Lora Baker
Local Search Specialist

A blatant case of “review spam” has hit bankruptcy attorneys’ Google Places listings in Boulder and Denver, CO. On November 9, a total of 17 different attorneys in the cities of Boulder and Denver, CO were faced with this review on their Google Place Page:

<Various Attorney> has been nothing but a nightmare for us. It all started last January 2011 and we still haven’t filed (November 2011)! We have been assigned to at least 7 different attorney’s and paralegals and no one seems to know what they are doing. The turnover of staff is despicable! That should have been our first clue…they can’t keep anyone employed here! We haven’t talked to the same person twice. We were told to give up a car by one attorney and then the next guy said we shouldn’t have surrendered the car because we could have negotiated a new monthly payment! We’ve been given a lot of bad advice and the documents that were submitted to the US Trustee were wrong and they forgot to include things like an auto payment, daycare costs,and our mortgage! These people are not professional much less educated or knowledgeable. I am sick that we didn’t run from this place! We have paid nearly $3000 and still don’t have anything filed! If you are looking for a bankruptsy attorney that will provide you with sound advice, protect and represent you, or file a solid case for you, this is NOT the office for you. I have no idea who is providing these misleading high ratings but this has not been our experience.

I can’t help but ask myself who would bother to go to eight different Google Place Pages just to copy and paste a disparaging review that many times. Boulder, CO is not a large city by any means –did this reviewer think that a potential customer would not wonder why this exact same review was left for almost all of the local bankruptcy attorneys on the very same day? Frankly, on the forefront this appears to be a competitor taking a cheap shot at trying to boost their own listing. Did that competitor really think this would be an effective strategy?

So far, I have found only two bankruptcy attorneys in Boulder who were not affected by this “1-star“ review. Was this just a case of one person having a very bad experience with a bad bankruptcy lawyer and deciding to make all Boulder/Denver bankruptcy lawyers pay for it? Sure: maybe this unlucky individual had the EXACT SAME EXPERIENCE with every single bankruptcy attorney in Boulder? Hmm. Not likely. Thankfully, one of the attorneys noticed this review the day it happened, and emailed the other attorneys who were hit with the same word-for-word review. One of these attorneys happens to be a client of ours.

Only one other time have I seen such a blatant case of review spam. A camera shop with multiple nationwide locations had a copied review left on at least 20 Google Places listings nationwide. I believe that the person who left the negative review did have the experience that he or she described in the review. However, once that same person copied their negative review to 20 different locations (mostly in California, one in New York and one in Washington DC), it became “review spam”. That person did NOT have that experience at 20 different stores. All the reviews were left on the same day (as in this case) and were copied word for word. Google acted swiftly in that case, and although I had crafted an apologetic response to each and every one of the reviews, Google had that specific review pulled off those listings within one week. In that case, the target was the same camera store –in this case, the target is almost every bankruptcy attorney in Boulder as well as several in Denver.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the history of the reviewer (by clicking “K” next to the date on the top of the review).  This reviewer has left only eight reviews in his/her whole Google life, and only against the various bankruptcy attorneys in Boulder. In Denver, a reviewer also known as “K” left nine 1-star reviews on Denver bankruptcy attorneys.

Overlooking the whole question of morality that comes into play when someone chooses to leave a false  and slandering review on different attorneys’ Google Place Pages, does the person who left these reviews really believe that this will help the attorney who doesn’t have this cut and pasted review? As a local search optimization specialist, this kind of flagrant disregard for what reviews are meant to accomplish frustrates me to no end.

As far as actions that I have taken: at this point I have flagged each review as inappropriate (not just my client’s review, but every review on every Google Place Page). In the description, I put the following note to Google: This exact same review has been left on 9 Denver Bankruptcy attorneys and 8 Boulder bankruptcy attorneys today. Please remove this slanderous review from this listing. Thank you. In my opinion, these reviews by this reviewer (I am looking at you, K) need to be removed from Google Places. When someone takes it upon themselves to use Google as a way to put down companies or businesses that they have not used, Google needs to deal with it swiftly and get the reviews pulled down.

Update: Less than 24 hours after these reviews showed up on Google Places, they are starting to disappear from the various Place Pages. Although I am surprised by the fact that not all the reviews have been pulled off of Google yet, I am impressed that Google reacted so quickly to a case of obvious review spam. So often, we all hear complaints of Google’s lack of response regarding reviews, but is not the case here. Way to go Google!

