Phil

Sabotage Methods in Google Places

November 19, 2011 by Phil 15 Comments

Maybe you didn’t “do anything” to your competitor. Maybe your competitor is struggling and simply wants more customers. Maybe your competitor thinks your success online means less profit for him or her.

I don’t know what your competitors think—and you probably don’t know, either.

But I do know one thing: you don’t want your business, livelihood, and your family’s finances to depend on whether or not your competitors are ethical people.

Just as people can hurt each other in real life, they can hurt each other where it really counts online: Google Places.

Your competitors are probably honest people. But there are always the bad apples. Even the bad ones most likely can’t hurt you intentionally in Google Places right now—unless they’ve been studying up on it. Some people are clever and knowledgeable but also dishonest and unethical.

There are specific tactics they can use to deprive you of local customers in Google Places and take a chunk out of your business and profits. For any competitors to use any of these against you, they’d have to fall somewhere between savvy and ingeniously cunning.

Some of these tactics I’ve seen used, whereas others I haven’t seen anyone use. But each one is a vulnerability that you should know about.

Disclaimer: I can’t control who reads this, or what that person does with the info I provide. I’m telling you about these tactics so you can prevent them from being used against your business in the first place, and so you have an idea of how to counteract them in case you do encounter them.

Here are the 9 nastiest ways an unethical competitor could sabotage you—ranked in order of least to most sinister:

9. They upload malicious or unflattering photos to your Places page. They don’t even have to be untrue or libelous; they could just be really ugly or irrelevant photos that turn customers off to you. Sure, you could get them removed, but it will be a real nuisance for you—and some potential customers will inevitably see the photos in the meantime.

8. They relentlessly use the “Report a problem” feature in Google Places to try to convince Google that you’re doing something wrong.

7. They pepper your Google reviews with flags and reports of being “inappropriate”—and then get their henchmen to do the same. If they succeed, your legitimate reviews might go the way of the dodo bird.

6. They could get several people to write you a bunch of positive reviews. Google may suspect you’re buying positive reviews (which some people do), and may pull your reviews or even suspend your account. Your competitors could take it a step further by making the reviews sound really fake (though still positive), which could cause legitimate people who visit your Places page to flag the reviews as “inappropriate” or “unhelpful” and get you into trouble.

5. They write nasty reviews of you on third-party sites and/or or on sites like PissedConsumer.com. These are especially tough to combat because (1) it’s harder for you to keep tabs on a bunch of different sites, because (2) one person can easily create a bunch of different user accounts on these sites and write you a nasty review on each, and because (3) some third-party sites don’t give you much recourse even if your business is getting slammed unjustly.

4. They write fake negative reviews, get their friends and family to do the same, and pay even more people to do it. They’d get a bunch of people to write not only negative Google reviews, but also nasty reviews on third-party sites. Most customers would know the reviews are cooked-up, but some would be convinced, and your Google Places ranking would most likely still take a hit. You could counteract their efforts if you took enough time away from running your business, but don’t expect Google to step in and do anything.

3. They set up fake Google Places listings for your address, using a different phone number from the one you use. Long story short, Google views your phone number as the unique “ID” of your business. If Google doesn’t have confidence that it knows what your real phone number is, your ranking will take a big hit.

2. Alternatively, they could set up fake Google Places listings using the name of your business but with a different phone number and a different address from the ones you use. Again, this would be an attempt to spread inconsistent info about your business and create “uncertainty” about your business in the eyes of Google. Having duplicate listings in general isn’t good for your Google Places ranking, and it’s far worse if there is a bunch of inconsistent information about your business floating around on the duplicate Places listings. The worst part is if your competitor lists an address that isn’t your real one, he potentially could receive the verification PIN from Google in the mail and actually “owner-verify” the fake listing. Google likely would eventually conclude that it isn’t the right address, but your competitor still will have thrown a wrench into the system.

1. Probably the worst thing a competitor could do to you is to use Tactic #2 against you and go to numerous third-party sites and create a bunch of fake listings for your business, all slightly different from each other. Not only does your Google ranking suffer when you have a ton of duplicate listings floating around cyberspace, but it’s infinitely worse when the info in those listings (phone numbers, addresses, name of business) is inconsistent. It would be extremely tough to manage the information that the most important third-party sites have about you—especially if an unethical competitor keeps peppering them with false info and maybe even claiming some of the listings. Especially if this tactic is used in combination with any of the others, you’ve got a serious problem on your hands.

So how can you avoid or counteract any sabotage? A few suggestions:

Watch your Google Places listing like a hawk. This means not only checking the Place page itself for anything suspicious or malicious, but also logging into the “Dashboard” area to make sure you don’t have any notifications/warnings from Google.

