The Real Florist Blog stories about phony florists spamming listings and user reviews has been cited in one of the 'big league' SEO blogs.
Read Yahoo Local Now Features "User Degenerated Content"
The article's author, Mike Blumenthal, an authority on Local Search, and I have been trading emails about some of the exploits used by black hats to promote their rankings and damage others.
Mike writes the following about alerting Yahoo of a phony New York florist listing:
As you'll read, this tactic is not only a way to tag phony locals, it can be used to damage real businesses.
I ran across a wicked results page (Atlanta carpet cleaners, not florists) and pointed it out to him.
Bottom line - Every florist should be on the lookout for competitors who can knock their listings out by slapping 'This business may be closed' labels on them. According to Mike, it only takes 4 folks (or perhaps unique IPs) to make a listing disappear completely.
Sorry to say, at this point we all need to check our listings on Y Local regularly (maybe daily) to make sure we haven't been smacked. (Pull up your listing and look near the top. If you see "Some details about this business have recently been edited by the community", click the 'View Changes' to read what's been reported.)
I *think* you can report 'black hat slaps' via your business owner login.
I hope more FC members will get out there and participate in this discussion (either on the RF blog, on your own blog or on Blumethals'.) With only a couple of us commenting, it may look like local florists are clueless or simply don't care.
We florists have got the attention now of some pretty powerful folks - now's our chance to be a part of the conversation.
Use it or lose it. This opportunity may not come again soon.
Read Yahoo Local Now Features "User Degenerated Content"
The article's author, Mike Blumenthal, an authority on Local Search, and I have been trading emails about some of the exploits used by black hats to promote their rankings and damage others.
Mike writes the following about alerting Yahoo of a phony New York florist listing:
(emphasis mine)
As you'll read, this tactic is not only a way to tag phony locals, it can be used to damage real businesses.
I ran across a wicked results page (Atlanta carpet cleaners, not florists) and pointed it out to him.
Bottom line - Every florist should be on the lookout for competitors who can knock their listings out by slapping 'This business may be closed' labels on them. According to Mike, it only takes 4 folks (or perhaps unique IPs) to make a listing disappear completely.
Sorry to say, at this point we all need to check our listings on Y Local regularly (maybe daily) to make sure we haven't been smacked. (Pull up your listing and look near the top. If you see "Some details about this business have recently been edited by the community", click the 'View Changes' to read what's been reported.)
I *think* you can report 'black hat slaps' via your business owner login.
I hope more FC members will get out there and participate in this discussion (either on the RF blog, on your own blog or on Blumethals'.) With only a couple of us commenting, it may look like local florists are clueless or simply don't care.
We florists have got the attention now of some pretty powerful folks - now's our chance to be a part of the conversation.
Use it or lose it. This opportunity may not come again soon.