Lora Baker
Local Search Specialist

The 7 ½ week case of the hiccups has come to an end. The local listings that I manage that dropped off of Google Places results on July 19 returned to Google Maps on Friday September 9.  Seven and one half weeks later. Holy cow. To be fair, Google was right on the money with the 6-10 week estimated timeframe for the hiccups to be resolved. The good news is that all the listings regained their previous placement. If, before July 19, they were #1 for the search term “office space Melville ny,” they returned to #1 for the search term “office space Melville ny” on September 9.

As a quick recap, I called Google at the end of July about one of the business listings I manage because it had suddenly just “disappeared” from Places results.  I was told that the listings had been “reset” in the system and would be back up in 6-10 weeks. The actual time that the reset took was 7 ½ weeks –right in the window of when I was told the listings would be back up. I was also told that making any changes to the listing during this “hiccup” could result in a longer wait time for the listing to come back up. Luckily, that was not the case as I did make a couple of changes to a small percentage of the listings and they all returned to the search results on September 9, along with the listings I did not touch. I was also specifically told to not change the account which the Place Page was located in or I would be “reset in the system”, and the cycle would start over. Once again, I disregarded this fairly reasonable advice (out of sheer desperation for instantaneous results). Thankfully, that listing also came back up on September 9.

I was able to tell which listings had been hiccupped by searching on the business name with a city modifier (such as Intelligent Office Alexandria VA). In this particular instance, during the hiccup I got a result with 3 other Intelligent Office listings that were near Alexandria and did not see the Alexandria listing in the regular Google map results. I did see the Alexandria listing if I clicked “Places” to pull up the Places results and scrolled to the bottom of the list. At that time, I would see the listing for the Intelligent Office in Alexandria, showing me that the listing was live but it was just, for whatever reason, not displaying in the main page of results. Now that the hiccups have seemingly ended, performing the same search (Intelligent Office Alexandria VA) results in the ideal one-box for the Intelligent Office located in Alexandria, VA. I was also able to see the hiccup by looking at the analytics. The complete drop-off of impressions on July 19 for multiple listings that I control was what prompted my original phone call to Google.

Current screenshot of results when searching on “intelligent office alexandria va”

Here are examples of the end of the hiccup:

Office Space Rental Agency in Alexandria, VA

Office Space Rental Agency in Toronto, Ontario

Office Space Rental Agency in Melville, NY

Note: Although it appears that the impression numbers are slow to recover, September 9 was a Friday, and historically there are many fewer searches on the weekend for these specific businesses.

 There are a few helpful nuggets that I can pull out of this extremely vexing experience. First of all, there will be times that your listing may disappear from Google for weeks at a time, but as long as your listing is “Active” and not tagged as “Rejected” or the ever ominous “We do not support this location,” you will most likely come back up within 2 months. When Google makes big changes to Google Places, such as the major change to the Place Pages in July, there most likely will be future “hiccups” to deal with. I have heard rumblings of more big changes on the horizon, so be prepared. I also believe that the more active you are in updating your listing, the more likely your listing will be hiccupped during major updates. The Office Space Rental Agency clients were newer clients at the time of the July 19 hiccup, and I was very active in making changes to each of the listings during the entire month of July. Although not every listing that I was active in updating was hiccupped, a much larger percentage of them were than listings that were more “mature” and I was not as active in updating.

At the end of the day, if you are a small business owner, placing well on Google Places is very important and not something to discount or overlook. There will be more bugs, there will be more hiccups, and some days you will question whether or not Google Places is worth the time it takes to continually maintain your listing – after all, you’ve got a business to run! Let me assure you that it is. More people than ever are performing searches on Google and they’re using Google in place of the Yellow Pages they used to rely upon to find local businesses.  Even after being hiccupped for over 7 weeks, these businesses will still have 45 weeks this year up on Google Places where their potential customers will be able to find them.  So ask yourself;  can your potential customers find you there?

