Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
A “Killer” Google Maps Ranking Tactic
I am not sure that I would suggest that you copy this fellow’s methodology. One has to wonder how the White House factors into this deal as well.
But it does impress on me the value of pure citations. No links just lots & lots of press and TON of reviews.
It’s amazing the speed with which this happens.
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Comments
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Great find. Good advise. But I thought that one of the triggers that might take down google reviews was accumulating too many in a very short time….and/or too many relative to competitors in the field.
I guess that filter isn’t turned on.
Dave, that’s called “velocity” of reviews, and it’s likely that Google’s filters aren’t really equipped to handle something like this. It’s plain to see that 99% of the reviews in the last couple days are illegitimate, as are the ones on Yelp, etc.
I’d give it a week or two before algorithms (or human beings) start removing reviews.
Yes there is nothing in the filter to take down massive amounts of reviews immediately.
What we don’t know is if there is a longer term filter that might do so. I have noticed that the filter sometimes doesn’t run in real time for some things although it does for others (IP address, urls in review). It could be like Mark says that their filters don’t look at velocity.
Reminds me of the time that Syrian terrorists bought a plumbing company’s pickup truck and didn’t remove the branding.
@Joe
Great example and he still shows for Terrorist Texas and Terrorist Plumber Texas City.
@Mike
That’s amazing, but I’m still not sure it beats his Yelp page.
this search provided surprising results.
Not enough news references or reviews I presum
Well as far as vanity searches I like this one: Google Olean NY
Getting back to your first paragraph, Mike, and questioning how the White House got there….The White House seems to rank for some surprising “categories” such as this one associated with a rare type of ethnic bakery.
Me thinks the collegial map maker volunteers need to clean up this stuff.
Ever since I 1st reported these reviews to Google, I’ve been tracking the # of reviews in the post at my place.
1st I checked there were 2745, then down to 83, then at one point up to 6,000 and now back down to 2,012.
So they’ve been working on them. Not sure why they can’t just turn them off for now. Especially since I heard he has not closed down.
Another story that came up in my thread – one of my TCs works for a company that USED to do SEO and hosting for the Dentist. They stopped working with him 2 years ago. BUT the domain never got transferred, so still listed that company’s name.
Even though it’s an EX client, the company has been getting threats, calls, bad Facebook posts. And that story made the press too. Crazy!
@Linda
Its clear that
1-High velocity reviews do not precipitate an immediate algo response
and
2-They are manually taking these down
and
3-They don’t appear to be working on the weekend on this issue 🙂
Several other interesting points, the photos uploaded showed a similar pattern to the reviews you were tracking.
But it also appears that after it drifts out of national attention the bogus reviews stop getting pulled. Remember Union Street Guest House that was getting piled on about a clause preventing negative reviews? Well they still have a ton of the troll responses and still show up for “negative review” when searching Maps.
Can anybody explain why when I did a search for “Lion Killer” in Google Maps I got the Bank of England site in the UK? I’m doing this search from NJ….
I wish I could include the screenshot here!
Scott. I limited my search to the U.S. If you don’t constrain the view port then you get a world wide search and apparently a director for the Bank of London, Sir David, was also a lion killer.
I read some of the reviews and they are from people angry at Dr. Palmer for killing Cecil the lion – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_(lion) .
That is also probably why the White house link was listed. http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/30/politics/white-house-cecil-the-lion-petition/ .
@Mike – not really a big deal, but this isn’t making any sense. I’m using Chrome with geolocation turned on, so absolutely no reason my *one and only result* for a Map is in the UK.
Also, when I take your US limitation off (e.g. “https://www.google.com/maps/search/Lion+Killer”) I get no results returned.
When I click on the link you provided (on my phone) I get the whitehouse.
yeah, I don’t. I get the Bank of England, on my laptop (Chrome) and on my phone (Android). Again, not a huge deal, just another confusing data point (for me, anyway!)
Google is assuming, based on immediately prior inputs, your view port.
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