I feel the same way you do. I handle listings for our law firm. We have 35 offices in 3 states and only practice one type of law. Our firm has been around since 1983 and we are far and away the largest firm in our area doing what we do, without question. I have had so much trouble trying to get obsolete, incorrect data off google with no help from Google. It seems they’ll take any info someone will give them and post it, but they act like it’s impossible to take it off. This, like you say is affecting people’s businesses. Some are receiving an artificial benefit while others are being shackled by an artificial handcuff. In the industry of law too, is it really good business do not do the research to suggest the firms that do the best job rather than firms who are more web savvy and don’t have so much old data to flush out to optimize? The way things are now, a tightly coded web page from some one who just got their bar number yesterday could place ahead of a veteran firm without such a grasp on the technology….or with decades of aggregate information still being passed around by these information monger companies….which is a whole other issue that’s equally as frustrating as this google nonsense. It just doesn’t come across as legitimate to me.

I think we all need to do what we can to help Bing get to the point where it keeps Google honest. We need to remember the old adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And I too think that google should at least be able to show what you violated rather than send you to a page that provides no assistance.

Google has a the market share here in the US.No one uses the yellow pages we have delivered every year,there door stops.
My business is a little different, i advertise on craigslist and have free business listing with every search engine i can.
I own a mobile auto repair business, alot of my customers come from 1411 information services and people searching “roadside assistance or roadside service”" on there smart phone.
With google going thru its growing pains it is costing me greatly.What would you do in my place, i have posted aver and again in the LBC forums about my issues with little help.
I do have regular customers that i service there fleet vehicles but as the economy slows so do the miles on there vehicles.Google is my fall back cash sourch.

I own a mobile auto repair business and have had my listing poof into thin air 3 times in a 4 week period. My business listing accounts for about 40% of my cash flow and every minute its down i loose out.
I have been able to get 1 google employee to help out and get the listing back up, but she could not tell me why it went poof?

As well i have had issues with other business’s posting bogus reviews with no ability to contest them.There is a clear path to follow back to the business bashing mine.I am considering using adwords but am affraid, yes i said it , affraid the same thing will happen with down time.

Alot of my business is late night eraly morning , when google does its down time for fixes and such which it happens to be when the listing has been down all 3 times.Should i invest into adwords?Will it have the same issues?No one has been able to guarantee me this.

WHELP!!!

… with the exception of “It makes businesses that are shown happy”…. The LBC glitches and spam do the opposite. They cause frustration, stress, and a huge distraction from productive business activities for a very large number of small businesses.

… my words of wisdom to all that have been spammed and are not insured against legal expenses is to threaten legal action and state that if you have to pay the £500 for a solicitors warning letter, you will pursue this expense and escilate proceedings through the small claims court instead…. this way it costs very little

Google’s goal is to organize all of the world’s information. They present information on the main search page that they think people are looking for. They then test the results to be sure that the results are what people want and if they are not, they change them.

So we can only assume that when someone types “Restaurant, Olean” in Google and Google returns the 10 Pack at the top that searchers respond positively to that.

Google obviously receives several benefits:
1)It keeps searchers happy
2)It makes businesses that are shown happy
3)It provides a path for SMBs to move from the LBC into adwords.

Adwords growth will ultimately come from this market.

As to whether I know the reason for its creation….no, I have no special insight into Google in this matter.