Strange Company Creating YP Listings

[RobinOctane]

I have two clients now that have had their listings created by a company, who not only creates websites with tracking numbers but also uses Supermedia to create listings which has then taken over the YP listing.

First they create these websites like this on their domain:
www. YOUR Local biz (ness) reviews.com and then / city, state/ client's company name The word biz is spelled business in actually.

Then they create a dupe Superpages listing with this tracking number which then also feeds into YP. In both cases this listing is now their main YP listing with this fake website and tracking number.

Is this is a legit company that have somehow been contracted to create these by the biz owner or the franchise they work for?

I hate it because both of these sites have great NAP except for their YP listings.

Any input how to deal? YP won't let me claim the listing because it says info is already submitted by Supermedia.

Thanks.

 

[RobinOctane]

bump

 

[Amber Robinson]

Can you provide a screenshot of what you are seeing? Or the company name?

 

[Linda Buquet]

I have two clients now that have had their listings created by a company...

Is this is a legit company that have somehow been contracted to create these...

Ya I didn't reply because I'm a little confused by the post.

If this is your client and the listings were created for them, wouldn't you ask the client what's up with these? Who created and can they cancel it or something?

Not sure how we could advise without seeing the listings, but even then not sure what we could see other than the obvious.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

So is it confirmed this company has signed on these clients to do this local "work" for them? I could definitely see someone using this as a pre-sales tactic - "hey check out this great local landing page we created for you, and got these main directories claimed for it. This will help your business and it will only cost $XX per month to maintain."

Can you attach a screenshot or give some examples? PM me with a URL to the YP/Superpages page if you could I'd like to take a look at this. Sounds familiar, but I just want to confirm i'm on the right track

 

[RobinOctane]

Yes it might be, I asked the client if he ordered it and he hasn't responded.

 

[Blake Denman]

Greatttttttt, just what we need.

I think there are 2 likely scenarios:

1) This company is creating squeeze pages to hopefully get traffic, drive calls to SMB's, then pitch them pay per call. By them creating these dupes in YP they might be hoping that these citations get picked up across the web, further indexing bad data with the call tracking numbers.

2) Negative Local SEO has been born and the end is near

(It's probably #1)

 

[Eric Rohrback]

I don't think this is negative SEO because there is no link to the actual client's website on the page. I think this is a sales tactic to get unsuspecting business owners to buy into their product.

Do this search:

inurl:www. yourlocalbusinessreviews .com
{added spaces to remove link}


all the sites are cookie-cutter depending on business vertical. All have tracking numbers, and all have a similar layout.

@Blake - definitely suspicion #1

I'm glad they didn't do custom domains, just a folder under their main domain. It made it a lot easier to find what they're doing.