Google cracking down on business listing spam
December 03, 2009 |
Many local businesses have severely criticized Google for the boatloads of rampant spam in the Google Maps Local Business Listings. For a long time, it seemed as though not much was being done about it. But that has changed now.
Instead of chipping away little by little to improve each of the problem areas, they're now showing us a fairly comprehensive blueprint for the future of Google Maps with their new Business Listing Quality Guidelines. Every area that sparked complaints seems to be addressed in the new guidelines.
Local listers have been spamming it up in their profiles with different degrees of keyword stuffing in their business names. Some have even created multiple listings for the purpose of ranking for different terms by appearing as multiple businesses, like Laptop World, Macbook World, HP Laptop World, and Dell Netbook World.
Google now says, "Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world...Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords or a description of your business into the business name."
Get the full story at ClickZ
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