Big Issue with Google Map Rankings For Everyone

[adammaxum]

Looks like the cat is out of the bag because I am seeing a mass INFLUX of lawyers (among others) adding "personal injury attorney" or variations of attorney / injury / accident to their actual LEGAL names so that they can get better rankings in Google maps.....and guess what, it works...very well actually.

At this point it's becoming clear that in order to successfully rank in the maps in competitive verticals you are going to NEED to change your DBA to include the city or keyword at this point. Otherwise you will not have a prayer to show up top 3 in maps.

This is what ranking at the top of Google has come down to for localized results..

Reviews and Changing your business name to add in keywords + location.

Every city will be dominated by [name]+[keyword]+[city] clones and I don't think there's anything Google can do about it because these aren't spam businesses. These are legit businesses with legit reviews who have finally figured out the way to crack the map ranking code (or at least their agencies have).

Am I wrong here??

As reference, take a peak at "personal injury attorney tampa" map rankings. What do you see? These are the top 10 firms in the maps. (aside from a couple, they ALL have keywords in their names)

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hey Adam, that's 100% accurate. I've been seeing the same thing. I think we will see keywords in the business name become less effective over time since everyone will have them. But yep, as of now, it's what all the cool kids are doing.

 

[Contractor]

"I don't think there's anything Google can do about it because these aren't spam businesses."

Google can simply stop putting so much value into keywords in the business name.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Google can simply stop putting so much value into keywords in the business name.

The reason I suspect this is easier said than done, is because changing the ranking dial on this would have a dramatic change to the search results as a whole.

 

[Contractor]

The reason I suspect this is easier said than done, is because changing the ranking dial on this would have a dramatic change to the search results as a whole.

I'm sure it would change the results drastically, but it would make it more fair. Why should the "San Fransisco Plumber" rank so much better than everyone else just because they were the first one to register that business name? Why should businesses who knowingly spam keywords in their name rank better?

Google does a lot of talking about providing what's best for the customer and not gaming the system, but their actions don't always follow their words.

 

[djbaxter]

The thing is it might well mess something else up. We've seen that frequently with Google lately. Their algorithms have become so complex that it's difficult for them to change one thing without it impacting 6 or 7 other things. Given that, whatever they're changing needs to be pretty important in the scheme of things if they don't want to watch the whole house of cards come crashing down.

 

[Contractor]

Google has made millions of changes, literally. I'm just not buying that in 20 years and with 115,000 employees they can't figure out how to fix this.

I still think that Google enjoys being the little boy at the ant hill with the magnifying glass. JMO.

 

[djbaxter]

My point is that in the grand scope of all things Google this is a rather minor thing. It's not outright spam or black hat anything. You may find it an annoyance but there are a LOT of things I personally find annoying about Google. The reality is their game, their rules. I try to find ways to work around them or ignore them.

Much like Microsoft and their software (*cough* Outlook 16, 19) and operating systems.

 

[Contractor]

I think that naming your company something with spammy keywords just to game google is much more serious than buying links to your website. Just my opinion.

 

[zach.todd]

I think the keyword stuffing is a challenge for them because, were they to actively penalize it, all kinds of businesses that legitimately have that keyword in their name would suffer. But I also don't think this is a black & white issue -- massive algorithmic changes aren't the only thing they can do here.

They could, for example, staff up with more human reviewers, so that avenues like the Redressal Form work more effectively. Name spam would decrease if it was common knowledge that while it might work short term, your day was coming. As it is now, keyword stuffing is pretty tempting due to the lack of much regular enforcement.