Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can a competitor close your business on Google Places?
-
One of my listings says it has been closed and the business is not closed. On Google + / Google places there is a field that allows users to check that claims the business is closed. Can they actually close it?
Your Google Places listing has been updated Dear Google Places user,
Google has updated your listing data on our consumer properties such as Google and Google Maps to more accurately reflect the latest information we have about your business.
We use many sources to determine the accuracy of our listing data and to provide the best possible experience for business owners and consumers who use Google and Google Maps to find local information.
Based on our sources, the following listing has been marked as closed:
Company info...
If you disagree with the changes we have made, please visit your Place Page to edit your listing.
Note that if you are an AdWords or Boost customer, your ads will be unaffected by this change and will continue to display the listing information you have provided in Google Places. To manage your online advertisements, please sign into Google Places or Google AdWords.
For more information about updates to claimed listings, please visit:http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1318197
Sincerely,
The Google Places Team|
-
Oooh...be careful, Donnie.
-
Yeah it's not fun... I have been contemplating a $5 Fiverr deal for 25 good reviews on G+ just to cover up all this spam. I don't like cheating/lying/spamming however I want to cover up all this spam...
-
I feel the headache you're experiencing, Donnie. So sorry about this and I couldn't agree with your more that Google's review process leaves much to be desired. But then, I don't know of a review entity that is perfect. Yelp has certainly come in for their share of public complaint for their policies. Google just tends to get the most heat because they are just so darned visible and powerful. What happens on Google directly effects the bottom line of the business owner, and there are no two ways about this. Over the years, I have written rather extensively urging Google to take serious responsibility for the effect they are having on businesses, especially on account of the fact that they initially populated their local index without owner consent. Suddenly, all local business owners were tossed into a sea of publicity, scrutiny and reputation management which few of them had the skills to handle. So, these days, to run a local business you've got to have the time to learn about Google because of its power over your presence and you've got to have good luck when coming up against the weaknesses and bugs of the system.
Google offers superb chances for visibility, but there are definitely big risks, too.
-
Actually all these spam attacks were done after the migration, people can just use a proxy and create ten Google accounts on 10 IPs. IMO Google should send a letter to every users house for verification (At lease the people who are interested in leaving reviews) and a company should be abe to rebuttal a fake review or report a review from a user they were never associated with.
-
Hi Donnie,
Wish I could guarantee that, but I've stopped underestimating the havoc evil-doers can cause in Google's Local entity. What is supposed to get better in the new Google+ Local environment is the spamming of reviews, because reviewers are now required to have a real ID. Assumedly, then, Joe Jones at the competing pizza house in your town isn't going to be able to go trash your pizza place anonymously because his name would be right on the review. We'll see how that plays out, but my word to the wise is that you should never consider any Google-based listing immune to anything. Maybe someday!
So glad my response was helpful, Donnie.
-
Thank you for this helpful answer. The listing was being spammed and Google is placing the listing back up. Now that Google is going to place the listing back, do you think it will be more immune to being attacked again?
-
Hi Donnie,
Unfortunately, yes, competitors can report your business as closed. Here is a legacy thread on this from Mike Blumenthal's copy of the old Google Places Help Forum which he saved when they shut it down:
http://places.blumenthals.com/threadb6b9.html
And here was a highly visible article from the New York Times on this problem:
Mike Blumenthal was so irked by this that he actually closed down Google's own listings in Places with a couple of clicks: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/09/14/google-places-now-permanently-closed-with-2-clicks-its-getting-worse-not-better/
Now, these issues were all from last year, prior to the Google Places changeover to Google+ Local, so let's take a look at some very recent reports of this issue:
And pay close attention to Linda Buquet's advice on this thread:
And here is a thread that actually got a response from a Google employee:
Basically, Donnie, if your business gets labeled with the closed label, you are going to have to try to appeal to Google either through the forum or their troubleshooter. There is a long, long history of issues with this, as you can see. Sometimes, this issue stems from competitive sabotage, and other times, the root of the problem can actually be duplicate listings or other problems.
I really hope the links I've provided will bring you up-to-date on this troublesome topic and point you in the right direction for resolution!
-
I don't think anyone can change it except the verified owner.
This makes me wonder though about Google needing to deal with the issue of businesses that may be owner verified and then go out of business. In most cases my guess would be that owners of failed businesses are not going to go in and close out their page or mark it as closed. So Google may have some need to close out claimed pages if they are getting data from different sources stating that the business is closed since they want to provide accurate information about businesses.
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
-
Can Schema handle two sets of business hours?
I have a client who, due to covid, will have two sets of business hours. Morning hours for business customers, and afternoon hours for general customers. Is it possible to designate this distinction in schema?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bherman0 -
Large Competitor closed, how to capitalize in search. Any ideas?
