Comments on: Google Maps: Tightening down on Locksmiths

By: Glenn Y

Glenn Y — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:46:00 +0000

@PureSheer
I believe that eventually much of the wild wild west and lawless aspects of the spammers will be brought under control. (gotta have hope)
But it is going to take a concerted effort to force the regulators to do their jobs. In California it’s BSIS, States attny general, district attnys, etc. Some states are really getting after it, but more is needed.

When Fraud is committed, there is more than one victim, the reciever of shoddy service and the company who lost out. So we can hope Google and others do their part, but if we don’t have prosecution, no long term change will happen. IMHO.

PPC might be harder to fix, but fraud will remain fraud so we will need the regulators. Ask they say in the movies “Regulators, mount up”

By: PureSheer

PureSheer — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:06:14 +0000

@Glenn
I agree with the % of spam listing in S.D.
in Total, in the Locksmith Industry, there was a great shift in past 1.5 months.
Dependable & it’s affiliates are licking their wounds in this time, so the amount of Local spam (which taking a lot of efforts) got reduced. BUT the PPC spam (which is much easier to execute) is gaining momentum.
Also, in the Bat area, 2 major players got kicked out from the field by the BSIS. Now they are in Toronto as well..

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:11:37 +0000

@Tito
Any time you would like to write up a 700 word “expose” of the inner workings of these guys, just let me know.

@Glenn
I would love to see your detailed analysis of this

By: Glenn Y

Glenn Y — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:10:10 +0000

@puresheer
We remain about 50-70% accurate on the 7 pak 2 months later, which a huge improvement. (up from 0%) So progress. I’m happy. Now onto Bing and Yahoo.

I’m discouraged by the daily listings in blogs and other directories under the term”locksmtih San Diego”. I Google Alert for that pharase and attempt to also post whenever I find a new directory or Blog that accepts submissions. I need to find a way to have that done for me.

If Google continues to give high credibility to Blog mentions, eventually the Map Spammers will be back in, as they are clearly working this angle. Although I want local search to be very relivent, blog postings for service business can be spammed this way too easily.

By: Tito

Tito — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:44:20 +0000

I used to work with one of the largest locksmith companies. They understand the importance of SEO and are willing to do anything to get to the top. And I mean anything…

I had to get out of the industry because of the lack of regulation and licensing. I thought maybe it was just the company i worked for that was shady, but I have quickly discovered this is not just limited to them.

These companies are familiar with lots of listing techniques going back to the days of 411 database manipulation and yellow page manipulation.

I’m glad google cleaned up!

By: Year In Review: Local Search & Maps

Year In Review: Local Search & Maps — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:42:00 +0000

[...] Google’s enormous credit, locksmith-infested SERPs have been pretty clean since late summer are now made up almost entirely of legitimate business owners. Next up in the game of Map Spam [...]

By: PureSheer

PureSheer — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:35:25 +0000

@ Glenn

Saw your listing over there couple of days ago. Well done & many Congrats!!

However, in the 7 pack for ‘locksmith San Diego”, results- B (real estate office), F (don’t know what that is) & G (mall or something like that). All of those are real addresses but fake ones, of course.

Tell me if I got it wrong. Thanks & way to go!

By: Glenn Y

Glenn Y — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:24:01 +0000

Happy Day!
I may have missed it, but clearly a major chance hammened in the last few days relating to map spam for locksmith. Although there had been some improvement, that then went away, as of 11-14-09 we have no map spam in the 7 pak, AND the organic listing for “Locksmiths San Diego” is mostly clean. After 2 years of total map spam, Grah Safe and Lock is listed on the 7 pak for most of our terms! And we are above the fold on our organic as well. Thanks must go out to Miriam @ Solas, the good work looks to be paying off.

The trial on the sale of the 3 Local search listings is in effect in San Diego for “locksmith San Diego”, and the mapspam folks have all three of those spots now. So they are not owning the 7pak, but they are still around.

Even in expanded map view 90% of the business listed are real, with real addresses. There are a few fraudulent address spammers amoung the expanded map view, but 90% are good, and have been for almost a week.

Yipee! Let’s hold out hope they have an Algo that works!

By: Acme Lock

Acme Lock — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:38:49 +0000

Google needs to put Google Maps out of it’s misery and go back to relying on page rank to determine relevance. Google Maps seems to have a new set of “local locksmith” listings every day in Phoenix. My legitimate brick and morter shop no longer gets shown (and we had 200 real customer reviews!!!) while you can see several listings from fraudulent companies (those reported to BBC and FTC).

The trouble with targeting keywords to get scammers is that it also removes many legitimate listings that are out there.

By: Priceless

Priceless — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:27:51 +0000

I can confirm that just having the term locksmith in the title AND believe it or not even in the category section results in a listing getting flagged. Crazy but it is true. I believe that google is using this to stop locksmiths from adding new listings so they can start ferreting through the spammers without having to deal with the thousands of NEW listings that get added everyday.