Ah but you didn’t answer the question: Do you have any suggestions as to getting back into Maps? Do you think Google should offer amnesty or a second chance?

Do you think this fellow has a leg to stand on?

Mike

I have been looking at LA lawyer spam all morning and even without his records, what is left is pretty amazing.

He is very upset at the “loss” of business since his records have been removed. He had to lay off the extra person he brought in to deal with the volume generated from his Map’s success. I pointed out that it might be looked at as having been a temporary gain, he didn’t see it that way.

Mike

Thanks for the comments, Matt. Is there a way that you define acceptable versus unacceptable multiple references to a local business, be it via Google Maps or via organic rankings?

Dave

That’s good to know. During a few parts of the interview I felt like you were giving this fellow “air time” after he’d said that there were multiple listings with bad data. Certainly the argument that “other people were spamming, so I thought I would” carries very little weight with Google.

I agree with matt cutts that a business owner needs to check up on his listings. I agree google had the right and duty to ban me.

But I wanted to point out that I paid a guy to do this for me. That was my biggest mistake. Mike blumenthal pointed out that the mass spamming was inexcusable. I agree.

This prompted me to learn maps. I took measures. I ended the spam. I reported the people I paid my former web master to copy.

I think mike saw how extreme it was.

I just want you all to know that I spent several years of article writing, reading matt cutt’s blogs and optimizing my site. Maps came along and guys with crappy low pr sites took over the top.

I did exactly what they did. Maps was still a new technology. I hired a person to optimize it. I learned my lesson. guys with crummy sites in less relevant geographical areas are getting my business due to mass spamming.

I agree all spam should be stopped. But I did not even know I was mapspamming till I came to the forum and got called out by a member then I learned mashing and read the maps rules. I was shocked. My webmaster said no problem don’t worry.

I termed him. All I know is that I have fought hard to tell my side and earn the privilege of getting back in. I think blumenthal and cutts can agree that of all people I am the last person who would ever engage in mapspam intentionally.

All I am asking for is a chance to get back in. I am even willing to pay. It has hurt my business. Blumenthal brought up that I got a windfall. But in reality, when guys with crappy sites got that great map at the very top next to their name, they got the windfall. I only wanted to get where they were.

In all events, I am licking my wounds and leave my firm and family and employees at the mercy of google maps. Semper fi. /s/ mike

Response by pazemikeIn response to Steve Espinosa. The spamming involved the guy I hired doing bulk uploads of multiple listings for the same address.

he also submitted totally bogus addresses. One was to a freakin park!! He said he was an seo expert with local and I paid him almost ten grand.

Again, I learned about this after coming to the maps forum and was told by a form member I was spamming.

At first I was defensive. I read the maps rules, spoke to the webmaster. he said it was fine and that is how to get premier positioning.

Listings then disappeared and here we are.

I am a responsible business owner. If I wasn’t I would not be here of my own accord risking the wrath of Matt Cutts and the Maps team.

It took me almost three (3) years to get good page rank and natural language placement through writing articles, making videos, blogs, etc.

Now that I finally understand Maps, I am banned. I never said, nor did I imply it is ok to spam since everyone else does What I did say is that it was unfair to single me out after I actually came to the Maps forum for help with a Maps problem, and not ban the other people.

So everyone out there. My advice. I would hire a guy like Mike Blumenthal to be your Maps Guide, rather than risking everything by paying someone else who claims to be an “expert”

@Matt- PanzerMike is quite capable of hanging himself with his own petard so I didn’t want to be preachy in the format of the interview. From my point of view the facts speak reasonably well for themselves.

I would also agree with Dave, Miriam and on this one issue with PanzerMike that the rules as to what is spam, are as yet an unspoken secret in Maps. The last time I asked Jen, I recall being told that Google did not want to formalize the rules as that would be too inflexible but that I would know it when I saw it…We all see these things differently and it may be time for google and every other local player to sit down and define what mapspam is.

I would also agree with Miriam that a clear set of public Or semi-public guidelines for readmission would be appropriate.

I would likewise support your more aggressive spam fighting in Local. For local’s future success, its content needs to be meaningful, fair and reflect our community’s realities and not become the snake oil salesman of the new millenium.

