13 ms·

Ask HN: Google won't remove my site URL from random business using it on Maps

• randombytes6869 6y ago
  You can probably just check the referrer header and display a giant nag message to people coming from that business listing. "This website is not associated with company X which have been misrepresenting themselves by linking to my site from their maps listing."
  • federicoponzi 6y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion but: 1. I would need to do that for every referral from google, something which I would avoid. 2. Users might not click on the link and still think we're related. Also, the very same listing is showing facebook and twitter links on which I cannot do much about.
    • nullc 6y ago
      You could also treat probes from google's address space differently, perhaps if you return 404s they'll automatically delist it.
      • edoceo 6y ago
        If you try to trick Google Bot different, they find it a punish your site.
      • rhizome 6y ago
        It's bad luck to return something different to GoogleBot than what regular people see.
        • lovemenot 6y ago
          Fascinating use of language. Superstition implies belief in fate / deity. It doesn't surprise to see this written now, even if only ironically. "The algorithm cannot be understood by anyone" - which is a fact. So we summon the fates to describe its expected behaviour. If this comment seems personal, that wasn't intended. I really don't know how people in SEO tend to communicate. But I just heard this kind of language for the first time. So it's just a sign of the times. More like this to come. Surely.
          • Kye 6y ago
            Showing different content to Google and visitors is genuinely against Google's webmaster guidelines. It will get you delisted. It's known as cloaking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en
            • lovemenot 6y ago
              >> It's bad luck to return something different to GoogleBot than what regular people see. It's [against policy] to return something different to GoogleBot than what regular people see. The facts are on your side, but GP's language choice remains interesting. Not right now perhaps, but down the road?
  • spyder 6y ago
    I just checked and the referrer from the 'Website' button on business listings only sends the google.com top domain with no tracking parameters.
• elcomet 6y ago
  But did you try to contact the owner of the listing ? They might remove it.
  • Operyl 6y ago
    Given the poster learned that requests are forwarded to the listing owner, it sounds like they (the other business) don’t intend to fix it.
    • federicoponzi 6y ago
      ^ Exactly this. I've also asked friends and colleagues to request the same removal and report that listing, but nothing happened.
      • cirno 6y ago
        Call me cynical (which is fair), but I would be very pleasantly surprised if Google's "report inappropriate results" links were actually logged and analyzed by an actual human instead of routed to /dev/null, because that seems like a whole lot of work for a company famous for not having reachable human support. The message feels more like one to placate users into believing their concerns will be addressed, and hoping said users won't follow up on it to see if any action has been taken. I do hope I'm wrong.
        • federicoponzi 6y ago
          This is one of the things that got myself very mad at Google. They didn't even bother to put my name / surname in the response email they sent. The follow up response to my response, was a subset of the first response, and still without my name after "Sig. ". In my last email with no response (4 days ago) I've asked to be called on the phone. They probably have a special place in /dev/null for emails sent by my address.
• dcminter 6y ago
  Talk to a lawyer. Probably they will write a nasty letter to the appropriate party. Nasty letters from lawyers tend to get respected.
  • netsharc 6y ago
    I have the same thought, send them a physical letter. Since they're on Google Maps OP already has their postal address!
• yodon 6y ago
  It sounds like you are the trademark holder and know the address of the offending business in question. Any lawyer should be able to compose a suitable nastygram to send to that business quickly and cheaply.
  • federicoponzi 6y ago
    I am the holder of the trademark, but I'm not sure it will be that easy unfortunately. The issue is that according to my research, there are no tech business located at that address. So maybe it's a private person or someone working in other businessess at that address. Also, since I have a feeling that there is a scammer behind this, I'm not sure if a robber will care about this kind of threaten. Of course it might be worth a shot, but I think it's incredible that google is allowing these kind of things to happen leaving users powerless. And I'm also kind of lucky because I hold the trademark (something valued zero at google, but it might help me getting out of this) but think about people not even knowing their website is associated to other businessess.
