Using keywords instead of brand name on G+ to rank for local terms.

[Silkstream]

I noticed something this morning, when performing a search on Google UK for "Intensive driving courses southend" the first position is awarded to a driving school that is using exact match keywords instead of brand name on their G+ page to rank for local terms. See this for yourself here: https://www.google.co.uk/#q=intensive+driving+courses+southend

Until then, my site had held position 1 for this term for well over a year.

Every gut instinct I have tells me that this will not work forever and its not something I should implement, however I'm interested to hear if anyone else is using this tactic, and how its working for them?

How can I compete with this "grey hat" tactic?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi SilkStream,

What you are experiencing is almost certainly the dread attack of the bad Google one boxes. This is a documented phenomenon going on right now, believed to be fallout from the Hummingbird Update. Instead of showing a complete pack of results for queries like this, Google is surfacing single spammy results with forbidden, spammed business titles. Some listings are for businesses that don't even exist anymore! It's an extremely poor user experience, obviously, and hopefully one Google will fix with another tweak of the dial.

I recommend you do some reading on this. Here are some great resources:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/09/28/hummingbird-local-knowledge-graph-shitty-search-results/

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-local-important/10000-attack-bad-google-local-one-boxes.html

Hang in there. I really hope Google will fix this soon!

[Silkstream]

Thank you so much Miriam. Its good to know that its something that's already been picked up in the US. I've added my comments to a webmaster forum thread that Linda Buquet started regarding this issue too, hopefully, Google will tweak this sooner rather than later. At least I dont feel so helpless now! Thanks again.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Silkstream,

Yep - it's almost always a relief to know what you're experiencing is part of a mass bug rather than an individual problem. Google tends to respond to system-wide problems with more speed and care than they do to edge cases. So glad I was able to answer your question and give you some peace of mind!