@Stephan – I have been looking at the spam in that market and it seems to a combination of heavy keyword stuffing, heavy linking from domain specific mirrored sites, multiple keyword listings per location. In PanzerMike’s situation I presume that in addition to the above that some of the many listings were from bogus locations as well to get more coverage as he didn’t have as many locations as his competitor.

@PanzerMike re I think blumenthal and cutts can agree that of all people I am the last person who would ever engage in mapspam intentionally.

I don’t know that. I do believe that you have learned from this but I have no way of knowing that you would be the last person to engage in mapspam intentionally. Just like there is the possibility of evil Priests in this world there is the possibility of Marine Lawyers that have a cloudy view of reality. What was it that Shakespeare said? “Me thinks she doth protest too loudly”

I also know that from where I sit, you should sit back, reflect, stop defending yourself publicly (enough already) and get on with the task of promoting your business in an appropriate way.

Mike

Mike/Miriam, imho, raised the most important point(s) here.

1) Until when is Google going to continue to be a black, impenetrable box to all but the select few that know someone who can get them answers, or vent on a popular blog like this one and thus force a response? Matt, you make a huge effort to communicate with webmasters, but your company as a whole is a public relations disaster as far as communicating with stakeholders like SMBs.

2) Google needs to understand that webmasters/site owners are its clients just as much as people buying AdWords are clients. If something doesn’t make sense or isn’t working properly, or a site randomly drops a few hundred positions (as one distressed business owner recently called me about), they need to be able to talk to someone. Webmaster relations aren’t a cost, they’re an investment in your branding and reputation.

It’s such an irony that the company that controls the web’s most popular SERPs should give itself these reputation management issues…

@Mike B/Matt: A hotel I work with has a hostel as well, and they used to have both sites on one domain. Result being that reviews for the hostel are mixed with those for the hotel, lowering the hotel’s average review scores. How in hell do we separate out the reviews? (Asking this in the appropriate Google Groups for Maps got me nowhere.)

Hi Gab

I strongly agree with you about the site owners as clients. I would take that thought one step further and propose that the Local Business Center users are the critical vanguard of their users and rather than fixing those bugs that they confront down the list, the make them a priority.

Along the lines of your communication to SMB’s suggestion: Google Maps has had a Maps bug that conflates two records, usually when they are at the same address.

Yet many posters in the Group and panzermike above, oblivious to the bug, assume that it was the evil work of an insidious competitor. Google has to my knowledge not officially acknowledged it. To their credit, they do respond when asked to fix it. But, to me, it makes sense for Google to be out front, leading on communicating about the issue and fixing these these types of bugs sooner rather than later.

By the same token, it sure is the case that these extreme situations highlight the contradictions, and it is easy (for me at least) to back seat drive on Google’s behalf.

Mike

@Mike Blumenthal,

To answer your questions first:
1. All I can suggest is that he move and change his firm name 🙂
2. On first blush I tend to agree with @panzermike — there should be a “mea culpa” button just like the reinclusion request. It’s not unbelievable that one would hire an unscrupulous SEO who would hurt them without their knowledge.

I want to be clear I’m aware of the Pollyanna stance in answer 2. We don’t know enough to be confident there wasn’t an intent to spam. And we don’t know how many bulk uploads against how many shadow domains or any of that.

That said, I recall a discussion in which it seemed you were saying that Mapsguide Jen indicated that in the absence of rules anything goes.

It’s not news that I think maps is half-baked. There are no clear cut rules and even when significant research is done to demonstrate ranking factors they still appear spammable.

It’s the ultimate arrogance of Google to believe that “Don’t be evil” translates well at this level.

And I feel @panzermike’s pain. I approached @Matt Cutts directly at SES and pointed him to a clearly spammy link network which dominates the SERPS for high-value phrases on spam blogs and advanced 3-way linking alone.

They still outrank historically authoritative sources today.

So where does it end?

It doesn’t until the FTC gets involved.

Google is synonymous with search. Buyers are moving online leading merchants there as well.

Searchers don’t know the difference between relevance and spam… merchants don’t have another sales channel which touches as many buyers… and without guidance and an equitable response on Google’s part to incidents of abuse it doesn’t get better.

