I certainly was not defending the use of the “details” area. I would agree that it provides little actual benefit to searcher, too deep, too far afield….I look at it at a debugging report that gives some insight into Google’s bad data.

I had not heard the Yahoo statement. That is very interesting, a certain conflict of interest but interesting. It is surprising that that info is not noted in their materials on line, is it? It would allow “pay for play” business title optimization. It may need to come to that at Google as well. hmm…

Mike

It makes me think of something, though. I was speaking to you Yahoo local rep this week, and I asked him to describe to me the value of paying $9.95 for their more enhanced local listing service.

He said that one of the benefits was that it locks your registered information in as the authority source, but that otherwise, your information may be overwritten by data from an outside source (one of the places Yahoo is scraping from).

I found this very interesting that money paid per month can lock out exterior data and presumably, eliminate the kind of error and clutter we are seeing in Google.

Had you heard of this before, Mike?

Dave – You surely are right.
Miriam

Mike

search for customer service (any city). Depending on the city you might find a 10 pack map

Did you know that Google’s headquarters are in Mountain View, California.

Repeat the search for customer service Mountain View, California

Not surprising. Google doesn’t make the top 10 in the 10 pack.

Dave

Amen to that! You have nailed it.

Mike

Should Google cleanse the records and information on behalf of both you and your client, that would be one small step for “pain control” but I don’t think it would be a giant step for anyone.

The root issue as you describe might well be the root signals from various sources that infiltrate the listing and add information from unknown sources.

How confusing. If it stems from addresses in which there are multiple offices in a building…then it certainly merits correction.

I wonder why entering data in the LBC doesn’t take precedence?

I suppose there are many ways to “spam” the LBC and enter data from a source that doesn’t represent the owner/webmaster. Still it seems that entering data from the LBC should be the dominant source and take precedence over all other information.

It would be neat and helpful if Google would comment upon this. Even better would be a fix.

I suppose it is illuminating into how Google thinks in seeing where the erroneous information appears and where it doesn’t.

I just don’t get it. So many engineers, so much brain power….so little effort at correcting the problems.

Dave

Here is an example of possibly “appropriate” use of the detail – Sugeon Orchard Park NY.

In this case I think that Google got the practice members accurate.

the problem seems to stem from a link between the address, multiple offices at that location and some web signals that indicate that they should elevate the importance of certain of the those signals to the “detail” level. They then “forget” to give priority to the LBC when that happens.

I can’t wait unitl they have my personal medical record. US medical costs per capita will go from 2.5x Europe’s to who knows how high….ah the gains from technology.

That’s a good question. I think it is (was?) Google’s hope to provide things like specialty etc on Doctors etc. At least in the medical field they end up using such disparate choices and link them so innaccurately that they have little accuracy and no value.

Mike

Yes the errors are pervasive and it does reduce usability.

I am hoping though that Google doesn’t say “we didn’t work on THAT problem for 18 months because it didn’t have an impact on the end use experience.” As we have seen with the previous medical record issues the maps could send emegency room visits the wrond way or inundate a secretary with unnecessary calls…

In this case the bad phone number did show up (although temporarily) in the Local 10-Pack.

Mike

I have noticed similar errors in the Google local listings for attorneys. It reduces useability and relevance of local search when Google pollutes good business profile date with bad info culled from various databases.