Understanding Google Maps & Local Search – Developing Knowledge about Local Search

I have done some reporting on a new, more sophisticated occurrence of MapSpam on Google and Yahoo in an article at SearchEngineLand: MapSpammers Getting More Sophisticated. The story was based on techniques originally described in a post at oooff.com. This newest approach integrates all of the previous ideas of listing a business at a central po box/ mail distribution center, naming the business and domain with your search phrase + location for each of the major markets and linking them back to a website that presents a home page based on those variables.

There have been additional on-going reports in Google Groups-Maps for Business of a more local type of spam where a business will list itself at numerous locations or more likely numerous names at one location. Here is one of the posts:

I work for a company who owns www.NewYears.com. A competing company(newyearseve.com) has recently registered hundreds of fake”businesses” using the address “Suite 7W, 133 West 25th Street, NewYork, NY” and the phone number (212) 724-3900 all with the keyword”New Years” in the title using different variations of the address.

They’ve done this to fool Google into including them at the top of allsearch results that have local information associated with it. Thismust be some kind of new SEO scam and its definitely working. Thesebusinesses do not exist and are taking away from the website thatactually have decent SEO. Is there some way I can report this Google?If its happening to us, I’m sure its happening to others as well.

You can test this by going to google.com and searching for “new yearseve nyc”

It appears that Google has recently removed these listings and the original thread but it is interesting that the mapspam in now appears in specific local markets as well as nationally driven local spam in the major markets. Local has arrived.