Hey Mozzers, One of our biggest competitors closed down on January 1st, 2020 in several US cities. They did stay open in some areas just FYI. The competitor's website is www.execucar.com. This is a very large company that has a presence in almost all US major airports. It's a private car service just like Uber but for wealthy individuals. For example. when you search " lax car service" they are #3 on Google or "car service to lax" they're #2 still. What can we do to get more of their traffic and actual business? Has anyone done something like this before or knows quick and easy tactics to get their clients? We have a local landing page: https://dcacar.com/lax-car-service that ranks 9 through 11 for those same keywords. Thanks for your thoughts and time. Davit
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit19850 -
Can Google Bot View Links on a Wix Page?
Hi, The way Wix is configured you can't see any of the on-page links within the source code. Does anyone know if Google Bots still count the links on this page? Here is the page in question: https://www.ncresourcecenter.org/business-directory If you do think Google counts these links, can you please send me URL fetcher to prove that the links are crawlable? Thank you SO much for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fiyyazp0 -
Google does not want to index my page
I have a site that is hundreds of page indexed on Google. But there is a page that I put in the footer section that Google seems does not like and are not indexing that page. I've tried submitting it to their index through google webmaster and it will appear on Google index but then after a few days it's gone again. Before that page had canonical meta to another page, but it is removed now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | odihost0 -
Prevent Google from crawling Ajax
With Google figuring out how to make Ajax and JS more searchable/indexable, I am curious on thoughts or techniques to prevent this. Here's my Situation, we have a page that we do not ever want to be indexed/crawled or other. Currently we have the nofollow/noindex command, but due to technical changes for our site the method in which this information is being implemented if it is ever displayed it will not have the ability to block the content from search. It is also the decision of the business to not list the file in robots.txt due to the sensitivity of the content. Basically, this content doesn't exist unless something super important happens, and even if something super important happens, we do not want Google to know of its existence. Since the Dev team is planning on using Ajax/JS to pull in this content if the business turns it on, the concern is that it will be on the homepage and Google could index it. So the questions that I was asked; if Google can/does index, how long would that piece of content potentially appear in the SERPs? Can we block Google from caring about and indexing this section of content on the homepage? Sorry for the vagueness of this question, it's very sensitive in nature and I am trying to avoid too many specifics. I am able to discuss this in a more private way if necessary. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn_Huber0 -
Ranking on google but not Bing?
Any reason why I could be ranking for Google but not Bing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Page position dropped on Google
Hey Guys, My web designer has recommended this forum to use, the reason being: my google position has been dropped from page 1 to page 10 in the last week. The site is weloveschoolsigns.co.uk, but our main business site is textstyles.co.uk the school signs are a product of text styles. I have been told off my SEO company, that because I have changed the school logo to the text styles logo, Google have penalised me for it, and dropped us from page 1 for numerous keywords, to page 10 or more. They have also said that duplicate content within the school site http://www.weloveschoolsigns.co.uk/school-signs-made-easy/ has also a contributed to the drop in positions. (this content is not on the textstyles site) Lastly they said, that having the same telephone number is a definate no no. They said that I have been penalised, because google see the above as trying to monopolise on the market. I don’t know if all this is true, as the SEO is way above my head, but they have quoted me £1250 to repair all the errors, when the site only cost £750. They have also mentioned that because of the above changes, the main text styles site will also be punished. Any thoughts on this matter would be much appreciated as I don't know whether to pay them to crack on, or accept the new positions. Either way I'm very confused. Thanks Thomas
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TextStylesUK0 -
How does google recognize original content?
Well, we wrote our own product descriptions for 99% of the products we have. They are all descriptive, has at least 4 bullet points to show best features of the product without reading the all description. So instead using a manufacturer description, we spent $$$$ and worked with a copywriter and still doing the same thing whenever we add a new product to the website. However since we are using a product datafeed and send it to amazon and google, they use our product descriptions too. I always wait couple of days until google crawl our product pages before i send recently added products to amazon or google. I believe if google crawls our product page first, we will be the owner of the content? Am i right? If not i believe amazon is taking advantage of my original content. I am asking it because we are a relatively new ecommerce store (online since feb 1st) while we didn't have a lot of organic traffic in the past, i see that our organic traffic dropped like 50% in April, seems like it was effected latest google update. Since we never bought a link or did black hat link building. Actually we didn't do any link building activity until last month. So google thought that we have a shallow or duplicated content and dropped our rankings? I see that our organic traffic is improving very very slowly since then but basically it is like between 5%-10% of our current daily traffic. What do you guys think? You think all our original content effort is going to trash?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | serkie1