Google Business Listing Team Gets Tough On Spammers!
I’m glad to see Google taking a stance on those who abuse the local business listings / Google maps. We have come across a few website owners claiming to share the same address / postcode as city centre rivals, or even business websites that deliver services nationally registering their business within each major town (often using e-office locations as their address/postcode)
The other abuser of this system seems to be the adsense spammer who registers business websites in city centre locations & then has a website full of adsense ads for the unsuspecting visitor…
Google publishes New Business Listing Quality Guidelines
Summary of major points:
- Represent your business exactly as it appears in real life. The name on Google Maps should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website.
- List information that provides as direct a path to the business as you can. Given the choice, you may want to list individual location phone numbers over a central phone line, official website pages rather than a directory page, and as exact of an address as you can.
- Only include listings for businesses that you represent.
- Don’t participate in any behavior with the intention or result of listing your business more times than it exists. Service area businesses, for example, should not create a listing for every town they service. Likewise, law firms or doctors should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties.
- Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business’s title or address fields
Of course if you believe somebody is abusing the system… you can report it at Google Groups
Tags: Google, google maps, spammers