Google Mapspam Coming to a City Near You

Greg Sterling and a few others note of a new Interwebz spammer called biglocal.com on a Search Engine Land post.

Many have noticed local (map) results on Google when doing a local search query. If you do a common one such as “pizza in Minneapolis” you’ll see something like this.

The above results are pretty slick and very relevant, appear above the natural results, and the algorithm is separate from the natural results as well.

Now you can do a search for “internet consulting in Minneapolis” and you find a bunch of fake ones from biglocal.com.

Clever indeed, although it’s obviously search engine manipulation and will be deleted once Google finds out what’s going on. Some notes…

1) They’re not local to Minneapolis which is considered essential for Google in these results.

2) Everytime you call their number, you suddenly get a “Due to the high volume of calls, we cannot answer. Please try again later”. On a Saturday? Right. This is noted by others as well.

3) The domain is registered by proxy, which basically means you can’t find out who they are. Domains by proxy are primarily used by those who don’t want themselves to be known.

4) Their “about us” page leads you to a broken page and they don’t show a physical address on their contact page, or anywhere else on the site.

5) The listing addresses they use for themselves are fake. Not just in Minneapolis, but in Seattle, Los Angeles, and pretty much any city across the country.

Although it appears they want to be anonymous, they do have a SuperPages profile and a Yahoo Local listing complete with a five-star “review” and matching physical addresses and Salt Lake City local phone numbers.

It does seem strange that the phrase they’re targeting is “Internet consulting + YourCity”. So many more people search for terms such as “Internet marketing”, “Web marketing”, “Internet advertising”, or “search engine marketing”. The free WordTracker tool isn’t perfect, but see for yourself.

The person or people submitting their listings are pretty clever though, and apparently pretty horny as well. The first Minneapolis listing shows an address of 307 3rd St S. This is about a block from what Google considers the city center and is also arguably one of the main factors Google considers in their local (maps) algorithm.

If you do a “street view” map search, there is no such address, but 308 and 316 3rd St S. shows you none other than this.

That’s right folks. Rick’s Cabaret, a well-known gentleman’s club. Maybe this photo was taken in the morning and these two gentleman shown are waiting outside for the club to open?

In addition to Greg from Search Engine Land, others have written about this too including Mike from the Blumenthals blog, Stephen from I’mNotADoctor (I believe he was the first to find this), and Greg’s article was even Sphunn on Sphinn.

More Favorite Posts - Local Search and Minnesota Combined

I’ve been doing more “favorite” posts lately, and there’s a reason. There are great posts out there. Let’s share them.

This time it’s a bit unique. Often, the favorites are Minnesota-based Internet marketing posts. Sometimes, they’re about local search in general. This time, it’s about Minnesota-based local search posts.

First, Jennifer Lind talks about the root of local search & where it could take us.

Local search… is it the new way we search or the old way? It’s both. Local search connects us to our community and to our neighbors. The old way of search is now online and it will continue to develop further than it ever could in the traditional means.

It is in fact both. Many people will use the Internet to search for products and services to go offline and physically make a purchase. Jennifer makes some great points including different online options, actually touching a product before making a purchase (this is kinda’ important), and opportunities for local customers to be involved online with businesses they purchase from.

Aaron Weiche has some cool local SEO results with his new company, Five Technology. They have five SEO initiatives so far. I really like number three, which is to create content for users first and search engines second. On a side note, see Barb Prindle. She’s is simply a fantastic writer! Five Technology is doing some very cool things so far (including video optimization) and you will see more of them in the future.

My rollerblading partner (who leaves me in the dust) Ed Kohler gives some insight on where offline shopping beats online today. It includes dealing with disappointment, negotiable pricing, proactive help, and bundling opportunities.

Ed, let’s get on the Greenway and rollerblade!

Favorite Posts of the Week - Search Engine Guide Style

I’ve been both fortunate and honored to be a guest writer for Search Engine Guide since late 2005 (Jennifer and Robert, I’ll write more - really!!)

