Comments on: Will David Mihm get lost in the Big Apple?

By: Mihmorandum | Links of Local Interest, Volume 5 | Links of Local Interest

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:53:41 +0000

[...] spam in New York is so bad that it has even taken over well-known, venerable institutions like the Morgan Library and the Plaza [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:42:43 +0000

@Peter Yes, the hijacked restaurant and hotel listings are country wide. Although on a historical side note Philadelphia has been at the forefront of Locksmith Mapspam as the locksmiths were engaged in bulk upload spam prior to this tactic. @David Yes, class action suits given the protection provided by federal law is unlikely. Certainly society really can't tolerate the ready theft of services and brands that Google has facilitated. The business case is strong for Google to handle this as there will only be increased public awareness and government scrutiny. On a related note. there is an interesting filing before the FTC currently about breaches of Google's "secure" cloud applications. While it relates to individual, not business data, it points to increasing scrutiny of Google's practices. Mike

By: DavidW

DavidW — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:40:00 +0000

One thing I don’t think we will see is a successful class action law suit against Google for map spam. Google owns their results we just use them.

They’ve provided good results (for the most part) in their organic search and people have come to expect this, but if tomorrow they decided to replace all the results with just Wikipedia results that would be their choice and the only thing anyone could do would be to go to another search engine.

I am not defending Google here, I think they need to get this problem under control, I just don’t think anyone should hold their breath for a successful lawsuit around this.

By: Peter Wyspianski

Peter Wyspianski — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:47:31 +0000

Mike,
Seems that locksmith spam reached Philadelphia. A great ‘El vez’ restaurant was hijacked by a1locksmithphiladelphia.com (which ranks 3rd for ‘Philadelphia restaurants’ now. The ‘El vez’ listing seems to be claimed but still…
The a1locksmithphiladelphia.com ranks 1st for ‘locksmith Philadelphia’ with all 94 reviews of ‘El vez’.
Why Google is not banning these locksmith domains? This is getting ridiculous now..
Peter

By: Samantha

Samantha — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:23:55 +0000

One more comment before I go back to crying in my beer along with the thousands of other small business owners compromised by Google, lol but where are the attorneys? The whole set up just screams class action lawsuit!

By: Samantha

Samantha — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:53:08 +0000

@Earlpearl
Thank you for your input. It does seem that Google is in the know, as seeing that my local non spam listing was removed just one week later. Perhaps because I was a adwords customer is the reason that my listing was removed.This business even has a negative review from someone that actually tried to visit the fake address but when the listing shows up on the organic searches it does not show it has any reviews at all. If Google is indeed in the know, then not only is it perpetuating mail fraud, but a case can be made for this to be considered racketeering. I guess the real question is who do I bribe over at Google?

By: MiriamEllis

MiriamEllis — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:52:09 +0000

Let’s just hope David doesn’t lose his keys in NY.

By: Earlpearl

Earlpearl — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:27:00 +0000

@ Samantha: The sad thing is that Google’s inability or unwillingness to tackle this consistent volume of spam is resulting in Google controlling who wins or loses on a commercial level. Google’s impact is allowing for a select few businesses to control all visibility from consumers, starve out the others…..and probably cost the consumer a pretty penny.

All they have to do is turn off maps from appearing in organic serps.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:21:41 +0000

@Stever

Yes it is all very disorienting….but if you do you loose your keys be sure that you have plenty of cash to pay for the $55 quoted job that comes in at $155.

@Samantha
The solutions will not be quick nor will the path be smooth. They, for whatever reason, are tone deaf to the needs of the many small business people that are affected by this.

The business and social case for Google to take care of this and quickly are strong…but there is no guarantee that they will be able to solve the problems.

By: Stever

Stever — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:09:02 +0000

Yeah, earl is right, you might loose your sense of direction, but you’re all set if you loose your keys. And all those locksmiths standing on guard makes NYC the safest city on the planet.

Unless your keeping all your valuables locked away in a safe, there’s a lot of people in your neighborhood that know how to crack it open.