Lora Baker
Local Search Specialist

Managing local listings for clients is the type of job that leaves you feeling like a superstar one day and a complete moron the next. I have experienced the highs and lows of local listing optimization for clients over the last 3 years – including inexplicable sudden drops in the rankings, duplicate listings appearing from thin air (taking months to get rid of), missing hours, wrong phone numbers (coming from who knows where), missing reviews, missing descriptions, missing additional details, etc. Of course, because Google Places is not monetized, there is not and never has been the kind of support that business owners are accustomed to from other vendors. When a small problem comes up (gee –I have no reviews today when yesterday I had 87), I can post in Google’s help forum so that I can get numerous responses from other users having the same issue, which always makes me feel a bit better. I have always felt like I just needed to ride it out and my listing would revert to its rightful (in my mind) place in the Google Universe and all would be well for my clients.

Google has rolled out, and continues to roll out changes to their Places pages. I understand why and where all the changes are taking place and continue to adapt my strategy to ensure client success. Within the last 2 weeks, I have noticed that a very small percentage of my clients have no impressions as of July 19. Even when typing in “business name city st,” these listings are not displaying. Each of these listings is approved and meets Google’s ever changing guidelines. At least two listings that are experiencing this dramatic drop in ranking have been running the product formerly known as Google Boost – currently known as AdWords Express. Both of these users have been using AdWords Express for a couple of months, so neither received the $100 free advertising credit that Google was offering to new users. Because one of the biggest selling points of AdWords Express is that you get support for local listing issues, I calmly called up 1-866-2GOOGLE to find out why I am getting no impressions and to see how this support would work.

The conversation went something like this.

Me: Hello. I am running AdWords Express and as of July 19, my local listing seems to have gone into
Google Places purgatory for no reason. Will you please take a look at my account and help me understand what is going on?

Google: Sure. Can I confirm the login email for this account?

Me: Sure (I share it).

Google: Great. Let’s see here –did you make any changes to the account on that date?

Me: No, I haven’t made any changes to the account for awhile. I am, however, running the paid ads that you are selling.

Google: Oh, I see. Yes, there was a hiccup on our end that day. Don’t worry, it is nothing you did. You should see your local listing come back online within 6-10 weeks.

Me: Oh ok -6-10 weeks huh?

Google: Yes, basically your ad was reset in our system. It is now going to be just like a new listing, so you need to go through the cycle.

Me (trying to keep calm and collected): I see. Ok. Can you please confirm for me that I didn’t do anything to cause this hiccup?

Google: Yes, I can confirm that your listing is experiencing a hiccup and will be back online in 6-10 weeks.

Me: OK. Should I create a new account and reclaim the listing?

Google: Oh no. Then you will just be reset again.

Me: Ok. Thank you for your help.

Google: Please stay on the phone and answer the survey questions. Goodbye.

Me (hearing the survey questions start): Hang up the phone.

Hiccup Examples:

Location in Alexandria, VA (who is running AdWords Express)

Location in Melville, NY (who is running AdWords Express)

Location in Troy, MI (who is not running AdWords Express)

(Note that the actions continue to “occur” even though I am getting no impressions. I have found that for the most part, actions in Google Places are a notoriously unreliable statistic. In this example above (a virtual officing solutions company) every action that is “occurring” is a request for driving directions. When I report to clients on impressions and actions, I have been discounting driving direction requests now for nearly 2 years –I don’t believe that they are true actions being performed on the listing.)

Location in Arroyo Grande, CA (who is not running AdWords Express)

I had a similar conversation last month with a different representative while running the product previously known as Google Boost for another client.  I was told that because I changed a business phone number from an 800 number (a big Google no-no) to a local number, that my listing had been “reset” and would require going through the cycle before displaying on Google Places again. Unfortunately, this same listing is going through a 2^nd cycle (hiccup?) after being live for 8 days.

Location in Melville, NY (who had a “hiccup from June 8 – July 8 and is now having a 2^nd one)

This “hiccup” issue is more vexing to me personally than all the other inconveniences that I have experienced. I made no changes on July 19. I was told by the helpful Google employee to make no further changes to the account until it “cycles through the hiccup.” It is not (from my side anyway) limited to only clients running AdWords Express, and it appears to be affecting less than 5% of my total listings. I do believe that while other local listing sites are important to pay attention to, Google Places is the absolute place that local businesses need to be listed. I also believe that Google is making good changes to their product and making it better for everyone. However, it is very frustrating to think that there will be random hiccups that will affect whether or not listings continue to display –maybe even for months at a time. Until Google can get the “hiccups” worked out of their system, it is time to stop rolling out improvements to Google Places and start fixing the bugs.

