Search Engine Optimization on Google Maps for Small Businesses with retail locations is a passion of mine that I don’t always get to indulge in on a day to day basis. Many of my clients are manufacturers or national service providers who do not have retail locations, so I only get to apply my knowledge in select situations.
That’s why I was very excited when I received the following distress call last week from a pizza place that had some problems with their listing on Google Maps; it allowed me to put my knowledge of the subject into action. I was probably over exhaustive with my response, but I thought it would make a good blog post.
Pizza Hut Hijacked my Google Maps Listing
Definition of the problem:
“My favorite pizza shop has a complaint with a Google search. When you search pizza in Culver City, LaRocco’s name comes up but the number below their name is for Pizza Hut. It also says Pizza Hut but consumers don’t notice that. They end up thinking they called LaRocco’s and show up asking for their pizza and get angry when LaRocco’s doesn’t have the order. I was witness to this a few weeks ago.
Apparently Google said there’s nothing they can do. Does that sound right?”
I knew right away what was happening, as I had read about this type of behavior happening in New York City with Locksmiths – as well as many other cases of Google Maps Spam. Here is my response in full:
Local SEO and Fighting Google Maps Spam
This is a classic case of what has been called “map spam” in the industry –something that happens a lot on Google’s local search results. Unfortunately, solving the problem isn’t widely supported by Google.
A company’s ranking in the search results for the “local” Google Maps search engine takes into account several factors, including distance from business from the city center, number of reviews for the business, number of local directories that claim this business and more. In LaRocco’s case, they are actually doing a great job at being visible with the search engines (must be a great place and I am definitely visiting next time I’m in LA), but are running into a problem: Pizza Hut appears to have claimed their listing unfairly and possibly unscrupulously.
How does this happen?
This happens likely for two reasons:
LaRocco’s has not “claimed” that they own this business location with Google. While claiming a business is fairly painless (instructions below), it’s not something many business owners do automatically. By not claiming a business, an opportunity arises for another business to claim this location as theirs.
Pizza Hut is a large national retailer with many locations. In order to ease management for mass retailers, Google provides them with the opportunity to “bulk upload” a list of their business locations and have them automatically approved. As a result of their status, Google makes it very easy for Pizza Hut to claim all of their locations, and possibly claim the locations of their competitors. This can either be done inadvertently or intentionally, but it appears to have happened here.
By not having claimed the listing in Google, it allowed Pizza Hut to claim that they owned the business. This can be reversed using the methods below.
How do we fix this?
While there’s no magic bullet for fixing the listing, I would start with the source and troubleshoot from there.
We recommend starting with having LaRocco’s claim their local business listing with Google. They can do this here: http://www.google.com/local/add/. They can verify that they own the business via phone or US Mail. They should choose the phone option, because US Mail doesn’t seem to work. This should only take a short time for the business to set up.
Once the listing is claimed, LaRocco’s can update all vital information to make their business contact information appear properly. This should only take a few minutes and may solve the problem immediately.
LaRocco’s should do whatever they can to claim their business listing with all possible services to make sure that this doesn’t happen elsewhere. Claiming the listing also allows them to post special offers, store hours, menus, photos, etc. This is recommended. Start with the following:
Use the tool on www.getlisted.org to see how the site is viewed in Google, Yelp, Bing, Yahoo, etc. (I see 75% for LaRocco’s Pizzeria)
Promote the site using a service called www.universalbusinesslisting.org. For $30, they will create/claim your listing with hundreds of local business directories, protecting them from fraud while also allowing their business to be found on hundreds of more websites.
Participate in the communities around each of these sites, especially Yelp and Google. Encourage reviews from customers, create specials on Foursquare and other location services (Gowalla, Loopt, etc.), respond to negative reviews, offer specials and discounts, etc.
Taking these steps will not only reverse the trends seen above by Pizza Hut “hijacking” LaRocco’s listing, but will also significantly increase their presence online!
Let me know if you have any questions. If you got this far, I commend you for reading!
Google Maps Spam Problem Solved
“Jeff,
It worked! I dropped off the instructions last night and I had an email in my yahoo mailbox today.
Thanks again for making me look soooo good!”
Concluding
If you know anyone who owns a business with retail locations, this blog post should help them by outlining a series of steps that all businesses can take advantage of immediately! I probably didn’t need to write such a long email to explain the problem (I could have just sent the link to http://www.google.com/local/add/ and said “good luck”), but I decided to write out the steps for both personal justification as well as training for others. While local search is fairly easy in principle, it’s a lot of information for a small business to consume on limited resources.
