Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hello Amit! Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. Both Robert and WebFeat have contributed good remarks here. As it happens, I actually had a chance to discuss this very topic with a Google Places Help Forum Top Contributor not long ago. Here is the process they recommended: 1. Go to the spammy Place Page in question and use the Report A Problem link at the bottom of it to describe the issue you have observed. 2. Wait the requisite 4-6 weeks to see if you get a direct response from Google or if you see any action taken against the spammy listing. 3. If, after this period, nothing has happened, go to the Google Places Help Forum and open a thread there explaining the problem carefully. 4. If one of the Top Contributors flags your thread, it will be sent to Google's Vanessa Schneider who may then decide to take action. 5. However, in the case of large scale, really outrageous spam (let's say a company has 20 phony Place Pages in 20 different cities) you are better off coming directly to the Google Places Help Forum from the get-go rather than attempting to report them one by one. In this event, be prepared to show extensive documentation and to link to all of the examples. Be clear and thorough in describing what you observed, and then be patient to see if it goes anywhere. Good luck! Miriam

I know Keri, but by the time this gentleman came to me for SEO, he already had those links. Besides, he hired a few people, some data entry guys with not even a basic understanding of SEO, who would drop blog comments left, right and center. AND they would open random profiles on facebook and post on their wall. Each guy would post on 1000 walls dail, yes, they have a daily target; recently facebook restricted them in many ways. I have been telling him against doing it but he wouldn't budge an inch. His argument is, people are "liking" his site, they at least come to his website once which is giving a boost to his Alexa ranking..and these people who apparently "like" the website are friends of people whose wall he is posting(read spamming) on. Yes, I told him these people are not targeted visitors, besides, in the long run search engines too will raise their eyebrows. I have been trying hard to convince him to direct those efforts in the right way. Now, I will show him this post, hope it will help. Keri, I also belong to "moz school of thought" when it comes to all things SEO, and I am working hard on some really great quality content, would you (or anyone reading this) be so kind to suggest me some people/websites who would love to link to/ share this content. Or any ideas on how I can find such authoritative sources in "wedding planning" niche? Any blog where I can guest post? Thanks for your time.

You won't see the change right away. Google will take a bit to get it in. From Google: ** Updates to existing listings, including the removal of photos or entire listings can also take up to two weeks. .** The phone change is causing your problem and you need to request that you get reverified. From google Places: Note that if you edit your business name, address, or phone number, you'll need to verify again before these changes can go live. Just go in and reverify and you should get all. If you get the PIN in quickly, you should be up within 24 hours of getting it in. Good Luck