My wife’s business, whose business data was not widely distributed across the internet or offline but is in the Local Business Center, has received the following offer in a direct mail piece from Google:
The offer, which drops to $75 after September 30 and expires on November 30th, offers this 6 Step program for her to start an ad campaign:
While Google has promoted AdWords to SMB’s in the past, this piece is clearly targeted at a business whose data came from the Local Business Center. Google Maps and the Local Business Center offers a treasure trove of marketing information that up to now has not been widely used by Google.
In July, Google kicked off their Favorite Places Campaign with an event in San Francisco that featured product demos and speakers to educate smb’s about Maps and Adwords. They also introduced videos and ads that targeted SMBs in an effort to transition them from Maps to Adwords and become paying customers.
The strategy is sound, only impeded by the still immature nature of the Local Business Center. As a first introduction to Google it might scare off more SMB’s than it attracts.
I will be speaking again this year at SMX East on the panel: Ranking Tactics For Local Search.
Chaired by Greg Sterling, I will be joining a veritable who’s who in Local. The other speakers are (arranged alphabetically):
Mary Bowling
David Mihm
Will Scott
Andrew Shotland
Please let me know if you will be there, as I would love to meet up!
Do you remember Bizarro World from Superman?
A Wikipedia refresher: In the Bizarro world of “Htrae” (“Earth” spelled backwards), society is ruled by the Bizarro Code which states “Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!”. In one episode, for example, a salesman is doing a brisk trade selling Bizarro bonds: “Guaranteed to lose money for you”. Later, the mayor appoints Bizarro No. 1 to investigate a crime, “Because you are stupider than the entire Bizarro police force put together”. This is intended and taken as a great compliment.
My current working theory is that Google Maps is a secret entrance to the Bizarro world of Superman although the bond scenario noted above is spookingly prescient of our world. My thinking here is buttressed by Google Map’s “System Error” message presented to those that have been banned for who knows how long from the Local Business Center for suspected spamming:
System Error
We’re sorry, but we are unable to serve your request at this time. Please try back in a few minutes.
It is one of the most bizarre, perhaps sadistic messages in all computing history. Asking the suspected spammer to check back in a few minutes is a very weird touch.
As further proof that Google Maps is a portal to Bizarro World, I relay this tale that was received yesterday as a comment on my post: System Error, Googlespeak for Banned?
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Mike, We’ve run into a brick wall with Google. I’ve followed some of your posts and response on the Maps forums and your blog here. I agree with your conclusions on Google’s inane policy of banning. I believe we’ve been banned by this exact “System Error” since February (more than 6 months).
I’ve posted in the Maps help forum and I’ve filed 6 reinclusion requests – pretty much one a month. I’ve never heard anything back from anyone at Google. Our other Google services still work (including our non-profit-status YouTube channel), but we are banned / blocked from the LBC.
We are a regional health system, with 4000+ employees, two hospitals, a third medical campus, and many clinics, departments, facilities, physician practices, services, joint-ventures, medical offices, etc. Our facilities have a wide variety of names, but all are part of our health system.
Most of our facilities are in one of two towns – Town A and Town B. But, we often also have multiple locations for a specific service. For example, our seniors services has a building in Town A near Hospital A, and a second location in Town B in Hospital B. Our Rehabilitation Services has four locations, two stand-alone in Town A, one stand-alone in Town B, and one in Hospital B in Town B.
Because there are multiple services in one building (or campus), many have the same address. But, senior services, birthing services, and volunteers and the charity foundation are all very different entities that are in the same building (or 3-building campus) and the same mailing address. Before we started claiming listings, there were already over 100 listings for all of our services and facilities in Goggle Maps.
However, several were incorrect – wrong phone number, wrong location, old location, no street address (just the town), missing locations, etc. – and there were several duplicates. We don’t use any SEO company or anyone else – it’s just me, a one-man show for our web services. I started claiming all of those listings, which was its own monumental feat. I couldn’t verify most of them by phone, because I couldn’t get to all of those locations and talk to the employee who might answer it first.
We did postcards for most of them, but that took a concerted effort to try to get the mailrooms and all of the locations to forward those to me, as they had no idea what the post cards were. I was trying to clean up and simplify our listings, including removing any duplicates. That worked for a while, and then one day we were banned (I assume) with the “System Error.”
Now, all of those listings are gone and many items have been removed from Maps and I still have a stack of post cards that I’m ready to enter to verify the listings. I’ve read the Business Listing Guidelines several times, and we were not blatantly violating any of those, and none of them intentionally.
But, it’s possible Google thought we were based on their interpretation of our listings, even if their interpretation is wrong (such as multiple locations, as I mentioned above). Any ideas? We’re stuck, and meanwhile there are wrong numbers and addresses out there that patients and the public are calling or visiting, and I can’t do anything to fix it.
Author : Jeff Wiley
E-mail : jgw1 at the following domain – pvhs.org
URL : http://www.pvhs.org
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I have no idea whether Jeff has sinned or been sinned against, no idea whether he is caught in Bizarro World or being properly punished for some heinous act.
I do know that he deserves a straight answer from Google as to what he did, what he needs to do to be reinstated and when he might expect that to occur.
I also am of the strongly held belief that Google should be capable of designing error messages that are honest and communicative, messages that are from this world and not from some alternative universe.
There is another possible reason for the stats to drop to zero over night on the Local Business Center Dashboard: You’ve been penalized for category spamming . The new penalty, first noted by Chris Silver Smith last week, dings your listing and causes it to loose standing precipitously. It does not preclude you from editing your listing in the Local Business Center.
A user in the Maps forum posted about a preciptious drop in his listings in the Google Map Help forums last week. Upon investigation it became obvious that his listing included multiple categories and geo phrases in the category fields. Removing the category cramming and geo phrases immediately (as in 30 minutes) brought his listing back into 10 Pack view.
Here are some examples of his choices to fill a single category field, which when removed returned his listing to the 10 Pack although in many fewer searches:
los angeles arabic classes, los angeles german classes, los angeles hebrew classes, los angeles japanese classes, los angeles persian classes, los angeles russian classes, los angeles korean classes, los angeles latin classes, los angeles thai classes
Clearly having multiple phrases on your category fields offers the possibility of your listing being returned on many more searches. For a business that doesn’t bother to read the guidelines or that is looking to gain a temporary advantage, it is easy to abuse Google’s categorization options.
The Google Maps Listing Guidelines as they relate to categories cramming and spamming are as follows:
• When entering categories, use only those that directly describe your business.
• Do not submit related categories that do not define your business. For example, a taxi company might properly categorize itself as “Airport Transportation”, but it would be inaccurate to also use the category “Airport”.
• Also, please use each category field to enter a single category. Do not list multiple categories or keywords in one field.
Interestingly while the poster was penalized, his close competitors had multiple categories per field but without the geo phrases and did not receive the penalty.
So it raises the question of what exactly can go into the custom category fields and what behaviors you would recommend? Does Google’s lack of enforcement imply tacit acceptance or support for category cramming?
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