Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Nowadays, it's too easy to do Local SEO for your website. I'm working on a project of artificial grass Malaysia that is a local-based project and I have seen many good result in Google.

Hi Seorankfuse! You are so right that this is a very serious problem. Google's apparent inaction regarding it could be stemming from two causes that I can think of: They are too comfortable as a result of being a monopoly. When Google entered local search, they did it without the consent of local businesses. Most owners simply found themselves thrown into the deep end of the pool, scrambling towards the realization that their information was now on a highly visible platform. So, basically, you had an entity representing the country's local businesses without their authorization, and Google support was so incredibly lacking back then, it was extremely stressful for owners whose information was wrong, spammed, conflated, hijacked, etc. It hurt real-world local businesses. Google's support has improved quite a bit since those days, but their brand attitude all too often appears not to have changed. I've now read so many stories of business owners who are literally being blackmailed by spammers or having their professional reputation damaged by review spam companies, I'm not at all impressed by Google's response. If their inability to address this scenario stems from a lack of competition, it's an object lesson in why monopolies are bad for the market. Google may simply not know how to manage what they've built. It's a vast body of content they have on their plate. Other review platforms (like Yelp) appear to be far more stringent in the enforcement of guidelines and policing of content, but it could be that Google either lacks the dedicated staff members to manage their review corpus or that their engineers have yet to hit on an algorithmic solution that they're happy with for auto-detecting most forms of spam. I am not an engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but it would basically come down to a combination of identifying suspicious patterns + human support to greatly reduce the damage happening to real-world businesses as a result of Google's uncontrolled spam problem. That's my take on this situation. I agree with you 100% that Google should be publicly addressing this and proffering a timeline of their planned solutions, but this just isn't happening. So, in the meantime, if you, a client or someone you care about is subject to a large-scale review spam attack, my best advice is to utilize PR to the maximum to draw attention to that particular case in hopes of one-off resolution. Not great, but there it is. Further reading: https://twitter.com/JoyanneHawkins/status/1069596742776061952 https://www.localsearchforum.com/threads/4-star-fake-review-issue-over-2-3-million-fake-ratings-on-google.53556/

I like your thinking, Nicholas! Some good tips here and intriguing predictions. Thank you so much for contributing to this thread.

There's more on my blog guerrillahub.com

Hi Julie, I wouldn't predict that happening in 2017 (or any time soon). Google has simply positioned themselves too well. That being said, Facebook is definitely one of the major deterrents to Google having the whole pie, and Apple Maps has made some improvements in the past year that could lead to them taking a little bit of a larger slice

Pleasure.

Oh, man! Not this: Google Business and that the reviews "may" return once the bug is worked out. It has been 4 years since Google's last major review fiasco. Hope this doesn't turn into round 2. Thanks for mentioning, David, and sorry Google Business Manager is giving you a headache.

Hi Kristen, Great question! So sorry, but I have no personal experience to add here about being a Local Guide. These might interest you, though: https://jakehennett.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/2016-01-20-local-guide-experiences/ https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/_J0EEGiM9cg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whDs4MSumbg And Mike Blumenthal, I believe, is a Local Guide. He mentions it in the comments of this blog post, but I don't recall ever seeing him blog about it: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/01/15/google-replacing-city-experts-with-local-guides-program/ There doesn't seem to be a ton out there about people's personal experiences being Google Local Guides. If anyone in our community is doing this, it would be neat to hear what you think of the program!

Hi Vadim! Thanks for sharing your take on best wording for this. I like your suggestion.

Nice! Thanks for confirming, Andy.

Happy to have you be part of this community, Travis!

Hey Matt! That's a really good and observant point you've raised. Making it easier for users to leave reviews does necessarily mean it will be easier for dissatisfied or even phony customers to leave reviews now, so an increase in reputation monitoring would be a must. Very true! So, word to the wise from MattAntonio: Be sure you're monitoring those Google reviews on a regular basis!

Hey There! Thanks so much for taking the time to contribute to this discussion. The geographic variations you mention sound normal to me, but the issue of the companies consistently ranking highly for no apparent reason is interesting. Are you saying the search is yielding a onebox (just one result) or a normal pack? Is the name of the business an exact or close match of the keyword phrase you're searching for? Is the business right in the middle of a cluster or similar businesses? Sounds like a good puzzle!

Hey Brodie, Thanks for following up with further details. I think it's really weird that neither you nor I can find a total number of Google reviews. Had I not been unable to find it, I would have bet the house that this data existed in some sort of quarterly report or something, but if it does, I simply can't find it. Our conversation has made me curious as to what that total number is, now If you can find it, I'd love to see that data!

Hey There! I really appreciate you coming back to update this thread with your experience. So, that's really good to note that someone noticed your company Twitter. Good to know! And sure, you don't want to abuse the account, but it sounds like you've now got a new resource that could be handy in a variety of situations. Neat development!

That's a little odd. I'm still getting the old results.

That is very interesting William, I personally loved Yelp's idea hated the execution. They are now borderline black mailers IMO. I hope others will respond so we can see some actual data. Nice post Miriam!

Hi Blake, What I'm suggesting with those links is that you need to do a thorough analysis of any competitor to discover whether their high rankings are a case of geography, organic strength, reviews, citations and a host of other factors ... or, if the pack in question has been spammed. If the former, you then know what the factors are that are contributing to rank and can identify which factors (if any) you can target to surpass the competitor. If the latter, then you can always report spam to Google. There are believed to be several hundred factors that contribute to rank, and a Local SEO or local business owner who is feeling astonishment over being outranked by what appears to be a weak competitor needs to sit down and put the time in to discover whether these high rankings are the result of strength that Google is responding to, or the result of spam that Google is failing to catch. In the scope of a forum, it's not likely that a community member is going to be able to take the time to do a full competitive analysis for you, so I'm hoping the links I've provided will get you started on doing one. I totally get how frustrating it can be to find your business or your client's business in this scenario of being outranked, but fortunately, we can use skill to divine the probable cause of this outcome and, hopefully, figure out how to overcome any issues, whenever possible. Hope this helps!