Spam wins again! "TORONTO CONDOS"

[HurricaneK8]

What are the odds that 3 businesses have the same "legal, registered name" of Toronto Condos?? But Google would NEVER show them on the first page of the maps, right?

...wrong.


I've deleted them all in mapmaker, but they will most likely be denied or stuck in pending for a few weeks. I'm hoping there's an upcoming update to cleanse "condo" related keywords, because its spam-tastic. "Mississauga condos" and "Condo in mississauga" are full of spam as well.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Good catch Kate!

AND you even put this post in the right forum. I'm impressed!

But ya boo for those "TORONTO CONDOS" listings.
Let us know if editors approve your edits.

 

[Nyagoslav]

In my experience reporting POIs as spam via Map Maker most frequently doesn't work, unless you have very concrete proof that the place doesn't exist at the particular location. In this case, it might be possible to prove that those places are actual rental/for sale properties, and not actual sales offices (are they?), but it is still unlikely that the places will be removed altogether from Maps because of that reason.

I would rather suggest you look for the correct business names and edit the POIs. Editing the business names to ones that are not keyword stuffed might very well result in them losing their unfairly high rankings in some cases.

 

[HurricaneK8]

Thanks, I appreciate your comments and in most cases I would do that. In this case, I did find the real business name and every single one of them already has 1 or MORE listings. 1 of them has their name hidden in a banner image deep in the website so it was very hard to find.

The problem with maps is 1 spammer does it and gets away with it, and then others come along and think "Well if you can't fight them, join them!" and they go and create more listings. It becomes spam-central on the map, and the good guys can't win. I'm constantly trying to clean up real estate phrases and Google just lets them back in. I think it's 5x as hard to DELETE the spam then to create it.

 

[Andrew Sawyer]

The first was an AdWords listing so they broke their rules as well. The easiest way is to just delete the features because unless the feature is for a lusting office it doesn't belong on the map. Rentals aren't permitted. I like using the double method of deleting through the Maps page for the business and checking the boxes which report to Places. That way it kills the feature with two stones, provided Listing Editors don't screw things up as they're apt to do...

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