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/YouTube of the Week - YouTube Analytics, Paper Shredders, and why Facebook is not LinkedIn

Minnesota-based again, with the first favorite being somewhat based from Minnesota.

One of the YouTube founders is from St. Paul, and they are now offering up analytics. I don’t know how detailed they get, but it can possibly be a remarkable tool to measure and market your YouTube videos to your targeted audiences. Jennifer Laycock from Search Engine Guide provides a very good write-up on it.

I’m biased on this, but one of the Jeremy’s at Rochester-based BuyOnlineNow.com has a cool yet informational YouTube video on one of Fellowes new Intellishred jam proof shredders sold at the niche OrderPaperShredders.com site. The 70’s “adult” music theme adds to the touch.

You want this shredder. You need this shredder. You don’t want to be without one, do you?

Aside from bad hypnosis in the previous sentences, I’ll probably buy this one. My current shredder truly sucks.

Finally, Holly from the New Brighton-based Risdall Marketing Pie blog writes on how Facebook is not LinkedIn. I especially like point number four stating that LinkedIn is getting really good at what they do. It works there. Does it really need to work on Facebook? I’ve benefited and gained clients from LinkedIn and use it as a professional networking tool, yet my current Facebook profile picture is this:

This will probably change at some point as I do “loosely” use Facebook as a business tool, but right now I guess it’s “what it is”.

Blogging Meetup Next Monday

The folks at Small Business Mavericks have created a Minnesota meetup group for area bloggers and those who want to know more about blogging, and have officially announced the first blast-off get-together in Plymouth on Monday, March 3.

I always enjoy these get-togethers, mainly because it gets you away from your computer where you can have fun talking to people w/ similar interests. Hopefully that huge group (ok, 3 of us) who attends “blogger hour” will be in attendance.

I might actually be in Rochester that day. If so, it looks like I’ll miss this first one but will definitely make future meetups.

Favorite Posts of the Week - All Minnesota Based

Still all Minnesota based, part PPC, part local search, and part WordPress blogs.

Jeff Hudson of The PPC Book gets stuck in some chilly weather and provides a great example of a void when shopping locally online.

Heard about Google Local News? So has Erica from Metroblogging Twin Cites. What seems like a great idea isn’t faring so well with people just looking for local information. It has a way to go.

There’s quite a controversial post at Lee Odden’s Online Marketing blog regarding WordPress and how they categorize SEO blogs as crappy “sploggs”.

Here’s the new WordPress definition of an SEO blog:

SEO blogs: Blogs that are written for search engines instead of humans. These blogs are dedicated to trying to fool Google and other search engines into ranking them highly. WordPress.com is not meant for this type of activity.

Lee’s 100% right. There are great search marketers out there who provide quality content which debunks the above definition, period.

SEOs often naturally get a bad rep, and rightfully so. Many of these also use WordPress to manipulate search engines. Yeah, really. You just might be one of them.

I do a lot of SEO, and my peers often say that this blog sucks. It’s on a hosted WordPress domain, I don’t use plug-ins, and I don’t SEO this blog.

This is all fine because the readers here are cool and smart, and don’t care what the ranking-whore crowds think of it.

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…

Punch Pizza Photo Contest

 
Logo stolen from Punch Pizza (hey, just being honest. I’m guessing they’re ok with it. If not, I’ll take it off).

First, a little link love to Metroblogging Minneapolis and S4xton.com for finding this.

The folks at Punch Pizza are doing something pretty cool. They’re running a photo contest while embracing social media in a big way. Apparently, it wasn’t long ago when they didn’t allow photos of their ovens. You can now turn that completely around as they’re running a Capture Our Fire photo contest.

It’s a contest that allows customers to take pictures of their ovens, pizzas, moments at Punch, and there’s even a special category for pictures taken from camera phones.

A few cool things to note:

One of their photo categories state “Ovens of Punch - Photographs of Punch ovens and fires in Punch ovens. (Photos must be taken from behind the food preparation area.)”

One bullet point states “All entries must be submitted online at Flickr.com.”

One more - “Entrants should upload contest submissions to their Flickr account (which are free) and apply a tag of “PunchPizzaContest” to each submission as well as the category for which the submitted photo applies: “OvensOfPunch” or “PunchPizzas” or “PunchMoments” or “PunchPhonePhotos”.”

I’m loving how they’re using Flickr. They’ll be able to sort of the contestant pictures by tagging, and the pages themselves will most likely receive a lot of traffic.

I’m guessing this will turn out to be a great social media campaign. Maybe they’ll even gain new customers such as myself (suppose that’s the end goal anyway). I’ve lived in Minneapolis for eight years and have never dined there (yeah, I know - apparently that’s a sin).

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.

You Subscribe, Search Marketing Standard Donates, MN Music Education Wins

The folks over at Search Marketing Standard are now offering a promo for their print magazine. Get four quarterly mags for $4.95. Just subscribe by Dec. 10th with coupon code 67LOCALMN.

Some of the readers of this blog understand the basics of search marketing, but don’t do it for their job. If this is you, it’s certainly worth the five bucks. Take it on a plane, read on the couch, whichever… it’s always a good read. Actually, it’s worth it for search marketers too. There’s just something nice about reading a print mag for those of us who work online.

The part I’m very happy about is they are donating part of every subscription through this blog to a charity of my choice. For me, it’s gotta’ be local and I choose to support the MacPhail Center for Music.

There are probably one or two readers that know I’m a huge supporter of music education, whether it’s early childhood music lessons or adult music therapy for the challenged. If you didn’t know this, now you know something more about me.