have been fighting spam listings for one client for three years. It's a constant grind that really offers little value to the client and some of these listings are just clearly crappy. Fake address, like a road with nothing there a few meters down the road from a legit venue. Same numbers as other existing listings etc. All the things you would not do to optimise a real listing - yet they work. Transiently of course. But if they keep on adding them then then we have to keep on monitoring and removing them. A great, big, fat waste of everyone's time.
And the pattern of companies now setting up businesses or lead gen sites to tap into this opportunity is not slowing down - it's fairly trivial to set up a simple site, a local number and add a call whisper so you can answer as "Best SEO Company in Birmingham Near Me" or whatever. The system is easily played on that front.
The whole system needs work on the reviews and spam listings front.
Hi Casey,
What so useful observations!
As many others who play under the rules, many times we are really frustrated. Also our clients are annoyed due to each day we see very unfair or spam practices that get success.
Of course, I will go through your advices, no question about it.
Clients deserve the effort of checking and report the listings having spammy practices.
Thanks!
Great post Casey. I think GMB's spam filter is embarrassingly poor because Google relies far too heavily on crowd-sourcing.
User moderation is a wonderful idea, but it only works if the general public understand the guidelines. Few people outside our bubble are aware that businesses can't add descriptors or slogans to the end of their business name, or even that it's possible to edit a listing! How could they be aware of this when Google does so little to educate them and hides their guidelines deep in a support site designed for business owners?
I agree with your point that SEOs have the potential to be high quality spam moderators. However I'd be very uncomfortable with this if I were a business owner. Why should businesses pay higher fees for SEOs to perform a task that is Google's responsibility? Google doesn't expect me to review disavow files from other websites, this should be no different.
Until Google makes the guidelines more visible and easier for regular people to understand, the best way to tackle spam is to build your authority by editing other listings. About 50% of my edits are published immediately regardless of whether the profile is claimed (even if I'm marking the business as closed or spam) and this is because I have several hundred approved edits in my profile.
@LachieW I agree. And no wonder people are confused when the rules changed from single descriptors being allowed to not being allowed.
https://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/02/20/google-plac...https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177
Casey - I am obsessed with the post. It's such an important topic that is commonly overlooked. We all know that local SEO is extremely important, but I feel that it's common for people to get frustrated when they don't see their efforts making a big difference in the local pack, etc.
These tips are a great way to ensure that only legitimate businesses are taking up the local pack real estate -- making more room for your own clients if you can navigate it successfully. This makes me think maybe we need to go on the offensive with local SEO, rather than on the defensive.
It's crazy the lengths people will go to show up for local search. Thank you for taking the time to put this together - I'm about to head to Google and see if I can find some spam listings!
I'm all about going on the offensive. Right now it's just a fact of life :(
Had a massive chuckle at "Custom Signs NEAR ME" ;)
Right?! I did too! Whether or not this was intentional, it's a genius name for local search! :)
Hard to believe something so simple is so effective, but the proof is here as clear as day. I even had a deeper look into local listings I was ranking for and found a couple of spoofed listings - none too high up the rankings fortunately, but I gave them a cheeky edit to keep them in their place.
Thanks a bunch for this post Casey, very informative indeed. Whenever I'm investigating something, a Moz blog just seems to appear to help me on my way!
Paul, I'm glad you found this useful. Glad you were able to take care of the spoof listings.
Yeah, I've run into a lot of competitors ranking higher using spammy tactics and it is frustrating. Great tips for fighting back though and I am hoping over time we see less and less of spammy trash showing up on local Google listings.
Hi Casey,
Great topic for the discussion. I believe most of the people who intentionally stuff keywords with their business names in listings don't fear Google, as they see it's working and practice by many. You are right here that Google has to take some steps just like they are doing in search with quality algorithms.
Besides the tactics that you mentioned, I have also came across one more - 'Duplicate Listings'.
As it is not that difficult to get a verified listing in Google, someone created a duplicate listing (even duplicate website on similar domain) of a local business in an area with exact same name but different address/location. So, most of the times when users searching for that business or related service, they used to end up landing on that duplicate listing. Clients who were not happy with their (duplicate listing) services, used to sometimes write -ve reviews on original listing as it was not easy to figure out which one is the original one.
However, somehow that duplicate listing got caught and removed. This teaches us to always keep an eye on SERP for your business name and services/products.
Thanks
Nice work, Casey.
