{"id":3107,"date":"2009-04-27T06:00:04","date_gmt":"2009-04-27T10:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=3107"},"modified":"2009-04-27T06:10:52","modified_gmt":"2009-04-27T10:10:52","slug":"google-maps-data-quality-where-do-we-stand-after-the-locksmith-onslaught","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/27\/google-maps-data-quality-where-do-we-stand-after-the-locksmith-onslaught\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Maps Data Quality: Where do we stand after the Locksmith Onslaught?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have written extensively about the hijinks<\/a> 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<\/a> and another in March<\/a>. Google however, when they fix a technical iisue like Mapspam rarely if ever seems to go back and clean up the resultant pollution in the index. It really begs the question: What does fixed<\/a> mean?<\/p>\n

One of the many tactics that the Locksmith industry used was to hijack unclaimed records in other industries (like hotels<\/a> & restaurants<\/a>) that had large numbers of web citations and reviews to achieve ranking cred for themselves. Over the past 6 weeks I have received various reports of these listings still showing up in the Local 10 Packs and spotting some myself as aI meandered through Maps. <\/p>\n

David Mihm, Local SEO in Portland<\/a>, sent me an example of a hijacked restaurant listing showing up for the search Restaurant Portland<\/a>. We quickly (less than 10 minutes each) found 10 additional high profile searches that still are showing the affect of being hijacked by locksmiths. Literally one of every two searches in major metro areas showed polluted results. One can only presume what a thorough review might find. A motivated locksmith discovered that in the Maps records of locksmiths for the top 50 metro areas in California, he found 60,000 spammy locksmith listings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"boston-rest-pollution\"<\/p>\n

Here are the searches that included obviously hijacked listings:<\/p>\n

Restaurant Albuquerque<\/a>
\nRestaurant Salt Lake City<\/a>
\nRestaurant Atlanta<\/a>
\nRestaurant Kansas City<\/a>
\nRestaurant Tampa<\/a>
\nRestaurant Nashville – a new one, towing<\/a>
\nRestaurant Boston<\/a>
\nRestaurant Miami<\/a>
\nRestaurant Phoenix<\/a><\/p>\n

Local data is hard enough to get accurate when all the players are honest and focused on that goal. However, leaving this detritus in the index takes the quality to a new low. As I noted in a previous post,<\/a> when the plumbing breaks you don\u2019t just seal the leak in the pipe you clean up the mess from the broken sewage pipe. <\/p>\n

It is time for Google to give the records back to the rightful owners and provide the quality user experience that they so often reference as their standard.
\n\"24hr-rest-boston\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 …<\/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-3107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local"],"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