Keep an eye on third-party listings and data providers—including Yelp, SuperPages, CitySearch, and ExpressUpdateUSA. Look out for duplicate listings and see if the info they contain is accurate. If not, get the duplicates removed.

Set up Google Alerts for your business name and website name. Doing the same for your competitors’ names is a good measure, too.

Read all your reviews—first and foremost on your Places page, but also occasionally on major third-party sites, like Yelp and InsiderPages. If you see a suspicious-looking review, click on the username of the person who wrote it. You’ll be able to see what other reviews that person has written. If there’s a scathing 1-star for you but a glowing 5-star for your competitor, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.

If prevention doesn’t work, contact the business owner. First just mention what is going on, and ask in a non-accusatory way whether they might know anything about it. If they’re dodgy, explain your reasons for thinking they’re up to something, and then ask them to explain what’s really going on. Obviously, be as polite as possible and don’t lead off with finger-pointing—but also be firm and keep your BS detector cranked up.

Meanwhile (maybe before you even contact the business owner), use Google’s feeble but occasionally handy “Report a problem” feature to let the powers-that-be at Google Places know something’s awry.

(By the way, if you still encounter trouble even after all of that, feel free to contact me; I may be able to give you some suggestions.)

To a peaceful, fair, prosperous local market.

Unorthodox Strategy: Testimonial Photos on Your Google Places Page

November 9, 2011 by Phil 5 Comments

Do you have hard-earned testimonials that you feel don’t get enough exposure? Do they just sit contently on your site, largely unseen by potential customers?

Try adding your testimonials as photos to your Google Places page. Just take screenshots of them and upload them to the normal “Photos” area of your Places page. Or maybe you already have photos of them—all the better.

I’m not talking about customer reviews. Obviously, reviews are crucial to your Google Places ranking and to your ability to attract customers in general. Rather, I’m talking strictly about the testimonials that customers have already written for you.

Why bother shoehorning your testimonials into your Places page? Well, because the whole point of testimonials is to have potential customers see them. This builds trust. If you have them on your website, great. But you can take it a step further by making your testimonials visible to the local people who find your Places page.

Here’s an example of how a testimonial might look when uploaded to your Places page:

I’ve never seen this done “in the wild.” However, there must be some business out there that has its testimonials viewable on the Places page. I’m sure I’m not the first to think of it.

By the way, that’s why I call this strategy “unorthodox”: businesses just don’t do it, even though they can and (I would say) should. You will be the first in your local market to leverage your Places photos in this way.

A couple of suggestions for the testimonials / photos you upload to your Places page:

– Make it clear that they’re testimonials. You could just include a bold header in the actual picture that says “Testimonials” or something like that. Ideally, this would be readable as a thumbnail—so that visitors / potential customers can tell that you have testimonials without actually having to click on the slideshow view of your Places photos.

-Have the testimonial photo(s) be among the first 3-4 photos uploaded to your Places page. You’ll want at least one of the testimonial photos to be visible in the new Google Places “preview” area to the right of your Places listing. You’ll also want to have some of the testimonials to be visible as thumbnails to anyone who’s on your Places page. In either case, if people can tell from a thumbnail that you’ve got some testimonials, there’s a good chance they’ll click and see the nice full-sized testimonial.

– Include your customers’ first and last names. Otherwise your testimonials might come across as phony. (Obviously, you should double-check with your customers first to make sure this is OK.)

– Mention that there are more testimonials to be found on your website (unless, of course, you’re able to stuff all your testimonials into the “Photos” area of your Places page). You can do this by editing your photos to include a little caption or watermark that says something like “More customer testimonials at www.example.com”. In addition to building cred with your potential customers, one of the main goals of including the testimonials on your Places page is to get people to go your website. That’s why you need to leave them little trails of breadcrumbs that lead to your site.

-Don’t overdo it, of course. If 3 of your Places photos (out of the total of 10 you can upload) contain customer testimonials, that’s plenty. The rest of your photos should highlight all the other great aspects of your business that are worth showcasing in your Places photos.

By the way, the pictures of the testimonials don’t need to be pretty. But if you want to spend a few minutes dolling them up, I suggest using SnagIt. (I’m not an affiliate; just a raving fan.)

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If you do apply this unorthodox strategy, I’d really like to hear about it.

And of course, please let me know if you spot a business “in the wild” that does this.

10-Point Maintenance Routine for Your Google Places Visibility

November 7, 2011 by Phil 20 Comments

In the real world, bad habits tend to be pretty fun. People can’t resist ‘em, even though they generally know these habits will eventually bite.

