Mike Blumenthal

Sometimes legal documents have a way of tickling one’s funny bone. Lawyers have no clue how funny they can be. Here was a section from Google’s Maps API Terms of Service: 1.4 Appropriate Conduct and Prohibited Uses. The Service may be used only for services that are generally accessible to consumers without charge. In addition, …

Several weeks ago I reported in detail new techniques that were taking mapspamming to the next level in Google Maps and Yahoo Local. The basic technique was simple: • Rent a mailing address with forwarding in every major market near the centroid of the city (UPS is one of many that offer this service) • …

Google Maps is now soliciting input from users as to whether reviews that are listed for a business are useful. There has been an on-going discussion at convertoffline.com whether the recent purging of CitySearch reviews reflects a new effort by Google could to develop a way of indentifying more trust worthy reviews based on the …

Tim Coleman from ConvertOffline.com has written an interesting speculative piece: Is Google Filtering Reviews or Reviewers? in response to my piece last week noting the loss of CitySearch reviews from Google Maps. Tim did some interesting research on the volume of each reviewer’s reviews and theorized that Google might be attempting to filter out “spammy” …

Google has done little forward facing promotion over the years so even when they use their own products to promote themselves it stands out.They have started promoting a full range of their map based products on the main map’s page. Previously business owners had to dig to find the button to the local business center. …

Yesterday Greg Sterlng’s blog Screenwerk hosted an interesting guest post: Google should Power the Local Web by Daniel Bower, who is part of welovelocal.com in the UK. He eloquently argues that due to the complex nature of true local, Google should focus on providing tools for local rather than going after Local Search themselves. His …

Maps Guide Jen responded today to one of the reports of Mapspam in NYC: TOPIC: Scam Using Google Local http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-For-Business-Owners/browse_thread/thread/2ec66a24df6021b4?hl=en ============================================================================== == 1 of 1 == Date: Tues, Dec 11 2007 2:37 pm From: “Maps Guide Jen” We’re looking into this and will take appropriate steps to make sure the businesses on Google Maps are …

I have done some reporting on a new, more sophisticated occurrence of MapSpam on Google and Yahoo in an article at SearchEngineLand: MapSpammers Getting More Sophisticated. The story was based on techniques originally described in a post at oooff.com. This newest approach integrates all of the previous ideas of listing a business at a central …