Shutting down rogue G+ Pages
-
We are helping a client clean up some past agencies SEO work in G+ and needed to figure out the best way to shut down duplicate G+ pages.
The pages were created with post office boxes, household addressed, etc to create a location in multiple cities. What is the most efficient way to shut down 40+ pages in 5+ cites? Do we need to get usernames/passwords for all of these to shut them down?
Has anyone had luck getting Google's help on mass cleanup like this?
Signed,
Exhausted already!
-
I figured, but was hoping for some off the wall genius!
-
Thanks, SEO 5 Team. Appreciate the kind words!
-
Awesome response Miriam. No short cuts on this one Jake
-
Hi Jake,
Oh, my, that sounds like a really bad situation! Yes, you've got to get rid of these. If these listings are duplicates of an accurate, honest listing with a genuine physical street address, then the best thing to do is to use the 'report a problem link' on each page. Do not claim these listings! But do be logged into the client's authoritative account while you report the problems. Click the 'place is a duplicate' box and describe as best you can. In the description field, include the URL of the single, accurate listing. State that you are the business owner and are attempting to clean up spam created by a previous SEO company. Be as detailed as you can.
Now, once you've accomplished this, you need to engage in a citation cleanup campaign, searching the web for all possible references to these bogus addresses associated with the business name or phone number. These also need to be cleaned up to try to clean up Google's data cluster about the business.
Nota Bene: Before I touched this project, I would let the incoming client know that, while I will make my best effort, this level of spam is pretty egregious and I cannot guarantee results here because of this. The business may already be penalized. Bad citations may continue to auto-populate for years to come. It's really a mess. So, I would do my best, but 40 spam listings in 5 cities is a scarily tall order for anyone to clean up.
Hang in there, Jake. I'm not surprised you're already exhausted!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Videos on Home Page
Hello, My company is currently in the process of editing our website's homepage. My creative team wants to add several videos to an already big home page. I would like a more simple and less interactive home page. There has to be close to a half dozen videos already on the page. I know that Google bots have trouble crawling some items like java. I also know that page speed is a huge factor and the mobile first index is quickly approaching. Is it ok to have all of these videos on home page? Could this due harm to the page. All the videos are hosted on Vimeo and typically expand from some sort of icon. Page load time has been an issue and this will probably be our last update before google's mobile first index. I just want to make sure I am giving the correct advice by saying there is no problem with 6+ videos on a home page. Any advice would be great! Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | aua0 -
Using Facebook for Places page
I have been using Facebook for my website for some of my client, Previously it use to get ranked fast and I have one of my client of the very top for one of my clinets main keyword. I took another the same Nitch but in a different location, but they don't seem to be getting ranked.
Image & Video Optimization | | joeuglyhat0 -
Google+ Local Page Wrong Categories
The "new" Google+ Local page for one of my clients is not showing the correct Business Categories. Seems like it reverted to an old Category before we revised. I looked in my Google Places dashboard and the correct Categories are there. They do not have a Google+ Profile yet. Any suggestions? They also seem to have disappeared for those categories we used to rank in the top three in Google Places results.
Image & Video Optimization | | Reportcard0 -
I understand that in addition to video sitemaps, a transcription of a video, if presented properly will help google and may help SEO. I cannot find information on the basics to add transcription properly to a page. Advice or direction appreciated.
Looking for guidance or information on the nuts and bolts of how to use transcriptions with video.
Image & Video Optimization | | hughman0 -
Page speed not good despite CDN and caching. Can this be fixed?
My page speed results are here, showing a speed of 40 seconds. I get an F for compress text, compress images and cache static content.How do I resolve this? Also.. I've set up a CDN. Is it a problem for SEO, that there is a copy of all my images and content at cdn.mysite.com? We get lots of search traffic through google images search.
Image & Video Optimization | | devdg0 -
Google Place pages and regular listings in search results
I'm trying to clarify something about search results which contain local listings. Here is the search string for Google that will give you the same results that I am seeing - http://www.google.co.uk/search?&q=letting agents glasgow&pws=0 Of the results that are returned, some of them have data which seems to be related to their Google Place page but the "title" links directly to their website. What I wanted to know is, "Is it their actual website that has given them those rankings" or "Are they listed where they are because of a well optimized and ranked Places page?
Image & Video Optimization | | XSMedia0 -
How to Track Traffic from Google Places Pages
Hi, Is there anything I need to do in Google Analytics to setup tracking for traffic coming to a site via it's Google Places page? I can see some traffic from maps.google.com in the Traffic Sources > Referring Sites report, but it does not appear to marry up to the data reported in the Google Places dashboard. Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | WCR0 -
Do search enginges prefer pages with mobile websites on the mobile phone?
Let me explain what I want to know: Somebody searches e.g. for a hotel on his mobile phone. Do the search engines rank websites with special mobile pages better than others? I am not considering the local factor here (let's say there are hotels nearby with or without mobile websites). If not, is there a trend for that? Does anyone have some datas / examples / experience about that?
Image & Video Optimization | | petrakraft1