It's good to see problems like this elaborated. Maybe Google will get to work on this now!
My hope is that they can find more to do to help combat these issues.
Hello Casey ,
This is seriously wonderful, I appreciate. I was wondering google is becoming smarter day by day, but forget that there are so many spammers who are more smarter than Google. They always find alternative ways to rank well, so in this race, only spammers win. And if they got found by Google and got down, they quickly come up with another spammy techniques. So, I never understood what Google is doing that there are so many spammy sites ranks higher rather than good sites.
It is not only the case of local, the organic results are also same, poor websites, spammy backlink profile and low quality contents still rank well. I have asked this to Neil Patel and Julie Joyce but nobody has the answer.
Only google knows how this is possible when we work hard, follow guidelines and still got some ranking down and spammers are winning the game.
I hope these local SEO techniques might help us. Thank you brother !
An interesting reflection on spam.
Lately I was wondering how in my neighborhood they were increasingly opening up supposed businesses that were actually fake. I did not understand why this situation.
Thanks to your article, I discover that it has been some SEO maneuver. A tactic very little recommended because sooner or later someone will catch and denounce Google as spam.
I guess when that's done and checked. Google penalize the web that is associated with that business?
I felt the same way, Enrique! It seemed like there was a sudden surge in businesses in some of our clients' markets -- but now I have a strategic plan in place to go through and sort out which businesses are legitimate or not.
Hopefully, in the future, Google will do a better job cracking down on this so we won't have to go in and report illegitimate businesses.
Great post, Casey. This is gonna come in handy for a fair few of my clients.
When reporting clients' competitors for having Keyword and/or Location in their name, do you think there's any risk to reporting lots of them in one go, in a short space of time? For example, I've just reported 6 competitors - changing their name from "[Name] [Keyword] [Location]" to just "[Name]" - in the space of 10 minutes. Do you think that carries the risk of looking like I'm doing what the John Richards reviewer is doing but in a different way (despite my edits being legit, and the fact that I'm trying to clean up the listings in line with Google's guidelines)? I've used my personal account (not my client's account), which has some old Google Map Maker and Maps edit history in it, so hopefully that'll help my case. I guess I'm just wondering if I'm good to go to town, or if I should try and spread out my edits across days/weeks (or even months)... What are your thoughts? Thanks!
The spam is out of control, all over, not just in local. Here in dallas, the seo community has made numerous complaints to google about dallasseogeek.com and even created a page https://dallasseogeekexposed.life/
google does nothing, it is really unreal.
I have tried reaching out to the Dallas SEO community concerning information about the dallasseogeek but can not get answers, I tried sending you a meggeage but maybe you did not recieve, please reach out if you can help me.
Hi Casey,
Great post! I have been working on reporting spammy listings for some time now. Google My Business' guidelines are not clear enough. I'm also using the same technique, checking legal records/trademarks, phone call, website but it's not always easy to make a choice and decide to report or not the listing.
One question, when you find a listing with a spammy business name, do you edit the business name or report the listing as spam? Personally, I'd like to have the listing removed, because reported as spam, but the reality is that Google doesn't take any action and it's better to edit the business name.
Google My Business support has become completely useless. When you call them, they'll simply tell you to click on "Leave a feedback" and report the issue.
The good thing is that there are so many spammy listings and I'm making so many edits that I'm getting a lot of points on my Local Guide profile.
Hey Thibault,
I always edit the business name. While a name might look like blatant spam to you and I, sometimes the business owner has just added their slogan or a few words to help describe their business, without realising it gives them an unfair advantage. You don't really want these guys removed from Google, you just want the playing field to be even.
To also play devils advocate, Google can't always trust user edits because what if those are being done maliciously?
Reporting a listing as spam will remove the listing if the edit is approved. If it doesn't auto-approve and goes up the chain to Google, it won't get approved for a legitimate business if all they are doing is adding keywords to the title. Google would approve it if the listing was for a business that didn't exist. It would not be in your better interests to report a listing as spam because if your edits get denied (which they will unless they manage to auto-approve), your trust level will decrease, thus making it harder for future edits to go through automatically.
In my case, I started a company last year, and the whole strategy (online and offline) includes a brand which is city+service. At the time we are nº2 on google results for the exact keyword, but not in google local search or maps.
