Mike Blumenthal

I saw this posted in the Google Help Forum thread Google is Merging Map Records and wondered if she knew something that I didn’t: hmcx2 4/29/09 We tried the Google Technical Support people (Julie & Billy, the supervisor) at 888/882-7114. They sounded like they could fix the problem but only if we paid $35.00. Since …

At the beginning of last week, I started to notice posts in the Google Help forum and I received emails from a number of correspondents that their records had merged with nearby competitors. At first blush they appeared to have all of the symptoms of hijacked records however after lengthy, ongoing communication with Google it …

I have written extensively about the hijinks in the Locksmith industry and the impact that the massive amount of mapspam was having on the Maps Index quality. Google noted that they had fixed the vector in January and another in March. Google however, when they fix a technical iisue like Mapspam rarely if ever seems …

I just hung up the phone with an InfoUSA staffer who called to verify our business record. Never one to miss an opportunity, I think I may have asked him more questions than he was able to ask of me. As my daughter noted on a apron she gave me for my last birthday: “Cooking …

Update 4/26: It appears that all of the CityVoter.com reviews have been removed from Google. It is a little hard for me to understand how these reviews can be removed so quickly from Maps but can not be updated with equal speed. Reviews from Cityvoter.com are heavily referenced in Google Maps with over 1,113,968 instances. …

Over the past few days there has been a steep increase of reports of legitimately claimed LBC listings being hijacked in Google Maps. The reports (here, here, here & here) all follow the hijacking pattern that Locksmiths widely suffered during the second half of last year. The last of these recent reports, Hotel Hijacking Map Spam …

Why is Merchant Circle buying up thousands of trade name + locale domains? Over the weekend Nick Reese contacted me to explore what appeared to him, and to me, very unusual domain activity by Merchant Circle. It appears that Merchant Circle has purchased as many as 10,700 domains. These domain purchases have been going on …

Compete.com showed Google Maps overtaking Mapquest in visitors in January as did Comscore. At the time Hitwise showed that Maps as nearly passing Mapquest but dropping back. As recently as last week Hitwise indicated that Mapquest was still in the lead but that gap was closing. Heather Hopkins of Hitwise took a fresh look at …