Geogrid trackers: shouldn't we assume that they're the next on Google's hitlist?

[JS Girard]

I've not seen this question brought up in the Local SEO sphere, but since we've started developing a tool to do non-english geogrids (since no one else is interested in doing that...), it's now a question I ought to wonder.

Has anyone in the industry considered this and how/whether we even have any way to get around it?

 

[LightOfHeaven]

Are you getting the data via Google's own API or third party providers? If so you're safe.

If you're scraping then I think it's just a matter of time. I have been testing logged in vs logged out engagements on Maps and there's a weird thing I've been noticing :

When logged out, users are only serve 10 results per query and you get hit with a nice little message that says " Limited Search Results" and prompts you to log in.

It's not serp "poisoning" but scrapers should be on high alert since 99% of them use non logged in accounts. If they were to log in then the data would have been useless due to all the personalization going on now with the SERPS

 

[LightOfHeaven]

I am a local falcon user as well so my reply is not one sided

 

[JS Girard]

Are you getting the data via Google's own API or third party providers? If so you're safe.

If you're scraping then I think it's just a matter of time. I have been testing logged in vs logged out engagements on Maps and there's a weird thing I've been noticing :

When logged out, users are only serve 10 results per query and you get hit with a nice little message that says " Limited Search Results" and prompts you to log in.

It's not serp "poisoning" but scrapers should be on high alert since 99% of them use non logged in accounts. If they were to log in then the data would have been useless due to all the personalization going on now with the SERPS

TBH, my presumption these days is that it's now in Google's favor to have SEO data be as unreliable as possible, hence why I do not actually believe API is safe. I expect that any time we could see the API discontinued with the excuse that too many bots were using it.