{"id":11003,"date":"2011-09-06T05:38:49","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T09:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=11003"},"modified":"2011-09-06T09:06:35","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T13:06:35","slug":"ny-times-closed-says-google-but-shops%e2%80%99-signs-say-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/06\/ny-times-closed-says-google-but-shops%e2%80%99-signs-say-open\/","title":{"rendered":"NY Times: Closed, Says Google, but Shops\u2019 Signs Say Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Google<\/a>An article on the\u00a0recent spate of black hat closing flags<\/a>\u00a0that have been appearing on Places listings was published<\/a>\u00a0in the NY Times today by reporter David Segal<\/a>. He is\u00a0the same reporter that broke the JC Penny’s link buying story.<\/p>\n

The good news is that Google has promised a fix for the problem shortly:<\/p>\n

A Google spokesman, Gabriel Stricker, declined to comment on whether the company kept a running tally of fraudulent closings. But he said Google was aware of the issue and was already working on changes, which will be adopted in coming days, to prevent what he called \u201cmalicious or incorrect labeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kudos to Google for acknowledging<\/strong> the need for acting quickly to put a stop to this pernicious activity.<\/p>\n

The other good news is that both Linda Buquet<\/a> and I were quoted\/linked in the article. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Other articles of interest on the topic:<\/p>\n

News Flash: Google Mt View Reported Closed!<\/a><\/p>\n

Places Blackhat Playground \u2013 Reported To Be Closed<\/a><\/p>\n

Clarification re: Clarification re: closed listings on Google Places<\/a><\/p>\n

Hit by Competitor Spam Reviews: The Plot Thickens<\/a><\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Thanks to Jim Rudnick, a Hamilton, ON SEO<\/a>, for the heads up that Google has responded publicly<\/a> to the NY Times article on the Lat-Long Blog. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article on the\u00a0recent spate of black hat closing flags\u00a0that have been appearing on Places listings was published\u00a0in the NY Times today by reporter David Segal. He is\u00a0the same reporter that broke the JC Penny’s link buying story. The good news is that Google has promised a fix for the problem shortly: A Google spokesman, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11003"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11005,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11003\/revisions\/11005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}