Local SEO & Google My Business Product Expert

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Google Spam Fighting Guide

Google My Business Spam – How to Detect & Report Fake Listings
maps spam image

Spam (fake) business listings on Google are an ongoing problem – always have been and always will be. The Maps system ebbs and flows with how badly the fraudulent listings fill the map. Regardless, if you’re wanting to help fight the spam, we have a guide which will give you the resources and guidance to report fake listings on your own.

By reporting fake listings to Google, you’ll be helping your business, your friend’s business, or other customers get accurate information about real businesses in their local area.

This guide takes a different format to a standard blogpost – we’ve created a Trello board you can view and make a copy for yourself. It’s full of hows, where’s and tips for doing the research needed for Google to process your request.

Other resources helpful for reporting spam:

A template  for reporting spam listings in bulk .

The Google Business Redressal Complaint Form

Google My Business guidelines

 

Examples of Google My Business Spam

These images show a variety of fake / spammy Google My Business listings which need to be reported

 

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Beginners Guide to Citations

Introduction

What is a citation?

A citation is any mention of your business out on the web. It can come in various forms and consists of any combination of one or more of the following four items:

  • Company name
  • Company address
  • Business phone number
  • Website address

Note: It does not matter whether the information links to your website or not.

The accompanying spreadsheets provide links to various sites which contain citations for your business at its current location, and for the new location.

Citations come in various formats, following are examples:

  • Company name only
  • Company name & phone number
  • Company name, phone number, & address
  • Company name, phone number, address, & link to website
  • Company name with website address

Why do they matter?

Citations are a basic part of helping your business be found online.

For local businesses (businesses with a shopfront or who work within a service area), citations are a must-have ingredient in your mix. Local SEO is all about “entity signals” – in other words, bits and pieces on the web that confirm your entity (your business) is for real, is where you say it is, and has a good reputation.

Local Pack display

Citations play a key role in the overall “findability” of a business – as in, when people are looking for a business in their area. They also create many other avenues for people to find your business and read reviews.

When you want your business in the top 3 or have higher visibility overall, one of the your tasks is to “clean up” (correct the information) and claim your citations.

After claiming a listing, update it to be consistent with Google and other listings.  In other words, don’t have your business listed as Fred Nerk Enterprises in one place, Fred Nerks on Google, and Nerk Inc on still another site. Google does tolerate some minor variations, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say to make them all the same.

And that includes the street address, phone number, hours, business categories and more.

One really good thing about business categories on citations is they help search engines better understand your business. Often people will say Google’s categories don’t accurately describe my business.  Many citation sites will have the exact category, or even better, allow for a hierarchy of categories.

example of a hierarchy of categories.

Where do they come from?

Citations can be found in a wide variety of places – some a business can control, some not. You may have the idea that since you haven’t built any citations yourself, they won’t be there. Unfortunately that’s not the case. And if you haven’t built these yourself, there’s a high chance they will have *wrong* information about your business.

example citation
sample citation with name, address, phone and link to website all included

Examples of sources include:

  • Yellow Pages™
  • Yelp
  • Local business directories (such as TrueLocal, Womo, and lots more)
  • Industry related websites (such as the Australian Dental Association)
  • Newspaper articles online
  • Social Media pages

On the image above (links not active), you can see a citation of a business from the Yellow Pages™. This has all sorts of info about the business including all four key elements. Citations can be this extensive, or completely minimal such as a business name written in a blog post.

This content is for members only.

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How to Link to a Specific GMB Question & Answer block

Ever wondered how to link to Google’s Question & answer block on your Google My Business listing? You might do it to

It’s not simple, but it is easy. It gets a little technical, so I’ll break the URL down in to steps.

Let’s do this with business named Australian Ugg Boots P/L and they’re in Braeside.

  1. Go to a Google search, and type in the business name. Or business & location, if needed. You’re aiming to get the knowledge panel for that biz to display.
  2. The URL will be long. Google makes its search results URLs complicated by putting in a bunch of info not needed for the query itself. Much of the “junk” in the URL is for Google’s own use. It includes things like the browser, version, language and so on. https://www.google.com/search?q=Australian+Ugg+Boots+P%2FL+braeside&oq=Australian+Ugg+Boots+P%2FL+braeside&aqs=chrome..69i57.2787j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
    The first part of the URL will always be
    https://www.google.com/search?q=
    and the second part will always be the search phrase you entered
    Australian+Ugg+Boots+P%2FL+Braeside
    (a + separates each word and the “/” is converted into ASCII as a %2FL). The entire rest of the URL is not needed for our purposes.
  1. Click on the See all questions link
  2. You may notice Google has just added #d,2 to the end of your URL.
  3. Click on the specific question and you’ll see the #d,2 has been changed to a #lpqa=d,3,a,AIe9…dbS.
  4. This brings up the Q&a box for a specific question.  The question is at the top, followed by all answers. The AIe9…dbS is a unique number for that specific Question and answers. The long string of numbers and letters is 140 characters. It is different for each Q&a.

Copy and paste the URL into a document and strip out everything past the first query and up to the #lpqa

So putting the pieces together, you to give a link to a client, you’d use:
https://www.google.com/search?q=business+name+location#lpqa=d,3,a,uniqueid

URL parameters to add to your query for Google’s Question & answers:

  • #lpqa=a,,d,1 create a question box for a listing
  • #lpqa=d,2 see all questions
  • #lpqa=d,3,a,AIe9...dbS see the Q&A box for a specific question. The question is at the top, followed by all answers. The specific Q&a box id is 140 characters long, and made up of numbers and letters both uppercase and lowercase..