Google + pages and SEO results...
-
Hi,
Can anyone give me insight into how people are getting away with naming their business by the SEO search term, creating a BS Google + page, then having that page rank high in the search results. I am speaking specifically about the results you get when you Google: "Los Angeles DUI Lawyer".
As you can see from my attached screenshot (I'm doing the search in Los Angeles), the FIRST listing is a Google + business. Strangely, the phone number listed doesn't actually take you to a DUI attorney, but rather to some marketing group that never answers the phone.
Can anyone give me insight into why Google even allows this? I just find it odd that Google cares so much about the user experience, but have the first result be something completely misleading. I know it sounds like I'm just jealous (which I am, a little), but I find it disheartening that we work so hard on SEO, and someone takes the top spot with an obvious BS page.
-
Good Morning!
Unfortunately, the results you are seeing are consistent with a tweak Google made a few weeks back that has brought up some extremely low quality one boxes. The tweak is surfacing many old, spammy results like the one you've highlighted. Here are two good discussions of this weird phenomenon:
The above forum thread in 8 pages long, and I recommend you read the whole thing, as it includes many examples and, also, some things people have tried in regards to reporting the bad results.
Then, I would also suggest you read Mike Blumenthal's article in which he ties this tweak to the Hummingbird Update. Very smart:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/09/28/hummingbird-local-knowledge-graph-shitty-search-results/
And, if you'd care to read more on this topic, you might want to take a glance at:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/NMh_bk5MXX0
The problem is very widespread. Google is aware of it and I expect they will turn the dial again at some point to improve what is currently a very poor search experience. There may be some hope in reporting a specific instance, as you will read about in Linda Buquet's forum thread, but for the most part, this may just be one of those sit-tight situations that we have to endure until Google takes action. Hang in there.
-
In the second column of the Google+ listing, you may have noticed the Report A Problem link.
There are several options provided plus "Other". "Place does not exist or is private" may be the best choice but you have options.
I agree that tactics like these stain SEO and the SEO industry. Every industry needs feedback like you've provided!
-
If you see the new bar in your Google+ account that asks you to claim your custom URL then do that and if not here is the URL to get started with Google+ custom URL https://support.google.com/plus/answer/2676340?rd=1.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Negative SEO & How long does it take for Google to disavow
Following on from a previous problem of 2 of our main pages completely dropping from index, we have discovered that 150+ spam, porn domains have been directed at our pages (sometime in the last 3-4 months, don't have an exact date). Does anyone have exerpeince on how long it may take Google to take noticed of a new disavow list? Any estimates would be very helpful in determining our next course of action.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vuly1 -
International SEO: can I choose only certain pages for subfolder?
For a client we are discussing international SEO options. I have pushed against CCTLD because they do not have the resources to manage multiple sites. Instead we want to go the subfolder route: .com/uk/ My question is whether we can properly create a subfolder version that only includes a handful of pages rather than the whole site - so 5-10 pages vs 4k. Is that possible? I'd love your thoughts. International SEO is not my strong suit. Also - if the subfolder for .com/uk/ content is almost entirely the same as the us-based .com is that a problem? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JBMediaGroup0 -
Video SEO for Google
I was wondering what the prime factors were to make something rank for a video on Google. Does anyone have any suggestions? I think that length may be important, but I don't know what the ideal run time is. Hypothetically for local SEO, would I be better off doing a tag like "Mercedes Buffalo NY" or do individual tags of "Mercedes" and "Buffalo" Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oomdomarketing0 -
Investigating Google's treatment of different pages on our site - canonicals, addresses, and more.
