It is Sunday and the “We Buy Houses Mapsspam are no longer visible in the Google Maps index.
This particular case was reported to Google on August 1 in the
Google Maps for Business Blog.
This particular abuse was much more limited in scope than
the Computer Repair abuse in that it only targeted large metro areas rather than every zip code and only returned results on a brand rather than a broad search term. Additionally the listings disappeared after just 4 days rather than the 2 weeks of the original exploit.
I just came over to report and confirm what you saw. Moreover, previously an organic search for we buy houses w/ a town city name was creating a map insert in the organic listings. Now it doesn’t. The we buy houses listings are not showing directly in G Maps or by way of a maps insert.
Looks like fairly fast work after this issue went public, Mike.
congrats on the expose.
Dave
Comment by earlpearl (784 comments) — August 5, 2007 @ 12:54 pm
Google Maps Working on More Automated Local Spam Fighting Tool
Mike Blumenthal has been vigilant about uncovering and reporting abuse of Google Maps’s Local business submissions. In fact, in the past week or so, he has reported a couple of cases of Google Local abuse, where companies submitted hundreds or…
Trackback by Search Engine Roundtable — August 7, 2007 @ 8:02 am