Comments on: Google Maps: York ME Found; Google gets Letter from Congresswoman

By: Dave Marciniak

Dave Marciniak — Fri, 27 May 2011 01:34:11 +0000

Mike – it’s probably going to come to that, I have no doubt. But, we’ll see. It’s one of those things, it’s not a giant priority right this second because I’m crushingly busy. If I get rejected again, time to hire it out and move on. (see? I’m learning to hire out the stuff I’m bad at. Small Biz 101!)

By: Roger

Roger — Thu, 19 May 2011 14:46:14 +0000

Ha! I had to send this to a few clients to help them realize that we are not alone.

What a total mess Google has made of this service. Especially since last October when they started mixing Places with Organic I get nothing but confused emails and calls all day from clients: why does the Places listing show up sometimes but not always? where did the 7 pack go? why is my Tempe listing showing up for a phoenix search?

Safety in numbers is comforting but Places is really becoming quite the time suck.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 13 May 2011 15:34:42 +0000

@Dave
I would suggest that you hire someone that has a lot of experience to look at the listing.

By: Dave Marciniak

Dave Marciniak — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:52:07 +0000

I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one frustrated by the impenetrable Google. Two weeks ago I checked in on my Places page (that I’ve had for a couple years, back when it was Local Business) to see that my account was suspended for violating quality guidelines. No specific guidelines, mind you, just “it was something on this list here.” So I made the changes that I thought I needed to, put it through for review, and yesterday – denied. Still violating quality guidelines.

The worst part is that the email ended with “Cheers, the Google Team.” Cheers? Really? That’s like when I used to write parking tickets and I put a happy face next to my badge number…

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 03 May 2011 17:55:42 +0000

Great post and I totally agree! Not to self promote, but I recently wrote about this on the SEOmoz blog here. The more attention given to this topic at the government and corporate levels, hopefully the more quickly Google will realize how important this area really is.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 03 May 2011 14:47:03 +0000

Not sure if you have seen my article Places Purgatory that details the many levels of salvation but you might find it of interest.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Tue, 03 May 2011 13:36:59 +0000

Great Post as always, I’m passing it around to fellow SMBs.

Here’s a humorous take on the question “who anointed google god?”

http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/

By: earlpearl

earlpearl — Mon, 02 May 2011 16:38:40 +0000

EHG’s comments are spot on. They might be able to fix these issues via algo, but to date the answer has been a resounding NO.

I think that Congress person needs to distribute that complaint to others in Congress. They should bear down on Google.

Here is a simple answer.

1. Have MORE HUMAN EYES review more complaints, sending the info to more engineers and getting problems fixed

2. Have these humans/ with engineers communicate to those that have made the complaints.

Glory be. That would make Google like any other business.

Until they do that, they seem to occupy a rarified air, in which they can get away with this outrageous behavior of ignoring one and all.

The big issue is that their monopolistic control of the search market exaserbates the issue. Here is a blatent case where the Google monoply can have disasterous impact on others.

Who annointed Google as God???