Hey all - I hesitate to ask this question, but have spent weeks trying to figure it out to no avail. We are a real estate company and many of our building pages do not show up for a given address. I first thought maybe google did not like us, but we show up well for certain keywords 3rd for Houston office space and dallas office space, etc. We have decent DA and inbound links, but for some reason we do not show up for addresses. An example, 44 Wall St or 44 Wall St office space, we are no where to be found. Our title and description should allow us to easily picked up, but after scrolling through 15 pages (with a ton of non relevant results), we do not show up. This happens quite a bit. I have checked we are being crawled by looking at 44 Wall St TheSquareFoot and checking the cause. We have individual listing pages (with the same titles and descriptions) inside the buildings, but use canonical tags to let google know that these are related and want the building pages to be dominant. I have worked though quite a few tests and can not come up with a reason. If we were just page 7 and never moved it would be one thing, but since we do not show up at all, it almost seems like google is punishing us. My hope is there is one thing that we are doing wrong that is easily fixed. I realize in an ideal world we would have shorter URLs and other nits and nats, but this feels like something that would help us go from page 3 to page 1, not prevent us from ranking at all. Any thoughts or helpful comments would be greatly appreciated. http://www.thesquarefoot.com/buildings/ny/new-york/10005/lower-manhattan/44-wall-st/44-wall-street We do show up one page 1 for this building - http://www.thesquarefoot.com/buildings/ny/new-york/10036/midtown/1501-broadway, but is the exception. I have tried investigating any differences, but am quite baffled.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AtticusBerg10 -
Street Address Not Appearing on Business Google+ Page
I run a local business in New York City, a commercial real estate brokerage. My firm has both a web site and Google+ accounts, one Google+ account for me personally and a Google+ account for my business. Under address my Google+ account is showing New York, NY. It is not showing a street address. Similiarly when my business name is entered in the Google search bar, my web site is the first result, but under address (directly to the right of a black dot with a grey circle around it) "New York, NY" with the phone number beneath it appears. No sign of my street address. My business is registered under Google Places and we have entered the correct street address. Any ideas on how I can get Google to display our street address? This is obviously very, very detrimental for local SEO. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
ASP.Net How to Allow Google to Skip a Disclaimer Page
I have an ASP.NET website witch forces users to accept a disclaimer before accessing the website. I want to allow Google and other Searchbots to index/craw all the pages without accepting the disclaimer. What is to best way to do this? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tug-Agency0 -
It Doesn’t Matter Where You Point Links, Google Will Pick The Page
Hi Guys, I have a site that ranks quite well in a very competitive vertical and the company is now planning to do a site relaunch. SEO is very important to them and all of the sites within in the top 10 have the primary keyword in the urls example search: key1 key2 site.com/key1-key2/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VividLime
site.com/ key1key2/
site.com/key1key2.php Our site is the only one that is positioned within the top 10 without the keyword in the url and homepage only listing so the top 10 result looks like search: key1 key2 site.com/key1-key2/ site.com/ key1key2/ site.com/key1key2.php oursite.com sitekey2.com/key1-key2/
key1site.com/key1key2.html Currently we do not have a separate landing page for the target keyword hence why link building is focused on the homepage. As part of the consultation, I recommended we create a landing page for our primary keyword so we get **oursite.com/key1-key2/ **and shift the on-page keyword balance towards this page. the hope is, we get search: key1 key2 site.com/key1-key2/ site.com/ key1key2/ site.com/key1key2.php oursite.com/key1-key2 sitekey2.com/key1-key2/
key1site.com/key1key2.html Would Google simply replace my current domain only list for the most relevant url for a term? Does anyone have any experience with this? Or would i need to build links into the new url for the change to take place. what i'm hoping for and expecting, is for somthing like this to happen http://www.seowizz.net/2011/04/it-doesnt-matter-where-you-point-links-google-will-pick-the-page.html0 -
Google replacing subpages in index with home page?
Hi! I run a backlink building company. Recently, we had a customer who had us build targeted backlinks to certain subpages on his site. Then something really bizarre happened...all of a sudden, their subpages that were indexed in Google (the ones we were building links to) disappeared from the index, to be replaced with their home page. They haven't lost their rank, per se--it's just now their home page instead of their subpages. At this point, we are tracking literally thousands of keywords for our link building customers, and we've never run into this issue before. Have you ever run into it? If so, what's the best way to handle it from an SEO company perspective? They have a sitemap.xml and their GWT account reports no crawl errors, so it doesn't seem to be a site issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ownlocal0