    • bloak 6y ago
      You're probably right. They would only be infringing your trademark if they were doing business in the same category of goods and services. What they're doing sounds much more like some kind of defamation than any kind of trademark infringement. But if they're criminals they probably don't care much about the possibility of a civil action. Google Maps are rubbish. In my experience they don't even show streets in the right place. When you're ordering something you can always write in the "delivery instructions" something like: "Don't use Google; try openstreetmap.org instead." Then, if they turn up an hour late somewhat grumpy: "I did warn you!"
      • viraptor 6y ago
        > In my experience they don't even show streets in the right place. The map editing link / tools have been made much more prominent and accessible over the last year or two. I've moved done streets in my town and the experience was fairly painless.
• gear54rus 6y ago
  Post 'illegal' content on your website and send them a DMCA haha. Fight bullshit with more bullshit.
• onion2k 6y ago
  As a Google search user (just like everyone else) stories like this make me wonder about the accuracy of all the data Google displays. Loads of people claim Google search is terrible. Is Google actually still good at understanding the information on the web these days, or are they just riding the reputation they build a decade ago?
  • the_pwner224 6y ago
    Lately in the results page it displays boxes with what it thinks is the answer to your question (e.g. if you search for 'maximum temperature of Intel CPU' it'll give you a number, with a link to the page it got it from). Those are very often extremely wrong for even slightly complex queries. Would be funny if I didn't see so many people blindly trusting those results.
    • bagacrap 6y ago
      it's called a knowledge card and yes, I've witnessed many people for whom the search process stops after reading it. The knowledge card definitely adds legitimacy in many folks' minds, nevermind that Google scraped it off some kook anti vax website or whatever.
  • jschwartzi 6y ago
    I stopped using Google 2 or 3 years ago because the search quality is really bad and it “helpfully” corrected many search terms to be not what I was searching for at all. It’s not really a good search engine anymore.
    • input_sh 6y ago
      My favourite case of this was when I searched for how to accomplish something specific in nginx and Google decided that the word apache is a synonym to nginx, giving me results for apache instead (even after I've put nginx within quotes). Would've preferred if it showed me "no results" instead.
      • 6y ago
• halflings 6y ago
  Could you please share the exact answer you got from Google support? You can definitely report false information on a listing, so I don't understand how they'd tell you "We don't care if the business is using your website name." You could suggest an edit that removes your website from that place: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7084895 https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7084895 Or even better, report that the place doesn't exist in the first place. https://support.google.com/maps/answer/3094088?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en https://support.google.com/maps/answer/3094088?co=GENIE.Plat...
  • notahacker 6y ago
    Note also the 'remove business for legal reasons' option. I imagine these get priority, and trademark violation and fraudulent misrepresentation is a legal reason.
  • federicoponzi 6y ago
    I cannot update my post anymore, but I already wrote it in another reply. The edit suggestions goes directly to the business owner. They can accept / deny the update request. I've also asked friends and colleagues to ask for the same edit and to report the listing as non existent but nothing happened. The answer from the Google support I'm referring to in my post, is from a legal request I've sent to them. This is the full response in Italian (this is the reason why I didn't attach it to the post): Gentile Sig. La ringraziamo per il suo messaggio. Le facciamo presente che Google è un fornitore di informazioni, non un mediatore. Forniamo informazioni su luoghi, attività commerciali e altre informazioni relative ad una particolare parola di ricerca di ricerca, ma non rivendichiamo alcun diritto sulle etichette associate a tali contenuti. Per ulteriori informazioni, la invitiamo a consultare i nostri Termini di servizio all'indirizzo https://www.google.com/policies/terms/. Per questioni riguardanti il marchio, la preghiamo di rivolgersi direttamente al proprietario della scheda o del luogo in questione. Se il proprietario dei contenuti in questione decide di modificare eventuali informazioni in seguito alla tua richiesta, tale modifica si rifletterà nella scheda la prossima volta che i robot di Google eseguono la scansione del relativo materiale di origine. Se ritiene che informazioni personali come il suo numero di telefono vengano visualizzate nei risultati di ricerca relativi a un'attività o a una località, può segnalare il problema tramite Google Maps seguendo le istruzioni riportate in questa pagina: https://support.google.com/business/answer/6163683 Cordiali saluti, Il team di Google Please notice that Sig. doesn't include my name in the email I've received. This is google translate: We would like to point out that Google is an information provider, not a broker. We provide information about places, businesses, and other information related to a particular search word, but we do not claim any rights on the labels associated with that content. For further information, please consult our Terms of Service at https://www.google.com/policies/terms/. For trademark issues, please contact the owner of the listing or location directly. If the owner of the content in question decides to change any information following your request, this change will be reflected in the tab the next time Google's robots scan its source material. If you believe that personal information such as your phone number appears in search results for an activity or location, you can report the problem via Google Maps by following the instructions on this page:
• galvin 6y ago
  You might be able to claim the business. If they are using your info you should be able to verify ownership and take over the listing.