It’s the merchants who are trying to play by the rules, as written, who get hurt.

Spammers win.

Mike:

With reference to an earlier comment by you, it would be interesting to hear about what else you are seeing with regard to lawyer spam in LA and beyond and what terms you are looking at.

Dave

No problem, Gracie (he says while smoking his cigar) 😀

@earlpearl

Not sure if you meant panzermike but here goes:

Assume “Los Angeles” precedes each search. Assume you can replace attorneys with singular attorney and the same goes with lawyer/lawyers. Assume you can replace accident with “injury”

dog bite attorneys

animal attack attorneys

auto accident attorneys

car accident attorneys

truck accident attorneys

wrongful death attorneys

burn injury attorneys

brain injury attorneys, etc.

You will notice a common theme:

Keywords in place of firm names and mirror sites en mass

There is at least one firm with multiple locations who uses keyword names for the firm name. There are at least 8 mirror site url’s this firm uses that all go back to the main host page. There are multiple listings per location.

Fake firm names

In order to spoof local results, some law firms are making up names that are not registered with the State Bar such as “accident attorney zip code”, “la law 24”, etc.

The Maps rules are unclear if this is legal, but the California State Bar Rules are not unclear. This is misleading. Unethical from my point of view as well. It’s one thing to say you are a Los Angeles Dog Bite Attorney, it is entirely another thing to say you are a real corporation like “24 hour attorney, inc.”, as a hypothetical.

In fact, I noticed several law firms such as “personal injury lawyer, inc.”, who claim to be a corporation, who were not even registered with the California Secretary of State as a corporation.

The actual firm names of the attorneys are buried in art work. This is spoofing the natural language and the local results. I assume the names are buried in artwork to avoid “substantially similar” content penalties when the spider look for this for example.

Hope this enlightens everyone.

What Authority Sites?, “I Don’t Even Care”

In the words of Alfred E Neuman above.

Google took years to get a first rate algo for authority sites. Now, all you have to do is get a downtown address, create a three or four page web site, make up a bogus firm name that has the words attorney, or LA, for example, and voilla, you get a PR0 site next to a huge, colorful map at the very top of the search results.

Now a site with no authority can literally monopolize what once took years to get. THE FIRST PAGE, first position at the VERY TOP.

As an aside, when this happened to me, I simply had to get local slots. I noticed a drop in business and figured it out, local crummy sites all of a sudden were appearing at the top.

So naturally, I hired someone to do the same for me. So think about it, guys with sites that took three or more years to build, with backlinks, articles, content, instantly are shut out to the benefit of NO authority sites who figured out all you need is a title, a bulk upload, and a super-pages listing.

Check it out. Notice virtually every top slot in Maps is a low authority site with little meaningful content. I truly hope the Maps Team uses this info to make Google a better place. And not just for consumers and big business, but for the little guys like me who are the back bone of this country.

@Matt Cutts:

Thanks Matt. I used to think you didn’t care about small businesses unless they were buying adwords or sponsored listings. The fact you are trying to fix this very serious problem with Maps that is hurting my business puts you in a new light in my eyes.

If your ever in LA, let me buy you a beer or two. Semper Fi. /s/ PanzerMike

To add to my last comment,

4. Does the Google Maps listing match the business name?

Mike,

I see no problem with an 800 number, provided they have a physical presence at the location they list under.

I do think having a physical location is necessary in order to preserve the local nature of this service. If this isn’t part of Google’s current policy, it should be.

Like the blog, I’m all into local search.

See I know a guy who has a UPS mailbox, in the town where he wishes to get most of his business. The actual location of his business is a town with less than 200 people, the UPS box town has a population of over 30,000.

I can see validity in using the UPS location here for the purpose of marketing, it was the main reason for getting that mailbox in the 1st place, to give a physical presence.

However,

I would be disappointed to see 2 separate locations for his business. He should use his UPS address in this case and list his additional location using a custom field or something of the like.

It also depends on what address(es) he lists on his website. They should match your listing.

Mike,

Just came across your site while doing research about Google Local Business Search/Maps. I have six physical locations for my law firm….and I’m so glad my SEO guy played by the rules for my listings on Google Maps/Local.