Google, Bing, and Yahoo! in cahoots to sell top organic listings?

anytimeflowers

anytimeflowers

Linda
Nov 22, 2009
4,033
3,448
113
61
West Saint Paul
any-timeflowers.com
State / Prov
Minnesota
I ran across an interesting article that that raised the fine hairs at the back of my neck.

You can read then entire article here.

A few highlights though ~ this service is called Local Paid Inclusion. I really don't know if I even believe that this is legitimate, let alone if it is at all ethical. However, I have to wonder if, since it IS local, whether the big three might consider this.

The article states that the search engines would not be charging for it themselves, the service would instead be charged through another partner - Universal Business Listings. It makes me wonder why they would even offer it AND WORK TOGETHER, to completely disrupt the entire idea of local listings according to what a person is searching for.

The part that triggers my antennae is that these paid local listings would not be marked as advertisement or sponsored ~ if it's true the big three will be taking away the last bastion left to small, local businesses ~ especially those that have no clue yet about the importance of a top listing.

On the other hand, if it IS true, it seems like a very minor investment. Then I have to wonder what happens when more than one business matching the same search criteria in the same geographic area all are paying this fee. Hmmmm.....

Thoughts?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Toddxxx, Clarabella and CHR
Oy! At first I thought this was the latest Local scam, but it appears to be really real. Expect a lot of explosions in the Local Search SEO community.

I've listed through UBL for the last few years and their fees are quite reasonable. They seem to do a decent job vetting their data. So that's a plus.

But expect spammers to try to buy their way back into Local now that a service is selling listings.
 
  • Like
Reactions: anytimeflowers
CHR said:
Oy!



But expect spammers to try to buy their way back into Local now that a service is selling listings.
Click to expand...

Yeppers ~ to the OY! and the spammer thing. In our industry and many others including ~ of all things ~ locksmiths, the spammers have already bought local phone numbers so this should be a piece of cake for them.

Lizi ~ I don't think there IS any protection except to pay up. I think that used to be popular in the 1930's ~ paying for protection I mean.
 
  • Like
Reactions: KABERS
  • Like
Reactions: anytimeflowers
[h=1]Boss, here is the latest "morph" of the page that would not resolve. You probably tried to open it during one of the postscript writings. I think we can assume that this was a big hoax.


[FONT=Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]Google & Bing: We’re Not Involved In “Local Paid Inclusion”[/FONT][/h]Jan 31, 2012 at 7:19pm ET by Danny Sullivan

[/COLOR]
logo.png
It sounds great. A program that guarantees top listings for local searches on Google, Yahoo and Bing. An “officially approved” one in “cooperation” with those search engines. But it’s not so, say Google and Bing.
The “Local Paid Inclusion” service launched officially today. The site’s home page pitches:
Local Paid Inclusion is a Google, Yahoo and Bing contracted service and is offered as an approved official program in cooperation with those search engines.Local Paid Inclusion promotes a local business’ profile page, like those found in Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local, into a top position on the search result page for up to 30 keywords per profile page.
This is a NEW program offered by Google, Yahoo!, Bing and 18 other major directories and indexes that places a business profile into a premium area above all other local profiles. Combine this with all of your other optimization programs to maximize your traffic.
What this means is local businesses that participate can essentially pay for the top local ranking position!
​
That copy reads like the type of email I’d normally delete as spam, if my spam filter didn’t catch it first. But since the service is backed by Bruce Clay, Inc. — a long-standing company in the SEO space — it really causes a double-take.
Clay dropped me an email late yesterday saying the service was going live, but I missed that (I have a lot of email I’m getting through) until some of the fireworks on Twitter erupted after his Facebook post went up and a story that Search Engine Watch did about the new service appeared
But Bing tells us:
Bing has no interest in paid inclusion into the local algo that artificially impacts ranking of algo results…. Microsoft does not have an agreement with UBL today.​
UBL, for Universal Business Listings, appears to be a company that Clay is working with on the Local Paid Inclusion product.
As for Google, it tells us:
We are not working on any program that enables a site to pay to increase ranking in organic search results.​
I’ve asked Clay for a further explanation, and we’ll update, when we hear more.
Postscript: Clay’s told me that he’s taken down the site while he investigates things further with UBL. Again, we’ll update, when we hear more.
Suffice to say, the claims are pretty unbelievable to me. I’ve also been seeing a lot of discussion about this on Twitter. So, in hopes of perhaps calming some concerns….
The idea that any one of these search engines would guarantee placement outside of their clearly marked advertising areas is pretty far-fetched. It’s not the way they’ve operated. The idea that all three would unite to do this in cooperation with an third-party company? Crazy.
So anyone believing this, or worrying about it, I’d relax. The denials above should be enough to do that, but they clearly aren’t for some people. But rather than the search engines having gone insane, it’s more likely there’s some massive confusion going on between UBL and Bruce Clay, Inc.
I get the impression that UBL — which I’ve never looked at closely — may provide data into local listings at the major search engines. Many companies do this type of thing. It doesn’t provide them any types of super-ranking powers. Some companies may try to stretch these type of relationships into some sort of endorsement by the major search engines. They shouldn’t be taken that way.
I get the impression (and this is solely my impression from afar, looking at all this), that Bruce Clay, Inc. is confused about what UBL can actually provide.
The idea that any company is going to guarantee an organic result simply makes no sense. It would be especially tricky in the local space. Google’s local results change significantly based on the city someone’s searching from. It literally becomes impossible to guarantee any ranking in that type of situation.
Postscript 2: UBL has posted:
Universal Business Listing denies any association with articles and news reports about a “paid inclusion” business listing service. The company has made no such announcements or claims, particularly in regards to Google. It has no product announcements pending.Bruce Clay Inc is a reseller of UBL’s existing business listing syndication service and is not currently testing any new service from our company.
​
The site itself didn’t make a connection with UBL over this service, but the Search Engine Watch article did — and Clay himself also suggested a connection when he emailed that he was checking things with UBL. So, I’ll check with them further, too.
Postscript 3: Doyal Bryant, CEO of UBL, has emailed me:
We have no program or service with Bruce Clay providing this type of service as we gave put out in our website.​
 
Interesting, Universal Business Listings called again today about my pending cancellation.... interesting because I don;t have a listing with them...

I answered, they asked for the owner (India call) and I played dumb, they tried to get me to say all sorts of things... bye bye now...
 
  • Like
Reactions: anytimeflowers
CHR said:
UBL has a good reputation. I highly doubt it was really them calling. More likely one of the wanna-be scammers trying to trap small businesses.
Click to expand...
I thought so too Cathy... I'll contact them *from my end* today and see whats up if I have time.
 
Eric S said:
I think if this is allowed that there should be a total boycott on search engines.
Click to expand...

Great idea, right up there with boycotting gas stations to bring the price down. No doubt will have the same level of participation and result
 
Just a quick follow-up. The paid inclusion for Local is not real.... at least for now.

Bruce Clay posted that the company was mislead, but that an NDA prevents them from explaining the whole story.

Chris Silver Smith basically blamed the Search Engine Watch reporter for getting the whole story wrong, but then back-pedaled.

Loads of blogs & tweets about this if you're wonkish enough to care, but the essence AFAIK is that someone from UBL lead Bruce Clay into believing the program was a done deal with the major search engines. (The SEW reporter said she was even offered by UBL to watch a demonstration of the program next week.) Seems this all started with UBL.

But now, everyone is denying any kind of program of the sort... especially G, Y and Bing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: anytimeflowers
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back