  • vageli 6y ago
    > You might be able to claim the business. If they are using your info you should be able to verify ownership and take over the listing. Verification of ownership is done via snail mail to the business address.
    • herman_toothrot 6y ago
      When I claimed a business it let me pick between that or an email to any email box on the domain for the site in question. But I'll defer on that not being an option all the time since it's not my area of expertise.
• cyberpanther 6y ago
  Here's a hack. Use the referral header or url tracking parameters to redirect the URL to some place seedy or maybe their competitor. I'm sure they'll change it quick after that.
  • mabbo 6y ago
    This is beautifully malicious. It's 100% within his rights as the website owner, and it will highly encourage those who can change this to do so. I love it.
    • diegoperini 6y ago
      Eye for an eye is a bad advice when there are more peaceful, not yet tried alternatives. It's not like they are pointed a gun and the only escape is shooting back. I respect the opinion though, so not down-voting you.
      • Avamander 6y ago
        No. Google is not someone that can be peacefully dealt with. They figuratively don't have ears for that.
  • tisryno 6y ago
    Since OP thinks it could be a scammer doing it, perhaps just check the referral header and display a big banner stating that listing on Maps is not you and to not contact them and list real services/competitors? Will stop people from contacting them in favour of real businesses if that's the case.
    • hubert1234 6y ago
      I agree that this is better, it punishes Google's reputation as well.
  • Aspos 6y ago
    > redirect the URL to some place seedy That business can potentially claim damages.
• exabrial 6y ago
  If Google wonders why antitrust action is inevitable, The complete lack of customer service for free services is going to cause it.
• 6510 6y ago
  Did you contact the listing owner? Did they reject your changes?
• gniv 6y ago
  Have you tried marking the listing as "Spam, fake, or offensive"? (Under the "Mark as close or remove" menu). Those are treated specially, they don't go to the owner. Assuming of course that you know for a fact that the listing does not exist. (You might want somebody else to do it if your recent edits were rejected.)
  • federicoponzi 6y ago
    As I said elsewhere, yes I did. I've asked colleagues and friends to report it as spam but it didn't help apparently.
    • gniv 6y ago
      That's surprising. The only other suggestion I have is to create a new listing on Maps with your website, a service-area listing where you don't have to provide a public address, but you still need to give Google some contact info in order to verify it. And then hope that -- over time -- Google ranks yours first when searching for that name.
      • federicoponzi 6y ago
        Is it, though? I assume they tried to reach out to him, and he just said "no I'm real and not spam thanks bye". WRT your second suggestion, I disregard that option because: 1. Even though I own the trademark, I'm not selling anything. I wanted to own the trademark to avoid these kind of situation from happening. 2. IMO It's just not fair that I have to challange a scammer in this race, since he doesn't even have the right to be there in the first place. Google should just fix their broken process.
        • dylan604 6y ago
          not to be cynical, but I LOL'd at your 2. Google should just do a lot of things. However, they will only do things as long as those things make them money. Ignoring the problem costs them nothing, fixing will cost them.
        • 6y ago
• bhartzer 6y ago
  While redirecting or displaying something based on the referrer is a cool concept, it won’t work. Referring traffic from google maps shows up as direct traffic unless yiu specifically add tracking code, which the OP can’t do. The only way to deal with this is to get the listing removed. Use The google my business redressal form to do that.
