Black Hats Nuke Competitors in Google Places

[CHR]

Google seems to have a never-ending list of bugs and 'features' that create loads of work and stress for local businesses. This newest black hat exploit is a doozy.

Nuking Local Competitors A Dirty, Rotten Trick

It's not bad enough that there are reprehensible individuals out there spamming their local competitors' profiles with phony negative reviews, but things have just reached a new level of low with the idea of reporting your competitors' businesses as closed.

One of Mike Blumenthal's clients got hit with this false 'Business is Closed' reports and he wrote about it here.

Mike then went on to test how the report worked, and found it only took two people to report a business closed and have it show in a Place Page - and he managed to temporarily show Google Mountain View as possibly being out of business. Read about his test here.

Google says they're 'working on it.' In the mean time, check your listing regularly because according to a few local SEOs, if the report goes unchallenged for a few days, the entire business listing get deleted.

Frankly, I'm sick of Google laying out tools that make the work of Black Hats really easy.

 

[BOSS]

Thanks Cathy...

 

[daisy mae]

This happened to us about a month ago. We came in one morning to find Business closed on our place page. Pretty sure I know who did it.

 

[theRKF]

It just continues to confirm to me that Google operates as a geek lab dealing primarily in the realm of the hypothetical with no real appreciation of the impact of their decisions in the real lives of real people.

 

[bootcampguy]

This happened to us about a month ago. We came in one morning to find Business closed on our place page. Pretty sure I know who did it.

How can that happen if they did not log into the google places account or am I out to lunch?

 

[anytimeflowers]

How can that happen if they did not log into the google places account or am I out to lunch?

Two people, (or even one with different IP addresses and identities) are simply reporting the business as closed. There is a link for people to report a listing, they do not have to be the owner.

"Bad" listings is something that Google would be very eager to clean up, because they don't want to be unreliable by sending people on a wild goose chase, I'm sure they never thought about the ramifications of allowing this to be automatic.

My solution would be for FIVE reports about a closed business would trigger an automatic email and phone call to the verified owner asking them to follow a link of some sort to report the business as still open. If nobody responds to it in two days, re-trigger again. After two more days, the listing gets taken down.

It IS a problem as more and more people navigate through life via a smart phone, to have the most up-to-date info available.

jmo