Comments on: Google Places Quality Guideline Update

By: Google Places Updates Quality Guidelines | Understanding Google Maps & Local Search

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:45:50 +0000

[...] update almost exactly one year ago. There have been a number of often critical additions (here, here and here) during the past 12 [...]

By: Google Maps: Melbourne Web Designers – A Mosh pit of Decay | Understanding Google Maps & Local Search

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:05:19 +0000

[...] dig through the annals of Map spam. Obviously every business name in the list included Business Title Spam. Who knew that there were so many firms in town named “Web Design [...]

By: Kennstdueinen.de Blog

Kennstdueinen.de Blog — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:32:55 +0000

Google Places: Verschärfte Qualitätsrichtlinien für den Eintrag…

Google verschärft die Qualitätsrichtlinien für Einträge in Google Places In dem Benutzerhandbuch für Google Places wurde der Abschnitt “Qualitätsrichtlinien für Unternehmenseinträge” in der US-Version überarbeitet (Die deutsche Version ist …

By: SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 26, 2010

SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 26, 2010 — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:57:39 +0000

[...] Google Places Quality Guideline Update, Mike Blumenthal [...]

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:50:32 +0000

@Miriam

Your guess is as good as mine. What is obviously clear enough to them is not so very to us.

By: MiriamEllis

MiriamEllis — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:47:09 +0000

I would really like a Google employee to come to this post and clarify this. It’s hard for me to believe this is what Google means (Re. pizza, hotel, coffee etc.) They can’t mean that, can they?

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 18:50:45 +0000

@Stever

I would agree with you but then why write a rule that makes “criminals” of basically all of us? Could they have not written a rule that targets the abuses that they are looking to curb and not cut such a wide swatch?

By: Stever

Stever — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 18:45:21 +0000

Seems to me this is the kind of rule that cannot be enforced to the letter. So then by having the rule in place they can selectively enforce it as they see fit. A coffee shop cannot describe the coffee they serve, using the word coffee? (We only sell fair trade organic ~~coffee~~) A pizza shop cannot describe its signature dish? (Home of the double deep dish ~~pizza~~). An independent auto repair shop cannot mention its accomplishments? (voted the best ~~auto repair~~ shop in ~~Cincinnati~~ by WKRP listeners.) Those are accurate and fair descriptions. - fact I do however see some people stuffing description fields and custom attribute fields with nothing but comma separated keywords, or repetitive uses of category and location keywords (new york limo- our new york limousines are the best limos in new york city, rent a NY limo today). Google obviously wants to curb that. If they plan to enforce this algorithmically then it becomes a matter of how many occurrences of the "bad words" will trigger the filter. Surely they wont set it to 1.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:24:24 +0000

@David

You have described the catch-22 better than I could have. Thanks

@Olivier & Payne

It is, as David points out, a rule that is very difficult to be in compliance with. It is unclear Google’s intent with the new rule and if and when it will be applied

By: David Kyle

David Kyle — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:11:47 +0000

Very good point Mike!

Like Olivier, I can think of many businesses that officialy use a category as part of their business name.

The word “never” seems extreme. I believe a better guideline would be:

“Content in the the title and category fields should have a very low density in the description and custom attribute fields, if not at all.”

This guideline leaves a real catch 22 for a lot of businesses.

Be in compliance by removing categories that contain the business name, and most likely lose rank

Don’t comply and eventually lose rank via a spam penalty.