But in the harsh world of Google Places, most people don’t even know what the bad habits are. That’s because the bad habit in Google isn’t glamorous or fun: it’s plain old-fashioned neglect. It’s neglecting to keep the good habits.

The result of neglect is your local visibility suffers—and so does your business.

How to maintain (and slowly grow) visibility in Google Places Not only can you maintain your visibility in Google Places by following the “good habits,” but to the extent you’re not as visible as you’d like to be, these habits also can help grow your local visibility over time.

Fortunately, a good Google Places maintenance routine is pretty easy to keep. I suggest you do the following on a routine basis (at least every week or so):

1. Check your Places page. Just make sure everything looks OK and that all the info on there is accurate (and if it’s not, login to your Google Places “Dashboard” and make any changes as need-be). Now, anyone can make edits to your Places page—even if it’s owner-verified. Scary.

2. Check up on your Google Places rankings for the search terms you want to be found for. Preferably take screenshots and file them away. It’s smart to keep track of whether/how your rankings change over time.

3. Look at all the photos on your Places page. All sorts of photos can wind up on your Places page—whether by fluke or by people’s intentionally uploading them to your page. Just keep an eye on what’s in the “Photos” area of your page.

4. Read your reviews. Make sure there aren’t any fishy ones, and make sure there isn’t a negative or fake review at the very top of the list of reviews on your Places page. If you see fishy reviews, flag and/or report them to Google.

If there’s a legitimate but negative review that just sticks out like a sore thumb, you should do two things: (1) write a polite response to the review, and (2) step on the gas and ask more of your happy customers for Google reviews, so as to put the negative one(s) in perspective for anyone who’s looking at your Places page for the first time.

5. Look at all your competitors’ Google Places pages. If there are any customer reviews that truly seem phony—as though your competitors wrote themselves some glowing reviews or paid someone else to do so—flag and/or report them to Google.

More importantly, just keep an eye out for good ideas: aspects of their Places pages or websites that you like and that you might want to use for your own business. Always look for good pages to take out of your competitors’ playbooks—especially if they outrank you.

6. Read the “Google Alerts” emails that you receive regularly. Whoops…I forgot to mention that before you can do this, you need to go to https://google.com/alerts and set up some Alerts. With Alerts, you’re telling Google to notify you every time specific information is published on the Web. For example, if your company is Acme Dynamite Co., you can tell Google to notify you every time anyone writes about “Acme Dynamite Co.” anywhere on the web. Then you can create a separate alert for “Wile E. Coyote,” another for “Roadrunner,” and for whatever other terms you want to monitor.

I suggest you set up Google Alerts for your business name, your given name, your website name, AND for the names of your local competitors, their website names, etc. You’ll probably end up with 2-3 dozen Alerts—but you’ll be able to keep tabs of exactly what’s being said online about you and your competitors. While you’re at it, you ought to check Twitter regularly for what (if anything) is being said about you and/or your competitors there.

There are also tasks that are every bit as important as the ones above, but that you don’t have to do quite as often. Some habits I suggest you get into and do about once a month:

7. Do a GetListed.org scan. Make sure you always score “100%”—and if you don’t, get yourself listed on the third-party sites it tells you you’re not listed on.

8. Check your listings on the major data providers: Acxiom, InfoUSA, and LocalEze. More specifically, you’re checking two things: (1) you’re checking to see that your business is listed on all these sites (if it’s not, add it), and (2) you’re seeing whether all the info they have on your business is 100% accurate (if it’s not, correct it).

All this may sound daunting, but it’s quick and easy: The absolute worst case is you’re not listed at all and have to spend 20 minutes submitting your business this one time. Or, if your business info isn’t accurate, it will take maybe 5-10 minutes to submit the corrections. Of course, it’s just as likely that everything is A-OK and that you’ve only taken 2-3 minutes to check up on how you’re listed on these crucial sites.

9. Make sure you don’t have any duplicate Google Places listings. To check this, just log into your Google Places “Dashboard.” Each physical business location should only have one Google Places listing. Multiples will seriously damage your chances of ranking well; remove them if you see them. (This check-up item literally takes 30 seconds, and removing duplicate listings maybe another 60.)

10. View your Places page through the “Maps” tab. First type in a local search term that you currently rank for, then click on the “Maps” tab at the top of the page. Find your business in the left-hand sidebar. Do you see a little excerpt of a customer review? Read it. Is it positive? If not, many of the potential customers who find your business under the “Maps” tab are probably being scared away by it. Again, the remedy for this is to make sure you keep positive Google reviews coming in. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

Check the review snippets under the "Maps" tab

11. This wasn’t on the original list, but it’s an excellent checkup item that Mike Blumenthal himself has suggested (see comments): type your business name into Google and see what pops up on the 1st page of Google results.