Since 2005, there have been some great writers that have jumped on board. I’ve met a few of them and hope to meet more the next time I hit a search marketing conference. It seems fitting to give SEG some (well-deserved) love back and provide a Search Engine Guide favorite posts of the week.

The first is from Manoj Jasra titled common web analytics issues. Manoj makes some great points, including a paragraph about the wrong data going to the wrong people. Depending on whether your client contacts are marketing managers, CEOs, or Internet marketing departments should give you an idea of what type of data you can provide them.

Next, David Wallace writes on Matt McGee’s local search workshop presentation during the recent Small Business Unleashed conference. The post is quite lengthy, but it sounds like the presentation was too at 90 minutes! Kudos to both Matt and David. Matt talks about maps, SEO, PPC, local search engines, and even provides a relevant lists of industry sites. It’s a great post! Just read it.

Liana Evans is also at the conference blogging on Sage Lewis’ building a community workshop presentation. During the presentation Sage talks about different community channels such as YouTube, Facebook, and Digg. He begins with YouTube and how easy it is to use, and how to properly optimize and tag your videos. He goes on explaining how you can promote this with other social sites such as Facebook. Lastly, he stresses the importance on participating yourself.

Favorite Posts of the Week - All Local - With a Mapspam and Video Twist

As with all other favorite posts of the week, this one is all local… with a twist. Instead of being all local to Minnesota, it’s all local to local search marketing. These blogs would be included in the blogroll if they were located in Minnesota.

Many know that I’m not a big fan of fake user reviews as I wrote about it on Search Engine Guide. I’m also not a fan of “Mapspam”, which basically artificially manipulates search results in places such as Google Maps and Yahoo Local.

Earlier this week, Andrew Shotland from the Local SEO Guide wrote about a company called SEO Champion who spammed his local Las Vegas company in Google Maps results in many cities across the county. Now it looks like these results have been removed. Kudos to both Google and Andrew.

Mike Blumenthal writes on how Yahoo affiliate Mapspam is now gone. For anyone unfamiliar, these local results have been loaded with affiliate sites to local businesses such as hotels. Affiliate sites don’t offer nearly as much value as the actual business sites. Affiliate spam isn’t totally gone, but it’s good to see that Yahoo is taking action.

Finally, Mike Boland from The Kelsey Group writes on how local search meets video search with the company PixelFish. It’s a great read. To me, the concept is including local videos in search engine marketing to bring online customers to your physical door.

For those in the Twin Cities area, Localmn doesn’t currently offer video search solutions, but I do believe that Five Technology does. Every few months, I get to hang with the VP and founder, Aaron Weiche, and we talk about this often. There are a lot of opportunities to make compelling videos, and if done right they can become viral as well.

Local Results Between Fort Worth and Minneapolis

Not the best title, but there’s a point to this, really! Different local results appear depending on how popular they are in your area.

In November ‘07, I got to hang out at The Attorney Store with Akhil, David, Ken, Susan, Wes, and others for a couple days in a suburb between Dallas and Fort Worth.

Belt buckles and cowboy hats happen to be popular in Fort Worth, which was pointed to me while visiting Joe T. Garcia’s.

There are no local “cowboy apparel” results in Minneapolis.

There are a few in Dallas.

You got the ten-box in Fort Worth.

I’m guessing these results are very relevant.

Studying local results like these do present opportunities for you to really understand your geographical clients and how they buy.

Schmap.com and Flickr Photo

I’ve only written about Schmap.com once. It’s a pretty cool local search tool that allows you to send local information to your email, phone, printer, etc. Unrelated, it turns out out that a photo I took of Miller Park w/ my Nikon point-n-shoot has been short-listed for the fourth edition of Schmap’s Chicago guide.

They did include the picture in the email they sent.

The funny thing is it’s certainly not the best picture. I took it on the fly while driving east on I94 towards Milwaukee. I doubt it will make the final cut though… unless they want Milwaukee’s Miller Park to represent Chicago. I’m guessing they found the picture within a Flickr set of last year’s Chicago Inline Marathon.

