{"id":15956,"date":"2014-01-08T10:57:43","date_gmt":"2014-01-08T14:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=15956"},"modified":"2014-01-08T12:23:38","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T16:23:38","slug":"mining-for-google-hummingbird-guano-in-so-cal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/08\/mining-for-google-hummingbird-guano-in-so-cal\/","title":{"rendered":"Mining for Google Hummingbird Guano in So Cal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"guano-mining\"<\/a>Google’s Hummingbird guano<\/a>, like real guano, is fertile ground. Unfortunately, in the case of Google’s guano, it is fertile ground for spammers and spam and nothing as productive as farm crops.<\/p>\n

Southern California has always been a hot bed of Google local spam particularly in the legal industry. Yesterday I was exploring search results for listings in the criminal defense and DUI area. For the 2 terms in 6 towns I found 3 spammy Hummingbird One Box results. That is a 25% #fail rate. Much higher than I had previously seen and an indicator that this problem deserves Google’s attention. I was going to add the adjective “immediate” to the word attention but since this problem has persisted<\/a> for 4.5 months already and has been reported<\/a> on a regular<\/a> basis,\u00a0immediate<\/em> seems, when associated with the words “Google Hummingbird quality in local”, like an oxymoron.<\/p>\n

Given the industry and the search phrases these are incredibly high value search phrases. The listings were total crap and yet Google continues to deliver these results which enrich spammers and deny others a place on the page.<\/p>\n

I dutifully reported these to Google so your results may vary on the searches today. Taking these results down one by one though hardly seems a solution to a problem that exists at world wide scale.<\/p>\n

Here are the searches that returned the Hummingbird guano:<\/p>\n

DUI Lawyer Los Angeles<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DUI-Attorneys-Los-Angeles\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To see more examples:<\/p>\n

Criminal Defense Attorney Burbank, CA<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Burbank-criminal-defense\"<\/a><\/p>\n

DUI Lawyer Beverly Hills<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DUI-Lawyer-Beverly-Hills\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google’s Hummingbird guano, like real guano, is fertile ground. Unfortunately, in the case of Google’s guano, it is fertile ground for spammers and spam and nothing as productive as farm crops. Southern California has always been a hot bed of Google local spam particularly in the legal industry. Yesterday I was exploring search results for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-plus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t