Chances are you’ll see a bunch of results and info all over the page relating to your business:

the local map on the right, with a Google Places map pin denoting the location of your business
a horizontal strip of photos—on the right
some keywords under the “At a glance” heading—on the right
third-party listings of your business (like on Yelp)—in the organic results
possibly some sitelinks for your site
all kinds of other stuff

Take a minute to eyeball everything on the first page: do the photos for your business look weird or strangely cropped? Is the map pin in the right location? Is there a scathing review or inaccurate description from a third-party listing that’s visible in the organic results?

This is crucial, because when potential customers search for you by name, there’s a good chance they’ll become real customers. They’re yours to lose. Just make sure that nothing on Page One looks bad; it’s where you can and should shine.

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What does your Google Places maintenance routine look like? Any items you’d add to either of these lists?

Unheralded Change in Google Places: the Tiny Feedback Link

November 4, 2011 by Phil 1 Comment

The Google Places layout has changed a lot recently: gray map pins, “preview” arrows for each Places page, and a re-orientated local map that follows you as you scroll down the page.

Much ink has been spilled over these changes. Even people who don’t follow Google Places closely know about the new layout.

But there’s a change that nobody (to my knowledge) has discussed so far: the little “Feedback” link.

What “Feedback” link? Type in a local search term, hover your mouse over any of the Google Places business results, and then hover over the little arrow that pops up on the right.

Way below the big map and the newly prominent Places page info, you’ll see a small, grayed-out link that says “Feedback.” If you click on it, the “Report a problem” window will come up, and you’ll be able to report mischief to Google.

There’s nothing new about the “Report a problem” window. You could always get to it before, either by clicking on a Place page and scrolling down to find the link at the bottom of the page, or by clicking on the “Maps” tab and clicking on a tiny link in the bottom-right corner. Nor is the “Report a problem” window any different from the old one; it just looks a little spiffier. This feature isn’t new.

What’s new (and strange) is the link itself and the way it’s been incorporated into the new Google Places layout. (Yes, it’s only for Google Places, because the “previews” for organic search results don’t include “Feedback” links.)

Specifically, what’s weird is how subtle this “Feedback” link is. It’s tiny. It’s gray. You only see it when you hover on a local search result and then on a preview arrow. For something that’s now accessible from page 1 of Google, it’s awfully inconspicuous.

The wording of the link itself is vague: all the other links to the “Report a problem” window simply read “Report a problem.” It’s not like you can leave any old kind of feedback: it can ONLY be a problem you’re reporting, not “Hey, I think this business is great.” Why is this the only case where Google refers to the “Report a problem” area differently (and vaguely)?

It’s a contradictory change: it’s more prominent—you can now see it without leaving Page One—but it’s not downright prominent. Google isn’t known for its subtlety, or for being afraid to stick its new features in your face.

So why is it only a little easier now for people to “report a problem” with a business in Google Places?

One possibility is that Google is starting to make an effort to clean up phony / spammy / inaccurate Google Places listings and info—with the help of Good Samaritans and business owners who are getting screwed by inaccurate and/or fraudulent listings. The folks at Mountain View know that Places is the Wild West; the only question is to what extent they’ll send a sheriff or two into the local saloons.

Given Google’s recent stabs at quality-control (in the form of “automatic updates”) and its growing emphasis on user-generated content, it’s possible Google is now paying a little more attention to reports of problems.

So…if there are any inaccuracies / spammy Google Places listings in your local market, give the “Feedback” link a try; there’s a chance Google will actually listen.

New Google Places Layouts w/ Gray Map Pins: Face-lift or Botox Shot?

October 29, 2011 by Phil 9 Comments

Google has once again tested VERY different layouts for the Google Places local results.

This particular test lasted a few hours in the wee hours today (October 29) but features several elements that having been popping up in Google’s tests recently.

It included a new look for the “7-pack” Google Places results…

…and for the “blended” local results:

Most notably, it’s the second short test of the new map layout that I reported on recently, and it contains the gray map markers that Jo from LollipopLocal and Nyagoslav from NGS Marketing noticed (mainly in Europe) last week.

I didn’t notice any reshuffling of the rankings, nor anything to indicate an algorithm change; the test layout is pretty much just a facelift.

Or…is it just a Botox injection into the ever-changing face of Google Places? Both new layouts are far less colorful—no red map markers or photos—even though they hog more above-the-fold space than before.

Google has now tested both the different map layout and the gray map pins twice in the span of a couple weeks. My guess is that in the very near future Google will stop messing around and will actually roll out a new Google Places layout.

Phil

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