On the 1st of June 2009 Google Maps update their quality guidelines for business listing. This is yet another move by Google to keep their search results clean and spam free. I haven’t noticed much of any spam in our local listing but I’ve seen examples of local business listing spam posted by others.
Here are a few highlights of the new policy that directly address manipulation;
- Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords into the title field, and do not include phone numbers or URLs in the title along with your proper business name.
- Provide the one URL that belongs to your business both in terms of the landing page and the displayed URL.
- Pages that redirect to another domain, or act as “click through” sites may lead to penalization. Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business’s title, address or category fields.
For more on the general guidelines for creating business listings visit the business listing quality guidelines.
With Internet marketing gurus now teaching people how to game local business listings this change in the guidelines is right on time.
