Google Patents for Identifying Local Spam and Fake Locations

[Linda Buquet]

I often hear people at various places say: "Ya it's a violation, but how can Google tell it's a fake location or a virtual office?" This post sheds light on some of the ways she may soon sniff out fake listings and closed locations. I think she's already using some of these methods to some degree. If you dig into this post, you'll find out a lot about how Google Local "thinks".

I've known for awhile now that Google has a list or database of especially spammy business categories. This patent alludes to that as well, although of course does not spell out which industries are under extra scrutiny.

Bill Slawski rules when it comes to this type of Google patent research. And this one is ALL about local.
So head over to see all the screenshots and read Bill's commentary.

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What do you think???

 

[Dustybones]

Thanks Linda. I'm really starting to get into reading these patents. Do you have any people or sites you follow that cover this area? The only issue I see with this is Google being able to keep up with updated images. For example, My brothers have a flooring business in my home town. Google came through in 2007 just before we started building. To this day it still shows an empty lot. 8 years later. I'm sure they will take into account other data, but still. Google can't keep up.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Bill is the man. He's the only one I know that consistently covers patents.

Go through some of his old posts and you'll discover lots of info that pertains to the local algo.