5 ms·

Search for "<my area> plumber" returns totally gamed results. Has for years. No idea why that obvious use case is so broken. My wife hired one and the plumber w

Search for "<my area> plumber" returns totally gamed results. Has for years. No idea why that obvious use case is so broken. My wife hired one and the plumber was useless so I investigated. I've found obvious spam nests of multiple sites with duplicate styling and nothing seems to have changed.

praptak 7y ago
You can report these to Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1 https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1 Edit: better link: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en
- gnulinux 7y ago
  I've been reporting things like this for years and never seen anything change for better. I'm not saying Google doesn't care, but it seems like they cannot tell apart signal from noise so they can't fix these scams.
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    No money in it. My unsubstantiated guess is that being part of the search team became uncool a while back because it wasn't new and shiny.
    - NewsAware 7y ago
      Something like "[myarea] open locked door" can have Google ad bids in the range of 30$,so there may be money in there for Google not caring for quality organic results
      - Scoundreller 7y ago
        Whenever a company pisses me off, I turn off my adblocker, do a few searches for them or that industry, and click their ads whenever they appear. I also like to see who’s advertising because it shows which industries/companies compete on marketing, instead of their own merits. It really shows which products have high marginal profits.
        cameronbrown 7y ago
        > I also like to see who’s advertising because it shows which industries/companies compete on marketing, instead of their own merits. Quite frankly this is wrong. You can have all the merits in the world, but if people don't know about it then you're out of business. > It really shows which products have high marginal profits. AdWords can be life or death enough that it's worth eating the cost because the alternative is not having a business.
        cwkoss 7y ago
        > You can have all the merits in the world, but if people don't know about it then you're out of business. With the rise of social media, this is about 20 years out of date. If you have a great product and 100 users, 1000 people are going to see glowing testimonials at zero cost.
        cameronbrown 7y ago
        I strongly disagree. You're thinking purely from a software point of view - advertising is still extremely useful for any kind of local business or startup.
- richardw 7y ago
  I did. I also told a real plumber what was going on so he could report it. Now I see he's doing it too, or at least a minor version with one page per area.
- richardw 7y ago
  Good pointer but...let’s try that. My guess is they stay online. Here’s a couple minutes of searching. All the same company. Google can’t even see the dupe content obvious to us: https://rivoniaplumber24-7.co.za/?wpamp https://rivoniaplumber24-7.co.za/?wpamp https://midrandplumber24-7.co.za/?wpamp https://midrandplumber24-7.co.za/?wpamp https://plumberdurbannorth.co.za/ https://plumberdurbannorth.co.za/ https://bluffplumber.co.za/ https://bluffplumber.co.za/ Think a different bunch but look at the keyword stuffing: http://www.plumbersgauteng.co.za/gauteng-plumbers-areas/plumbers-plumbing-fairland/ http://www.plumbersgauteng.co.za/gauteng-plumbers-areas/plum... Google aren’t even making ad money on this. It’s just crap content and really bad old-style spam. If they just required a business location it might help. Are we in the 90’s?!
mopsi 7y ago
"<my area> locksmiths/plumbers/etc" may be a part of a massive ongoing scam that very few people know about. Reply All podcast made an episode on it: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho87/78-very-quickly-to-the-drill https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho87/78-very-quick...
Matsta 7y ago
This is lead gen and is a big business. People will build generic white label websites and rank them for certain cities. They'll then put a toll free number on them and then contact legitmate contractors and charge them either a monthly rate or a fee per each call. There's also companies like RingPartner that are referred to Pay Per Call networks and give you a unique phone number to promote and you get paid per call.
iblaine 7y ago
Ah yes, the home contracting industry is ripe for SEO due to so many long tail keywords. A project I'm not proud of managed to get 100M pages indexed (about 1% of Google at the time), all related to home contracting services. This was done with a combination of using mod_rewrite to manufacture unique URLs, creating a CMS platform, hiring students to write content, using natural linking algorithms, and some software to automate creating unique inbound links from wikis/blogs to deep URLs. Sad to see the same kind of thing can be done today. I regret not putting that effort towards something more productive, but when you're in advertising, the race to the bottom can be tempting.