Brands including your place have been done for decades for offline services and companies, now we can find it online frequently. Do you think it’s time to change our name businesses to (just a few fast examples, if they even exist I am not related with them any way.) Fresno Personal Injury Lawyers, Chicago insurance, Miami Financial Services, Denver travel agency or Boston Real Estate?
Some people recommend to change your brand if you're not the biggest in the space. I tend to disagree because my hope is that Google will figure out a way to ensure these fake brands aren't rewarded as much as they are now.
It is nice to read about how everyone should go white hat and unicorns and rainbows. As I business owner I have a very different and practical view on that. Sometimes Google just can not make things work and local businesses suffer. For example, our business now has 0 visibility on maps, despite being #2 in prominence in the area. Why? Just because our #1 competitor has an office in the same building as us and Google seems to not understand unit numbers or suites at all. There was a period when their office was closed and we were showing on maps in well deserved #1 spot. But after they reopened their office, our listing disappeared again. What can we do - it is a clear glitch, but Google will not make manual changes. We are tempted to do some stupid stuff like changing address to a fake one or something similar.
Damn, that's a really unlucky situation you're in geralexander. Have you tried contacting Google My Biz support directly though? Request a call back in the support section of the Google My Business dashboard. If you can send them some business registration info to prove you're not the same business they should reinstate your listing within a few days.
@geralexandr,
So unfortunately what you're experiencing is not a glitch. This is how the Local Filter works ever since the Possum update in 2016. Basically Google filters out listings from the local results that they deem to similar. This includes businesses that are near each other that fall under the same business category. The filter has accomplished some good. It has eliminated the ability for 1 company to dominate the 3-pack with different listings they created for the same office. However, in cases like yours, it's really frustrating to deal with.
Keep in mind that the filter runs based on the query. So if you were a lawyer, you might get filtered for "divorce attorney" (and your competitor in the same building shows instead). However, you might see the opposite for "family law attorney" where you show up and he doesn't. So just because you're filtered for one specific keyword does not mean Google is not showing your listing for anything.
The good news is you can get unfiltered. I've worked many cases where this has happened and the first step is to do an analysis of your competitor to see how he's beating you. What ranking factors does he have that you don't? What makes him more relevant to that particular query? Once you improve your relevance, you can get unfiltered, which will also most likely result in him being filtered.
Some people have asked me why on earth Google would add something like this into the algorithm. I believe they did it to help fight spam, which frankly is working really well . The second thing is I think they want to diversify their results and having the top listings all be right-next-door to each other *might* not be in the best interests for their users. I'm speculating here of course, but if I searched for "restaurant chicago", I would probably find the results more useful if it showed me restaurants all over Chicago, not just 3 that were all 5 minutes from each other.
@LachieW - Unfortunately when it comes to ranking issues, GMB support won't of any help. They can't really comment on ranking and if they do, their advice is generally wrong. In this case, his listing isn't suspended, it's just filtered.
Oops, thanks for the correction Joy! I didn't read geralexandr's post properly and assumed the listing was suspended.
I think Possum's great overall too, but do you think it's doing a disservice here? If I'm searching a broad area I'd like to see businesses in diverse locations, but as I zoom in I'd expect to see all competitors, even if they're in the same building. It seems to me like he's been caught by a rule designed for a different purpose (to eliminate fake listings) and his only option is to engage in a battle to one-up his competitor.
While I think all businesses should invest in SEO to prove their relevance, it seems a little unfair that some should have to invest more because they're unlucky enough to be physically close to a competitor.
@Lachie - If you zoom in, all the filtered listings appear. However, being filtered means you'll never be in the 3-pack for that term as long as you're filtered since you're not in the initial search results page in the Local Finder.
Great answer, Joy. It is rare to find someone familiar with this situation. Based on your comment, I understand that the only way is to beat the competitor in rankings, which is extremely difficult in our case (they are just 10x larger company - more prominence, more locations, etc. and they know what they do). I'm starting to think about something more grey hat - registering a fake location nearby or something similar. It really hurts to get filtered out of the major keyword (we are in 1.5 keyword niche business).
I'm not sure creating a new location would work but am curious now. Just so you know, Google would pull down the fake location if they ever catch it so you'd lose any reviews etc. Depending on what industry you're in, it might be easy for a competitor to report it and claim you aren't really there. Personally, I wouldn't recommend going with a strategy that is bound to not work at some point but the short-term success would vastly base on the industry you're in and how big your city is.
