Spam at top of SERPs

[MannyHam]

Hey everyone! Hoping for some expert advice on this. If you search for "Dallas car accident lawyer," "car accident lawyer near me in Dallas," or similar variants of the same phrase, you'll see one website, dallascaraccidentlawyers(dot)net, come up in the top organic position—and they've been ranking #1 for these high-competition keywords for probably close to six months now. What's strange is that this website is obviously made to LOOK like a law firm, but there's no actual name anywhere on the site (nor any attorneys listed, nor even a physical address). The phone number is unique, so searching it gives you no info either. They go to great lengths to avoid identifying themselves...

The site is clearly an attempt to deceive people into thinking it's run by a law firm, and I suspect it's either run by a marketing company who's selling the leads, or by one local law firm using black-hat tactics to rank a disposable site.

Either way, I've reported this site to Google probably 10 times over the past 6 months in various ways (serp feedback report, webspam report), but absolutely nothing has been done. I don't know if there's a better way of reporting this kind of thing to Google, so I guess I'm just hoping for some advice on how to get Google to just... LOOK at the site.

I feel like this is the prime example of a site that Google should use to train their search quality evaluators (and one which should have been dinged by E-A-T). People who visit this site may be tricked into submitting sensitive/private/legal information to some deceptive marketing company with no scruples. What surprises me most is how it ranks for "near me" searches even though there's literally no address listed anywhere on the website, no NAP citations, etc. It HAS to be ranking purely due to spam tactics, yet I've gotten nowhere by reporting it directly to Google. Any suggestions?

 

[Tim Colling]

Just to be thorough: did you try submitting a redressal form?

 

[MannyHam]

Just to be thorough: did you try submitting a redressal form?

Thank you. I would have, but unfortunately it's not a maps issue. It's the first organic search result.

 

[Tim Colling]

Ah. I see.

 

[Den]

What kind of info can visitors submit on the website?

I don't think it is against the rules to run a lead-gen website, or is it?

 

[MannyHam]

What kind of info can visitors submit on the website?

Well the contact form. In my mind, someone's a lot more willing to go into personal detail when they think they're reaching out to a local licensed attorney. If we were talking about a plumber, that's one thing. When you're dealing with legal issues, you should tell the visitor where (to whom) their information is being sent—or at minimum have a disclaimer to explain how it's going to be used.

I don't think it is against the rules to run a lead-gen website, or is it?

No, and my apologies if I made it sound like that was what the issue. Martindale, nolo, and thousands of smaller lead-gen sites operate totally above board. My issue with this site in particular is that they're intentionally—deceptively—trying to look like a legitimate Dallas law firm in order to solicit these leads.

I'm not sure if that's technically a specific violation of Google's webmaster guidelines, but it clearly makes for a poor user experience (one that I can't imagine Google would want to put in position 1). There's nothing in the way of expertise, authoritativeness, or trustworthiness (not even an address), so I guess I'm just skeptical of their ranking tactics and surprised that they continue to rank like they do.

 

[Yan Gilbert]

I don't think there are any rules concerning lead gen sites ranking in organic.