Tracy Earles
VP of Marketing & Business Development

After emerging from Chapter 11, Ritz & Wolf Camera & Image needed to adjust their Internet listings to reflect their new brand name, logo, and associated messaging, as well as remove closed stores from search results. Read the case study to read how Parallel Path quickly resolved these issues and dramatically improved their local listing performance:

Bringing Successful Local Listing Optimization Service to Chain Store Operators

Boulder, Colorado (PRWEB) April 26, 2011.  Internet marketing agency Parallel Path Corporation announced today the availability of their Aha!Local Enterprise Service, a local listing optimization service for chain store operators. The service, intended for franchisors, corporate-owned chains, and blends of the two, is designed to drive in-store traffic by delivering the highest possible store listing placements on Google Maps, Bing Maps, and similar local search tools, to distribute store information across a very broad distribution network, and to present the store information with the appropriate branding to the target audience.

Aha!Local Enterprise is an evolution of Parallel Path’s Aha!Local service sold directly to individual store operators, which the company has provided for two years. The company has managed store listings across many verticals and geographies, gaining valuable expertise in optimization techniques, effective promotional tools, and other activities that drive customer action. While servicing these individual businesses, Parallel Path also developed proprietary tools and techniques that allow the company to efficiently service hundreds of locations simultaneously, enabling the company to now apply their expertise to the needs of chain store operators.

The company now has several chains participating in Aha!Local Enterprise, with as many as 750 stores each. Ritz Camera & Image has been a customer since last year. In less than a year, Parallel Path has increased the number of store listings in the first position on Google Maps by 49%, resulting in 37% more monthly impressions per store. According to Peter Tahmin, Ritz’s vice president of RitzPix.com and online retail, “We’re confident that our improved online image and increased impression volume is driving new revenue in-store.” A full case study of Ritz’ local search optimization process is available on SlideShare.

“Local online search represents an important new marketing channel for businesses trying to attract local customers,” said Tracy Earles, Parallel Path’s vice president of marketing, “but the local search environment is dynamically changing, including user behaviors, placement algorithms, and promotional opportunities. Aha!Local Enterprise allows chain-store operators to take advantage of this marketing channel without having to establish and maintain the expertise in-house.”

Parallel Path has been sharing their local search expertise through various channels, including live events and blog postings. This content can be viewed on Parallel Path’s SlideShare (http://www.slideshare.net/parallelpath) and YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/parallelpathcorp) channels.

About Parallel Path Corporation
Founded in 2005 in Boulder, Colorado, Parallel Path is an innovative and results-driven Internet marketing firm that partners with clients to grow their business through customized Internet marketing strategies. Parallel Path develops and deploys complete Internet campaigns using the entire online toolset: search, display, social, mobile, and local. Passionate about Internet marketing, Parallel Path delivers the in-depth expertise, along with implementation consulting for clients’ marketing, IT, sales, and related teams, to achieve powerful and measurable marketing results. With their Aha!Local service, Parallel Path also delivers online marketing solutions to brick-and-mortar business operators and franchisors, as well. For more information, please call 303-396-1111, visit www.parallelpath.com, or follow @parallelpath on Twitter.

Media contact:
Tracy Earles
Parallel Path Corp.
303-396-1111

The third in our Aha!Local University series, this four-part video series explains local paid search advertising; what it is and how small business owners can use it to market their products to local customers.

In this video, we present a case study of Ritz Camera & Image and the challenges they faced when cleaning up their local listings after closing hundreds of unprofitable stores. Ritz engaged Parallel Path Corp. to manage these duplicate listings and address other listing challenges through the company’s Aha!Local Enterprise listing management service.

In this video, Parallel Path Internet Marketing’s Local Search optimization specialist Lora Baker provides insight as to how the small business owner can remove duplicate online listings to perform better in local search.

The second of the Aha!Local University series, this five-part video series describes how local listings work, and how business owners can use local search to market their products to local customers.

Parallel Path’s Aha!Local University is a series of seminars to teach business owner/operators how to market their businesses online to local customers. This session, in 5 segments, presents an overview of 7 different online marketing techniques.