{"id":7424,"date":"2010-09-30T06:00:38","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T10:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=7424"},"modified":"2010-09-30T09:45:41","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T13:45:41","slug":"google-maps-and-the-payday-loan-industry-strange-bedfellows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/30\/google-maps-and-the-payday-loan-industry-strange-bedfellows\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Maps and the Payday Loan Industry – Strange Bedfellows?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read<\/a> the other day in I, Cringely’s Blog that Google had a booth last month at the\u00a0Online Lenders Association convention in Chicago<\/a>, a group mostly composed of Payday lenders… you know the ones… they charge ~400% to help poor folks get from one pay check to a smaller one. What Google was doing at their convention I have no idea. This is legal part of American society for which I have little sympathy<\/a> and less respect.<\/p>\n

The article, however, about Google’s involvment reminded me that I had written extensively about spamming techniques in the Payday Loan industry as far back as as 2007. I did a quick search on Google for Cash Advance NY NY<\/a> and the first result struck a bell for me and seemed oddly familiar. I did similar searches in Buffalo<\/a> and a few other cities and saw<\/a> much the same…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While Google’s effort at fighting spam might be criticized, their ability to search and sort my back library is near faultless. It turns out that I had written about this very company in a December, 2007 Searchengineland article titled: MapSpammers Getting More Sophisticated<\/a>. In the article I detailed their techniques having used the exact same search & company as the example spam. At the time\u00a0I included a screen shot<\/a> of the Local results showing their #1 standing. \u00a0I noted:<\/p>\n

The basics of the plan are simple (as\u00a0originally described<\/a> at oooff.com):<\/p>\n