DirectoryM is Lookin’ Pretty Slick These Days

I’ve been aware of DirectoryM for quite awhile, but admittedly haven’t checked them out in detail. It’s not your average Web directory. They’re more of a hub that gives you advertising links on their own directory, plus some big players like…

There are nationwide ads available, but local ads do seem to appear pretty prevalent.

I think the $240 three month investment is useful for businesses who measure analytics. You’ll have the ability to track how many users come to your site from these referalls and see how they navigate your site.

For those still stuck on search engine rankings “only”, some of these links do seem to pass link juice, but it might not be worth your investment.

I hope to have more detailed info in the future.

Google AdWords - How Local do You Want to Go?

If you advertise local products and services, Google AdWords has provided regional and local targeting for a few years, but how local do you want to go?

It really depends on what you provide. It could be a home for sale, legal services, Web design, car rental, or local chinese food.

Google’s AdWords platform lets you customize your location(s), but it can be tricky. By default, you can easily show your ads in the Twin Cities area.

These are the areas your Minneapolis-St. Paul (metro) ads will be shown.

This is great, but the above image is broad and shows Bemidji, MN as somewhere in the Twin Cities metro. It’s a pretty cool place, but it’s a long 220 mile drive. You might not want to use this option if you’re looking for impulse in-store traffic.

To put it in perspective, a drive from Pensacola, Florida to New Orleans is shorter by almost 20 miles.

If you’re specifically looking for Minneapolis customers, you can set it up this way…

Your ads will be shown here.

If you want to specify a radius from a city…

Here’s what you see.

More to come on all of this in the near future…

Google Local (Maps) Results… and Results… and Results…

Thanks to Clint from ThinkSEM for pointing this out to me - Google is showing (at least today) up to ten local listings within their natural results. I’ll use the standard “pizza” local search, but it applies across many industries.

I’m not affiliated with them at all, but there’s a reason that Pizza Luce is circled. Here they are again in the sponsored results.

And… in the natural results - once for their own site and once by piggy-backing on CitySearch.

All of this on just one Google page. Talk about a lot of real estate. This could be a good opportunity for interested folks to check out the local search post regarding going back to the basics.

Updated post also at Search Engine Guide.

Back to Local Search Basics: Google and Yahoo Local

This post may be part-one of a series, but I’ve received a few email inquries lately regarding local search, mostly questions on how to benefit from Google Maps and Yahoo Local listings.

It’s in good timing. Andrew Goodman from Traffick.com provides a great post regarding the status and possible decline of pure-play local search sites outside of search engines like Google.

So, who are the winners in local search? I’m hoping Ahmed from Tech Soapbox and iBegin reads this because he may have input.

The winner could easily be you, the local business owner. The basics of local search can arguably be narrowed down to Google Maps and Yahoo Local and much of it doesn’t cost you anything but your time. Here are some basic tips to benefit from these opportunities:

1) First, make sure you have a free Gmail and Yahoo email account.

2) From there, sign in to Google’s Local Business Center and Yahoo’s Add a Business page.

3) Provide accurate information regarding products or services provided, payment methods, hours of operation, and more (there are easy field forms for most of these).

Example:

4) They both allow you to upload and display photos. Hint - sometimes just a simple business logo does wonders.

Random Example:

5) They both allow you to describe your business in up to “x” characters.

Keyword stuffing = bad and silly looking. Accurate information = good and builds trust.

6) They both allow user reviews for your business. Embrace it. It can create an online version of Word-of-Mouth marketing.

Example:

7) Don’t provide fake user reviews. Users are smart and will easily sniff it out, and they will make a point to not buy from you. This happens all too often.

8 ) Read number 7 again.

9) Make sure any industry portals or Internet yellow pages display your current and accurate addresses and other information. Local search engines may use this in their own listings.

That’s it for the basics. More to come soon on some of the points listed above.

Jan. 23 Update: Revised and updated post now up at Search Engine Guide.