Insider Pages listing ranking in the 6-pack

[Amber Robinson]

Take a look at the result I got when I searched for "Houston Emergency Electrician". Are you seeing a 6-pack, too? AND an InsiderPages listing in position D?

https://www.google.com/search?q=hou...64.9107j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Amber, I see it too.

There was an old Google Places course, maybe 3 years ago that taught a strategy of using a high authority site like your profile on Insider Pages or City Search instead of the client's web site on your Place page. And they showed a bunch of listings that ranked high.

But they were also doing some heavy backlinking if I remember right. I think part of this gray/black hat theory was you could leverage the existing high authority of those sites then throw a ton of backlinks at the profile - ones you'd be afraid to throw at the main web site due to potential penalties.

I still see ones like you show in the SERPs occasionally. Hard to say if they are leftovers from SEOs that took that course and had success with this method or if it's just an SMB that does not have a web site, or for some reason thought it better to link to Insider Pages - for instance if his site sucks.

But in this case looks like that one does have a site: houstongeneratordealer DOT com

 

[HurricaneK8]

You could report it in mapmaker if you can provide sufficient proof that the website Linda mentioned is theirs. I don't have time to check for evidence atm!