Understanding the intricacies of Google Maps and Local Search Engine Optimization can be a daunting task for businesses, and this is an area where it may pay to have an expert on retainer. I can’t tell you how fulfilling it was to help solve LaRocco’s problems, and I hope that this post helps others resolve theirs!
Last week I had the honor of speaking at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management for a class entitled BA 1905 — “Internet Search Economics, Google, and New Business Opportunities” - a great name for a course covering this relatively new industry, with some truly engaging curriculum around my favorite topic of conversation: Search Engines, Marketing, and creating a business model around increasing visibility on the web.
With a blank canvas to work with and many possibilities for conversation, the professor and I decided that it would be best to do an hour long presentation on Google. The presentation pretty much wrote itself from that point on. Here is the full slide deck:
Since I am so closely involved with, and dependent on Google (I use their products, actively read their blogs and use their search engine every day) the talk came naturally for me. The presentation was mostly just an “off the top of my head” overview of what I know about Google from various books that I have read, interactions with teams, etc. Here is a loose outline of what I talked about:
Creation of a New Industry
What Google Means to Online Marketing
What Makes Google Interesting?
What Does the Future Hold?
About Three Deep
Questions and Answers
Being the slacker that I am, I spent all weekend pulling my presentation together and didn’t even get a chance to rehearse before my Monday afternoon talk. Fortunately, the subject matter came naturally to me and I was able to turn out a well received speech.
It was really humbling to receive feedback from the students on my presentation. They found it to be a very valuable and engaging experience, but don’t take my word for it – listen to the students!
* “Really neat info on how to make money from Google. Very informational, straight-forward. Good presentation. Cool guy.”
* “I thought this was a very interesting presentation. I learned a lot of fascinating things and this opened my eyes to a completely new industry that I was unaware of before.”
* “I thought the presentation was really good. The presenter is very knowledgeable and passionate about what he does. I liked hearing about what we have been learning, from the perspective of someone who is in the business.”
* “Jeff was really great. He is very knowledgeable and willing to share information.”
* “Presented and covered many relevant topics about how Google’s innovations have made the company successful. Suggested possible market or venues that Google could venture into. Answered hosting and marketing questions and gave advice to explore interests in internships and find contacts and connections.”
* “He was interesting and very knowledgeable about Google. He also had a job related to Google which made the presentation especially interesting. Interesting to learn about the new company. Fun to see different things about Google.”
* “I liked the real-world timely examples given.”
* “Would have been interested to hear more about Three Deep Marketing and how they grew their company. More relevant info about online business growth and models would have been helpful and interesting.”
* “Very interesting to get a real-world perspective on some of the issues/topics we’ve talked about in class! Very worthwhile/interesting!”
* “Some of the information was review, but speaker was very informative and gave a really strong overview of Google. Really gained my interest when he started to analyze why Google does what it does and how to be successful through Google.”
* “I thought the presentation was very interesting. Jeff had a lot of good, useful information that was very relevant to the class. I like the fact that he had experience and real-life examples of certain things (such as the stories about domain names) because it was so real and put things into a good perspective. He knew a lot about the topics he talked about and presented it in a way that was clear and easy to understand. I learned a lot.”
* “The presentation helped to link all the different Google ideas into the real business world and how they relate.”
* “Good and clear information provided.”
* “The information about starting your own website was very useful and interesting.”
* “Useful overview and review of Google with insights from the real world. Great personal anecdotes that related to subject matter at hand. Material was presented in a catchy and eloquent manner but did not go over my head.”
* “I found this very interesting and I was very engaged the whole time! Jeff knows his stuff and has a great way to get his information across and was a great speaker. It made me want to get into starting my own website. Great presentation!”
In December, several members of the Three Deep team attended an event at Google’s offices in Manhattan, NYC. Google’s offices made for an intimate setting, and compelling presentations from BabyCenter’s Tina Starkey and Google’s Jim Lecinski made for a particularly worthwhile event for our team to attend. Since many of our clients tend to be in the business of marketing to moms (and we often execute these marketing programs), this event was right in our sweet spot.
Parisian Love
The event started with a quick video that was produced by Google that told a love story through search. It was a compelling video and told a great story of a long distance relationship where the subjects are brought together through the magic of Google.
My wife travels often for work, and by default, I usually act as her own personal car service. As such, I am found using search for a flight status for whatever airline she may be flying that week.
Somewhere between April’s Delta flight from Monterey and November’s American Airlines flight from Indianapolis, Google has become fantastic at showing me the information I’m looking right on the SERP (search engine results page), above the organic listings without ever having to leave the search engine. Every bit of information I’m looking for is right there.