praptak 7y ago

You can report these to Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1 https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1 Edit: better link: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en

gnulinux 7y ago
I've been reporting things like this for years and never seen anything change for better. I'm not saying Google doesn't care, but it seems like they cannot tell apart signal from noise so they can't fix these scams.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  No money in it. My unsubstantiated guess is that being part of the search team became uncool a while back because it wasn't new and shiny.
  - NewsAware 7y ago
    Something like "[myarea] open locked door" can have Google ad bids in the range of 30$,so there may be money in there for Google not caring for quality organic results
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      Whenever a company pisses me off, I turn off my adblocker, do a few searches for them or that industry, and click their ads whenever they appear. I also like to see who’s advertising because it shows which industries/companies compete on marketing, instead of their own merits. It really shows which products have high marginal profits.
      - cameronbrown 7y ago
        > I also like to see who’s advertising because it shows which industries/companies compete on marketing, instead of their own merits. Quite frankly this is wrong. You can have all the merits in the world, but if people don't know about it then you're out of business. > It really shows which products have high marginal profits. AdWords can be life or death enough that it's worth eating the cost because the alternative is not having a business.
        cwkoss 7y ago
        > You can have all the merits in the world, but if people don't know about it then you're out of business. With the rise of social media, this is about 20 years out of date. If you have a great product and 100 users, 1000 people are going to see glowing testimonials at zero cost.
        cameronbrown 7y ago
        I strongly disagree. You're thinking purely from a software point of view - advertising is still extremely useful for any kind of local business or startup.
richardw 7y ago
I did. I also told a real plumber what was going on so he could report it. Now I see he's doing it too, or at least a minor version with one page per area.
richardw 7y ago
Good pointer but...let’s try that. My guess is they stay online. Here’s a couple minutes of searching. All the same company. Google can’t even see the dupe content obvious to us: https://rivoniaplumber24-7.co.za/?wpamp https://rivoniaplumber24-7.co.za/?wpamp https://midrandplumber24-7.co.za/?wpamp https://midrandplumber24-7.co.za/?wpamp https://plumberdurbannorth.co.za/ https://plumberdurbannorth.co.za/ https://bluffplumber.co.za/ https://bluffplumber.co.za/ Think a different bunch but look at the keyword stuffing: http://www.plumbersgauteng.co.za/gauteng-plumbers-areas/plumbers-plumbing-fairland/ http://www.plumbersgauteng.co.za/gauteng-plumbers-areas/plum... Google aren’t even making ad money on this. It’s just crap content and really bad old-style spam. If they just required a business location it might help. Are we in the 90’s?!

mopsi 7y ago

"<my area> locksmiths/plumbers/etc" may be a part of a massive ongoing scam that very few people know about. Reply All podcast made an episode on it: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho87/78-very-quickly-to-the-drill https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho87/78-very-quick...

Matsta 7y ago

This is lead gen and is a big business. People will build generic white label websites and rank them for certain cities. They'll then put a toll free number on them and then contact legitmate contractors and charge them either a monthly rate or a fee per each call. There's also companies like RingPartner that are referred to Pay Per Call networks and give you a unique phone number to promote and you get paid per call.

iblaine 7y ago

Ah yes, the home contracting industry is ripe for SEO due to so many long tail keywords. A project I'm not proud of managed to get 100M pages indexed (about 1% of Google at the time), all related to home contracting services. This was done with a combination of using mod_rewrite to manufacture unique URLs, creating a CMS platform, hiring students to write content, using natural linking algorithms, and some software to automate creating unique inbound links from wikis/blogs to deep URLs. Sad to see the same kind of thing can be done today. I regret not putting that effort towards something more productive, but when you're in advertising, the race to the bottom can be tempting.