• throwaway_jobs 6y ago
  It sounds like someone is impersonating you on Google’s services, you put Google on notice you are being impersonated (your Mark infringed) and as a result you are suffering (legal) damages and google’s official response acknowledges this and simultaneously says they have no duty to prohibit infringement of your mark on their services and they have no duty to provide accurate information to their end users/the public. In other words in the old phone book days, imagine if you were to list your business in the phone book but next to your business was a competitors phone number so they get all your business...you put the phone book on notice and they just say sorry we have no duty to provide accurate information. Many have said get a lawyer to send a letter...that’s a waste of time while you will continue to be damaged. Get a lawyer to file a small claims case for damages and injunction. A few benefits: 1) you could probably get a lawyer to do it on contingency (no out of pocket expenses for you, they would get a % of damages if and only if they win); 2) small claims cases can often fly under the radar of big companies and so maybe as soon as 20 days after filing you get a default judgment; 3) if the do respond a small claims case means 1 thing to them, their attorney’s fees will exceed your damages so they will probably look into it and resolve it; 4) if they want to fight it (which would be stupid if your claims are legit) small claims are extremely expedited, typically there is no formal discovery and it’s just a pretrial (where the parties will be encouraged to settle) and then a trial (possibly a mandatory mediation at pretrial or at the court on the day of the trial).
  • newacct583 6y ago
    > It sounds like [...] It does indeed. Except the actual details are scant to nonexistant, and as others are pointing out the paraphrased "response" from Google just doesn't sound right. Google gets IP violation reports like this all the time. Clearly they have some kind of appropriate canned response that notes why they feel they aren't liable and not the "We're totally guilty!" phrasing we read above. My guess is this is more complicated than the OP is letting on.
    • Judgmentality 6y ago
      In my experience, outside of engineering, most people at Google are surprisingly incompetent at their jobs. I absolutely would not assume Google knows what they're doing - in fact, at this point, I tend to assume Google has no idea what they're doing. This is based on interacting with a couple dozen people though, so it is a small sample size.
• jrockway 6y ago
  I'm not saying you should do this, but I bet if you put malware on your site it would be gone from Google overnight. It would be a terrible thing to do (you'd never get your reputation back), but it would be interesting to see what happened.
  • atoav 6y ago
    If only there would be a way to serve a differnt sites to users coming from maps.google.com....
• sds357 6y ago
  Did you recently register the domain?
• jennyyang 6y ago
  Google's behavior is that of a monopolist. Now that there is no competitive pressures, they simply ignore legitimate requests to save money. Google needs to be broken up and competition introduced again in this space. If Google Maps or Google Search didn't rely on the revenues from Google Ads, they would take things like this more seriously because they would need the revenues. This happens tens of thousands of times per day, and the fact that they can ignore this is because they have a monopoly and they are abusing their monopoly position.
  • ViViDboarder 6y ago
    Or if Google Maps results weren’t presented as facts in Search over organic results containing first party information, this would not happen and other companies would have a chance to get more viewers and ad revenue themselves.
• advisedwang 6y ago
  Based on your HN profile, I assume the blog you mean is https://blog.informaticalab.com/ https://blog.informaticalab.com/. When I search for "informaticalab" on Google (US) I do indeed see a business result, but it doesn't have a URL on it (any more). The Facebook and Twitter links seem to be legit, although obviously the address and telephone may be dubious. The business has reviews that suggests there is actually some IT consultation or support business there, is it possible they are actually operating under your name? Have you tried calling the number associated?
  • felixarba 6y ago
    I don't know if it was a good idea showing the link in the comments, since OP clearly didn't want their business mentioned. I understand anyone could've done what you did, but that means that they would have to care enough to actually go looking through OP's profile and them finding out the name would be deliberate and not just plainly advertised for anyone.
    • petee 6y ago
      If it's in your profile it is plainly advertised to everyone.
    • ISL 6y ago
      It makes it really hard to understand the issue without seeing it firsthand. For the community to dig into the issue effectively, pretty much need to see it in order to suggest solutions. I reached the same conclusion as @advisedwang by following OP's profile information.
  • ISL 6y ago
    The URL for the Maps "website" link presently (1249 Pacific, June 20) points at rubyschool.us , which has text in cyrillic. It's an odd choice, but not impossible, for a "Computer Consultant" in the suburbs of Naples. Rubyschool claims to be located in San Francisco here, though: https://github.com/rubyschool-us https://github.com/rubyschool-us
• rsync 6y ago
  "They're even showing my website url." ... "Use the referral header or url tracking parameters to redirect the URL to some ..." ... I just searched this comment thread for the string "goat" and got nothing. Come on! Where is the fun ?! Where did it go ?!