Thank you Casey - all good examples/tips :-)
What the? Why is it our job to report spam? Do you think lawyers report loopholes in the law? Do you think corporations report how they get around paying taxes? Cmon now. Nowadays it's like the less you know about SEO the better you can be at it. Plausible deniability and all.
It's a game of Police and Thief. I recently read an article where author was giving guaranteed ranking using black hat tactics like Cloaking and PNB. The conclusion is whatever Google will detect, Black Hat guys will find solutions. It's a endless game but for long term result, follow Google guidelines because the life of Black Hat is very short.
Great Article Casey, I've been flagging left and right and been active on the Forums. Sadly, I feel that without all the top contributors and moderators on the Google Forums nothing would get done. Joy and the others are lifesavers. Something that is even scarier than the spam in Google My Business is the spam in Yelp. I see a lot of the same problems but often times spammers can get away with 3+ listings on one search result. For legitimate businesses, this is even worse because as we know local Yelp search results and profile pages rank extremely well for local service based queries. I honestly feel that Yelp crying about Google favoring their results and reviews made businesses worse off so it would be nice to see the same type of monitoring from "Yelpers" that we see from people like yourself. Keep it up!
You're bang on with all of this Casey, but I don't quite share your optimism that Google will figure it out. At least not soon...
It reminds me of the exact match domain situation, where so many real, legitimate companies went with denverplumbingcompany.com-type domains because of the obvious advantages. Now that so many of these companies have established rankings (which they theoretically do deserve), and they're not technically breaking any rules (like the businesses that have registered keyword rich trade names), it's going to be really hard to get the cat back into the bag.
I'm a pretty 'by the book' SEO, generally speaking. And even I have been dabbling in the trade name changing strategy to stay competitive in the local rankings. Right now, the most appealing approach to me is if you are "Action Sewer & Drain", register a trade name of "Action Plumbing Denver" and do a soft re-brand (logo, GMB + other listings, web copy, etc) and reap the rewards without being overtly evil.
I wish it weren't so, but what's a clean SEO to do when these dirty tactics are winning so consistently?
For the local business, the article is more helpful for the newbie business.
Casey,
I am a freelancer and really think you are spot on. My main client is a personal injury lawyer and I battle with this, and many other manipulating techniques, from agencies. Google continues to mention cleaning this up but I never see results. It is frustrating to follow guidelines and still be outranked continually by methods I know are against "the policy". The other technique involves "private blog networks" that continue to work for agencies...although against policy. Maybe the companies that truly follow the appropriate guidelines will be rewarded one day.
Good job!
Great Article Casey, I appreciate the strategies you mentioned to fight back Local SEO Spam with examples.
Google uses automated spam detection measures to remove reviews that are probably spam. Reviews that violate the Google review policies can be removed from Google My Business listings.
I have used the same techniques to flag and fix inappropriate reviews made by the competitors on my clients' listing and within few minutes Google updated the listing and removed the spam reviews.
There is a lot of competition in Local SEO and Google listing. Unfortunately for some people, doing unethical SEO practices, it is easier to pull down than to build up. Therefore, I always advice my clients to keep an eye on their local listing and take immediate action when they find such spam reviews.
Easier said than done.
Well hello. Our law firm LEGALLY changed our name with the California Secretary of State for an entirely different reason. Ever since Panda and the "quality updates" starting in 2012 we have been inundated with calls for divorce cases, bankruptcy, and just about everything OTHER than what we do.
We are PI attorneys. So we LEGALLY changed the name of the franchise after fielding calls for wares we do not engage in. Ever since, people clicking on our site know exactly what we do. So those calls and emails have withered away.
Just letting you all know there are other reasons to change your legal business. For example, because the quality updates send traffic for things that the business has never engaged in, I mean. :-)
hi,
i am from india ,i have already site but i dont know how to find our site going to spam .How to find it..
give me suggetion?
I appreciate the strategies to fight back. Especially helpful that you used law firms as an examples.
Hi Casey,
Thanks so much for this article. I am part of a small SEO company and we seem to be getting more and more complaints from our clients about competitors that look like they are adding spam google listings.
I am a little unclear how to report Google listings for service area business that create multiple listings for the same business, when only 1 is a legitimate location. The intent of the company seems to be to show in maps for multiple locations within their service area. Do you have any suggestions on how to get them removed? I didn't want to try to mark it as spam and risk my user name not being taken seriously with future edits.
