Worst impact and results from the insertion of G maps into organic searches

[Robert Paulson]

Originally Posted by earlpearl

Google corrected the information for Duke TODAY!!!!

I still see the same crummy mistake filled data for queries that effect my business.

guess Google jumps through hoops for a few select institutions and allows everyone else to suffer!!!!!!


After today Y has become my SE of choice.

If you can figure out a way to position the mistakes relative to your business to appear to threaten a PR disaster, I'm sure yours would be fixed today, too.

[earlpearl]

Originally Posted by Robert Paulson

If you can figure out a way to position the mistakes relative to your business to appear to threaten a PR disaster, I'm sure yours would be fixed today, too.

hehe, RP....that is sort of what I was thinkin in the first place.

Instead of correcting the large and universal errors G manually corrected the errors for a big shot.

I'll be working on your idea tho!

At least my default SE is now Yahoo!

[earlpearl]

BTW:

Here is the Google response to two people today, one of whom (Bart) is the person from Duke:

Hi Charles and Bart,

I can definitely understand the frustration you're experiencing regarding these search results. The reason we don't allow businesses to correct information other than their own is to prevent spammers or evil people from changing business information that doesn't belong to them.

Currently, the best way to get wrong information off of Google Maps is to contact the business that it's attached to and let them know how they can change it. If this effort proves to be ineffective, let me know through this post and I may be able to assist you individually.

In the future, if you want to contact us, you can of course go through this group, or submit a ticket through our Help Center at http://maps.google.com/support

Bart, I know you're experiencing a slightly different issue on a much larger scale. I'm going to look into it for you. I definitely appreciate all your patience and effort to try and get the information corrected that's showing up on Google Maps. (my emphasis)
Thanks,
Jen

Google treats different groups differently!!!

[A.N.Onym]

I am slightly surprised this is not all over Gevil.org.

Man, Google has finally reached the point of screwing up constantly. Is it the coincidence that they started hiring non-PhDs there?

[eKstreme]

I love how they use the word evil to refer to other people. Nice touch that.

[A.N.Onym]

Well, just trying not to be something is not the best strategy. It is time they should realize it, I guess.

[earlpearl]

Aghhhhhh.

I've persistently worked to try and corrrect mistakes w/regard to Google vis a vis my business and after detailing specific erroneous and old data they removed 5 very old very bad listings in the last day.

BUT they have or are downgrading my site for G Local. Even as it seriously outranks any other competitor in my region for organic serps it is on the bottom of the G Maps sections or beneath the top 3 listings on a regular basis Aghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

Of interest this week for the first time ever we fielded two calls from potential customers/visitors who both claimed they made a number of calls and never connected to anyone on the phone until they reached us.

I'm liking MSN, Y, and Ask more and more these days! What a pain!

Meanwhile I suspect the full spectrum of mistakes are widely presented throughout G maps unless people are going to extremes to get them removed.

My example and that of the fellow from Duke are simple examples of both the power of G Maps and the problems associated with such volumes of bad data.

Now I've got to seriously work on this G Local mysterious algo.

[Robert Paulson]

It IS a mystery, isn't it. I just checked one of the Onebox maps results, and it's a framed page presenting AdWords! Nothing else there! Pure spam!

I've reported it, and hopefully that will provide a bit of room for me in there.

It does seem odd that you can get ranked #1 for an organic search term, but not for the same term when searched within their maps algo.

Thinking out loud - is the maps program something they bought from someone else, or did they develop it themselves? If it was purchased, ala YouTube, searching for info about the original creators might be fruitful.

I'd do it, but I'm too lazy. Reading too much random crap online, I suppose.

[earlpearl]

RP:

Google issued a patent on G Maps a little while back and Bill Slawski wrote about it at seobythesea.com. (don't remember the exact entry but it is one of the local patents).

I don't believe they are following the patent...but I'm gonna go back and review it to a tee.

Clearly the G maps algo is different than that in organic results.

Also Mike Blumenthal has created a framework at his blog, blumenthals.com/blog which is about G maps and Y Local, to try and determine how G is ranking sites.

I've been discussing it with some people. It requires a lot of a analysis to try and determine patterns.

[Robert Paulson]

I saw Mike B's post, but didn't quite get it. It needs to be formatted in a different way or something.

For analysis, I would think an experiment for anytown, USA would be worthwhile. Again, the lazy factor prevents me from acting on the idea.