• jccooper 6y ago
  Bad publicity on a major news site seems to be a major Google support channel. So you're halfway there; had you included names in this post you'd have a chance at that avenue.
• sebastien_b 6y ago
  [removed]
  • dang 6y ago
    It's not ok to post like this to HN. No doubt your intentions are good but we don't want HN to be used to harass people, and definitely not to incite an online mob, which in the limit case is what this point to. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • sebastien_b 6y ago
      Fair enough (I’d delete it but cannot now)
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• thrownaway954 6y ago
  what is the name of the listing? i am a google guide and by some mysterious google power, whenever changes i make get approved instantly so i can try to mark them as fake or remove the information you want. other than that... hire a lawyer and send them a cease and desist
• floatingatoll 6y ago
  In the United States, you can sue John Doe (the anonymous party who created the listing) for identity fraud and trademark abuse, and then file a discovery motion compelling Google to divulge their identity so that they can be identified and prosecuted by the court, with your lawyer optionally noting to the court that Google removing the domain from the other entity as you originally requested (and paying your court costs and lawyer fees as damages, as they were notified of the fraud and refused to act) would be an acceptable settlement. In the United Kingdom, you can sue Google for libel, as their misrepresentation of someone else as you harms you, and if you prove malice ('reckless disregard for the truth', which Google is clearly demonstrating) you can not only compel Google to remove the libelous material but also win damages from Google for their flagrant disregard for the truth. What jurisdiction are you in?
• thomaslord 6y ago
  I'm not sure if this would help, but have you considered trying to add Local Business metadata to the site that Google can pick up? It's possible that it'd overwrite the other business entry, or you might be able to report the business as a duplicate. At the very least, you might end up with both showing up stacked instead of just the one so you might reduce how many people interact with the fraudulent listing.
• lultimouomo 6y ago
  I understand your frustration, but I don't think you're giving a complete picture. I did a quick 5 minute search on the internet to figure out what the website in question was, and it's the Italian equivalent of itlab.com (as in IT Lab), which is a bit generic to say the least. The business in question appears to be an actual business, but with a somewhat different name, and which is, actually, what could reasonably called and IT lab, as in a computer repair / network installer / small time website developer shop. Searching on Google for your website name, including the TLD, does not yield the business result, only searching for the equivalent of "itlab". All in all it seems to me like Google should remove the business suggestion for that search, but I don't think it's as clear-cut as you put it.
  • kedean 6y ago
    I think the OP intentionally didn't identify their website for privacy reasons. Don't you feel like this comment is kind of doxxing them?
    • lultimouomo 6y ago
      He link to his personal website in his HN profile, and in his personal website he prominently links to the blog we're talking about. I thought about it and it really didn't feel like doxxing.
• fredophile 6y ago
  I'm assuming that you already tried contacting the listing owner and they haven't been cooperative. The easiest thing to do would be to make them want to remove your website. At the top of your main page put a little note saying something like "If you're searching for <foo business> in <location> we're not them. Please click here." Then, since they don't have a website you can send users to a page that explains the situation, suggests that they may want to do business with a more reputable company, and provide links and phone numbers to their local competitors. Alternatively, if you don't care about your websites reputation, you could just fill it with porn, popups, or other content that users won't expect or want from a business.
  • fiatjaf 6y ago
    Clever, but unlikely to work. The business owner probably won't ever check or know about these things.
    • fredophile 6y ago
      I think you underestimate people's desire to complain about things. If the website pops up a dozen new windows full of porn that autoplays with audio I guarantee someone will call the business to let them know.
• kull 6y ago
  I am trying to change our business location on google maps for the last 6 months.
• blahpro 6y ago
  Please consider adding instructions for reproducing the issue to this thread. E.g. what's the name of the business that's using your URL, and what's your URL? Without such instructions it's much harder for others on HN, or from Google, to help.
• ingend88 6y ago
  Did you get a closure on this ? You can also use this form to file a request. https://support.google.com/business/gethelp https://support.google.com/business/gethelp