Furthermore, if you’re lucky enough to have a Google enabled phone, you just push the Google Voice Search button, say the airline and flight number and, voila, the information you need is at your fingertips – making it very user-friendly to search while driving as well.
Continue Reading Please Don’t Leave Me – Search Trends for 2010 →
We are Google’s favorite place! You read it correctly! After years of hoping, prodding, sweat and tears, I can finally announce to that Three Deep Marketing is Google’s favorite place in the United States, and presumably the world.
I would like to thank my family, friends, acquaintances, complete strangers and people who I might meet in the future; we couldn’t have done it without you!
In the mail today, Three Deep received a package from Google containing a large window sticker with a bar code, like the image shown to the right. I have been anticipating this package for the past 10 days; ever since reading this announcement from Google. I knew it was only a matter of time before Google would send us an affirmation of how much they truly like our organization.
What does it take to be Google’s favorite place? A strong presence for your local business listing. Those fortunate enough to receive this designation and a package in the mail (about 100,000 exclusivebusinesses) have worked hard to optimize their local business listing on Google so that they often show up in local business oriented search results.
Continue Reading Three Deep is Google’s Favorite Place →
Last week I came across a great slide deck put together by InsightR consulting that compares two free web analytics tools: Google Analytics and Yahoo Web Analytics (formerly IndexTools). While we haven’t had much experience working with Yahoo! Web Analytics, the results from this study are quite intriguing, and favorable for Yahoo! in many areas.
As a GAAC consultant, this really does not change anything when it comes to our preferred choice of tools, but I do think that it proves Yahoo Web Analytics to be a true competitor in this space. Competition is good!
Continue Reading Yahoo! Web Analytics vs. Google Analytics →
As marketers, we all know that there is a fair amount of turnover throughout the dynamics of the client/agency relationship. This post series covers solutions to many common problems that may arise while inheriting a Google Analytics account.
One of the key objectives in value added Web Analytics is answering the question “what is the point of this website” and “what do we want visitors to do when they visit.” The metric we use to determine success is a conversion occurring during a site visit.
This is a pretty elementary aspect of web analytics, and a fundamental foundation for a solid analytics install… or is it? From my experience, this is often overlooked. The fact is that most web analytics installations do not have even the most basic fundamental configuration elements in place.
Continue Reading Google Analytics: Inferring Conversions with No Goals →
A few weeks ago, a small group of “Three Deepers” attended Google’s annual Authorized Partner Summit at their headquarters in Mountain View, California. This four-day event provided excellent coverage of their industry-leading marketing products, including Google Website Optimizer (GWO), Google Analytics (GA), and Urchin.
The information presented was an excellent blend of product training, use cases, deep-dives into new capabilities, and breakout sessions with the product managers and engineers themselves. The following is a brief overview of the event and the knowledge that returned to Minnesota with us.
Day One – Google Website Optimizer
Continue Reading 2009 Google Analytics Partner Summit Recap →
As marketers, we all know that there is a fair amount of turnover throughout the dynamics of the client/agency relationship. At many levels, turnovers are a part of normal agency operations.
As the web analytics industry matures and more specialists emerge in the field, I have noticed that turnover is a result of clients reaching out to specialists in order to get the most out of their data. This effect can be credited to three simultaneous events occurring in the online measurement space:
The shift in the web analytics industry from an IT function to a role in marketing.
I love to read, and in the ever-changing world of Interactive Marketing, constantly reading is imperative to staying fresh and relevant in the marketplace. While nothing substitutes for real world experience, I have found that maintaining an extensive reading list is the most surefire way to accelerate your career (and your profile within your company).
When I first started with Search Marketing, I found that there were several quality books that were published both in print and in e-book format. All of these books were highly relevant to the topic of search marketing, and offered a solid background as to how the search engines evolved, which engines were succeeding in the short term, and an outlook for the future of search. This was exactly what I needed in order to get started in the industry, and it helped me put form to the theories that I had crafted in my head about how to approach the industry.
This worked well for the first several books, but then I started to notice two very distinct and opinion altering trends when it came to reading Interactive Marketing books in print:
There is a lot of overlap between the books. While seeing a comprehensive history of how Google became the dominant search engine is very useful on first read, hearing variations of the same story in 3-4 print books becomes quite tedious.
We are Google’s favorite place! You read it correctly! After years of hoping, prodding, sweat and tears, I can finally announce to that 
As marketers, we all know that there is a fair amount of turnover throughout the dynamics of the client/agency relationship. This post series covers solutions to many common problems that may arise while inheriting a Google Analytics account.
