This SMB continues to experience merged data problems.

They assert the problem has remained for virtually 2 months:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/maps/thread?tid=54b35a617f54c926&hl=en

They are a moving company. Imagine if they broke your furniture in a move…you contacted them to complain…

and they wouldn’t even answer the phone for 2 months.

tsk tsk tsk

Thanks for the response. Having scanned comments today, what I noticed about that response was 38 days . That is a long time.

I saw that the guy wasn’t in compliance. Is there a process that clearly spells out what a person needs to do to get into compliance? If not, it is probably beyond that of most business owners. If there isn’t a simple process it may well be beyond most smb owners. They aren’t webmasters.

I suppose I should have chosen someone who has been caught in the “web” of algo problems and the problem remains in existance for a period of time.

Those are the people who are left out in the cold by “lack of customer service”.

Glad to see you “guyz” are monitoring the comments here. I wish you were monitoring LBC maps spam and responding as quickly as you responded to my comments.

The one that blew me away recently was identification of a business that name spammed the google LBC records recently. Bingo…with that effort the business got into a 7 pac where they hadn’t been there before. I reported it. I referenced a very official name. I still see the business w/the spammy name sitting high up in maps. To me that is an open invitation to spam google records.

I’ll give you a different issue in google groups for maps:

Sunnywest asked for help on 11/25. This search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=luxury+scottsdale+resorts&revid=1620836695&ei=iakAS5gIiPaxA57SjbcL&sa=X&oi=revisions_inline&resnum=0&ct=broad-revision&cd=6&ved=0CFwQ1QIoBQ

is turning up a plusbox.

I offered suggestions. I added the caveat that I’m not a google employee. I referenced that this kind of problem had occurred in the past. You guys seemed to fix errant plusboxes via algo a while ago…but this issue has arisen.

I refernced 2 ways to potentially fix it (on his own site and through possible “signals” from other sites…but I also referenced that Google will probably need to deal with it, especially if the “signal(s)” for the plusbox are coming from websites other than his own.

(this comes from experience…..Imagine how hard “no IMPOSSIBLE” it is to get inappropriate “signals” removed from a 3rd party website….when nobody is responsible for it anymore). I’ve dealt with that.

The misappropriate plusbox is still showing. Has the guy been contacted by google. Is there customer service? Is anything being done to fix the problem?

My frustration is that the reorganization of Google groups for maps looks nice. It still doesn’t seem to generate customer service.

Again, I’d like to see any of these smb’s survive without giving quick customer service.

In this particular case perhaps Earlpearl is wrong but IN GENERAL, I would have to support him in his argument that Google takes the approach that he quoted of Joel above…where Google does not deal with individual reports of spam even though its impact is great.

I understand Google’s goal of scaling solutions to fight these things, but smb’s for the most part are surviving day to day and can’t wait for your algo to catch up with their needs.

A better approach (from my point of view and I think that of most SMBs) would be to manually “suspend” or “hide” spam from view in the results until such time as your algo can do the job. It would at least then appear that you care and would give you time to solve the real problem in good time.

Please note that some of users who post in the Maps Help forum have business listings that do comply with our Business Listing Quality Guidelines (http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528). The user you cited listing, currently does not comply with our guidelines.

We hope that those who post in the forum are aware of our guidelines and follow them, but many do not and therefore encounter issues as to why their listing does not display on Maps, just like the user above.

Best,
Maps Guide Linda

38 days and counting. Business listing still flagged, come on google pull your finger out! Report abuse

robert3583
Level 1
10:29 AM
Maybe google have bitten off more than they can chew. Zero support for business listing.

The Singular major problem persists. There is simply no Customer Service.

I operate smbs. In certain cases I have contacted Google directly. I have yet to get a response. I have yet to see “clear examples” of spamming google’s lbc acted on by Google support staff.

I see google spam working. I saw a business which changed its google record name from its real name to a spam name that included “local geography”. The result was a higher ranking in google maps.

I reported it with examples of the real name. The record still sits in a high ranking in google maps.

Why bother setting up standards and then not enforcing them. It is an invitation to spam. Your blog gets a lot of attention. This response is an open acknowledgement that:

1. Spamming google records works
2. Google isn’t acting on spam reports

I can’t imagine an actual SMB that would operate in a fashion to its customers as Google Maps acts to SMBS.

Complete indifference to the Customer Service requests to customers would result in the worst reputation one could imagine.

This is even more remarkable in this day and age, when customer service responses on the web can destroy a business’s reputation.

As I referenced to you earlier, when Google established two new requirements with regard to names, I went back and looked up the LBC records on a number of businesses that I had entered. I actually surprised myself, as I referenced to you. Every LBC record entered used an appropriate business name. I’m aware enough of Google’s algo’s to know that a variety of spamming techniques would have helped. I hadn’t done it.

Now I see businesses blatently breaking those standards, benefitting from Google’s algo’s, being reported, and Google doing nothing.

(Joel H’s response….from 11/27 is a clear example of non-customer service

” Joel H
Google Employee
11/27/09
earlpearl – I think I’ve mentioned this before – we don’t necessarily take individual action on every report submitted. However, we do use the information to feed into our ranking algorithms. Those reports are always useful.

My response is
Why don’t you take action. You set up guidelines. It appears that Google neither enforces those guidelines, and in doing so, encourages twisted spamming reports.

By the way, I continue to go into Google Groups and I continue to see SMB’s cry out for help. In a number of those cases these businesses reference that the problem has been ongoing for at least several weeks.

In sum….nice window dressing change, Google. No substitive improvements on customer service.