Yes, you're all right. Google Spam tactics are working surprisingly even if we use Brand name or use misspelled keyword we can get ample traffic without any excellent DA.
Great article for a very bad and common issue.
Thank you Casey.
There's another way to spam locally. When your website starts to grow, your competitors start to build spammy links to your site that Google doesn't like it. This is a huge problem for growing and small business websites. Big ones won't let them grow up.
Here at SiteStory, we started to collect a list of these websites and provide a disavow file for other webmasters and SEO(s) so they can use this list and disavow these spamming domains. This list already contains more than 3.5k websites.
This content is in Persian language and all the websites in the list are the ones spamming Persian websites.
So if you are an Iranian, you could use the list.
I wish this can help.
Could someone please explain negative SEO and the ways and results?
With the recent update in Fred, it's becoming even more spam friendly although there may be another update soon for a course correction. Always have to take what google says with a grain of salt. Thank you for sharing this post!
Awesome insights here!
One thing that's been annoying me for the last few months is a local skip hire company in Manchester has been using some real dirty tactics. They've uploaded an image of a yellow skip with their phone number written on it onto every "skip hire" map listing in Manchester. So when you search for a specific company and the map listing appears, so does this image. Potential customers are seeing this image and calling the number which is of course, the wrong telephone number.
I've reported it to Google over and over again, wrote on forums and tried reaching out on Twitter but it's still there!
It baffles me that a business owner can't remove an image that's been uploaded by a "customer" unless it violates their T&C's.
Google need to up their game because if more black hat SEO's start using this tactic, then we are all truly doomed. Plus we look really bad to the client because we can't get it down.
@Dean - which forums did you post it on? If one was the GMB forum I can escalate the thread for you if you post a link to it here. Usually we are able to get these types of things removed.
Those reports never worked for me. My site is the only listed under its real name for several years already, and nothing helps :)
Great post and good discussion!
For me this is 2 fold with out a doubt first kudos to the companies that include the main geo target in their business if it works, but also keep an eye out for the ones that may be a possibly spammy attempt in local search as that makes all our lives harder.
Great way to point out some future problems we may face.
Yes and I feel it becomes difficult to know where to draw the line on a business name.
Thank you very much for your exposure and your advice. I will keep them in mind when positioning my site. The fight for the first place is getting harder and you have to be at the last minute, if you do not eat us fast.
Hello, thanks for the post, I will now pay more attention to these details in spam.
What is clear is that using any of these methods to get a better position seems like a desperate resource and in my view, the truth of this company diminishes.
Thank you
Seriously these spamming techniques are becoming more and more common and we need to do something about it. Next time i see a fake business listing I'll definitely take some action. SEO should be always done in a neat and clean way.
Does my domain age and domain expiry period block traffic to my website, will it prevent my pages to get ranked?
Reporting an issue to Google works, but they need at least 5 unique profiles to report it before they'll act on it.
Very good advice here. Thanks for sharing this!
This is one of those cases where there's very little penalty deterrent so there's no doubt that it's going to keep happening. In traditional web, you'd have the chance of getting your domain black listed via manual action. It doesn't seem the same here. I've removed literally hundreds of listings for a spam domain that creates fake listings, but I still find more. Unlike the traditional churn and burn of "pure" SEO spam, it's always the same domain. It's even worse if you're just using a phone number, because that's super easy to get another one.
There has to be some sort of network analysis they can do to find the garbage and get rid of it en masse. Playing whack a mole gets old fast.
I must thank you for the efforts you've put in penning this blog. I am hoping to check out the same high-grade content from you in the future as well. In fact, your creative writing abilities has motivated me to get my own website now ;)
I'm more than happy to find this page. I wanted to thank you for your time for this wonderful read!! I definitely enjoyed every bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new things in your web site.
not sure if this is the right place to post, but i am looking for a little bit of advice, i´m trying to do the seo on my new price comparison site.
What is better for seo and google - a website that is made from regions so the whole website is about one theme but covering all different areas, so for example a website about plumbers, and 50-100 pages of areas i.e plumbers in manchester, plumbers in london etc etc, and with each one having the contextual link to the home page.
Or
A website that is full of multiple categories, with 1 page each?
I read somewhere the importance of overall website theme relevance affects the seo, is this true?
Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Casey,
Great topic for the discussion, this tip is really very helpful for me.
I read your post and it's very interesting as well as very useful for me. thanks for such a nice post.