Craigslist key word spamming/flagging?
-
I really trust the MOZ communities opinions on this and would appreciate any help.
Our company has a competitor that puts our brand name in the majority of their craigslist ads. If you search craigslist for our product name, 80-90% of the results are this one company.
Can anyone recommend a REPUTABLE flagging service that can flag their ads that break the craigslist TOS by using keyword spam? I'm open to any and all suggestions.
-
I haven't used it for those purposes, but Craigslist would also want to know about that type of spam. If you're going to complain about a TOS violation, it's best that you not also violate their TOS.
Give them as much information as possible -- search queries that show the ads from the same person, how you identify it as the same person/entity, and make sure the queries don't have any false positives.
-
Thanks for the quick response. Does this method typically work for these situations?
Not sure if this matters but just for scale we are talking maybe 50-100 ads per day being posted under different names through out the US.
-
Have you tried contacting abuse@craigslist.org? That's where to report things like this.
Flagging software and services would be a violation of their TOS as well (see Use at http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use).
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
-
Google My Business: Company listing is showing in search instead of division address - similar names/same city
Hi! I have a client whose company name is very similar to one if their company divisions. This division has multiple locations but its main location is in the same city as the parent company. The problem is that when you search for the division, the parent company shows up. The parent company has a physical address, but most users searching need to be going to the division address which takes customers. They are having problems with customers coming to the parent company address instead. I have made the Google My Business parent company page to show service areas instead of their business address. Yet, their listing still comes up first when searching for the division location. This is because of part of the parent company name is in the division name. My client wants users to be able to find the division more so than the parent company. Anyone had this issue before? Any tips would be great!
Local Listings | | agrier0 -
Google points of Interest / POI
Hello, Looking for some guidance on how to appear and get listed in Google Points of Interest in the Search Engine Results Page. Like when searching for "attractions Seattle" at the top of the SERP these listings appear. Cannot seem to find some good resources on the topic as well. Thanks Conrad
Local Listings | | conalt1 -
Hotel SEO / Rank Conundrum
Hello Mozzers, I am having an issue with a particular client and wanted to throw it out to the forum for feedback. We work with many resorts and hotels. One, in particular, is a large condo-hotel property with several individual buildings. Each building has a unique name. While the property management company owns and operates most of the units within each building, there are units that are individually owned. The property management company runs the branded resort website, all local pages & listings, etc. One savvy unit owner, however, has built a website that is branded with the individual building name for one of the buildings. He has also taken ownership of the building Google Plus page, Facebook page, etc. He only owns a handful of units in the building. We have retroactively tried creating a new site but are struggling to gain traction from a ranking perspective. We did temporarily change the website address that was listed for the Google local listing, via the "edit" button, and were actually starting to increase rank (presumably somewhat related to the increase in website traffic), but it was quickly fixed to the other website. The management company has reached out to the owner but he continues to refuse to give up any rights to the Google local page, etc. We have also created a new (technically duplicate) page just to see if we can knock the other one off, though we are having issues getting the verification post card from Google. Any advice on how we can gain access to this Google local page? Or any other tips on how to get a relatively small, new site to overtake an existing site? I know URLs / examples are helpful in these situations but we'd prefer to keep the client names anon.
Local Listings | | mbochic0 -
Moz Local is saying a 800 is not okay...does it really negatively impact citations/rankings?
So I was considering using Moz Local to help improve the visibility of one of my clients who is trying to improve their local SEO (they only have one business location). When I submitted my existing client's listing there was an automated popup that read: Sorry, we're unable to update this listing right now Toll-free number detected Many of the partners to which Moz Local submits your data do not accept toll-free lines as primary phone numbers. Choosing a local phone number may also be better for rankings and increase the number of calls you get from local search customers. Is is true that having a "local phone number" can result in better rankings? Is there any articles/studies/evidence to support this? Also are there any discounts out there for first time Moz Local users?
Local Listings | | RosemaryB0 -
Google + / Local for Business. How to SEO ?... Done the basic but no real change.
Hi All, We have set up all of our Google local for business pages which are verified and these link to the relevant branch pages on our website. The branch pages also link back to the relevant google local page. We only appear for one category on the google local pages and we have also done a large number of citations (NAP) across all locations and the text used in each of the google pages is keyword rich and we mention the city in there as well to localise it. We have a few google + likes and we have used hootsuite to publish the same content across some of the google local pages which links back to our website blog , we are not appearing in local search whereas our competitors seem to be appear for all their branches. Is there any fundamental tips or things we need to do to def. get up on the rankings.. Or any good articles worth reading ?.. I've had a look but can't seem to see anything relating a google local business bible.. thanks Pete
Local Listings | | PeteC121 -
Google Maps Spam
Has anyone had any luck with the Google webspam team getting spammy results taken down or changed? If so can you please tell me how you did it.
Local Listings | | apittsburghplumber.com0 -
Reliability of http://www.scamanalyst.net/
Hi - has anyone used scamanalyst.net as a research tool? If so, do you have any thoughts on how reliable the site information is? My thought is to use in conjunction with Open Site Explorer (in the process of tidying up a clients' questionable site links). Thanks so much.
Local Listings | | E2E0 -
Does anybody have any data on what percentage of people actually click on a Google Places / Google+ listing VS call the business direct from the SERPs?
I've had a few SMB clients who have experienced drops in website traffic once their Google Places listing has gone live. It's hard for the average SMB to understand that this may not be a bad thing because they actually may be received more leads direct from the local SERPs. So while I can try to explain this to my clients, it'd be nice to have some broad data on how searchers interact with Google local listings. I'd love to learn what percentage of people call direct from the SERPs instead of clicking through to the business' website link. Obviously, the percentages would vary across different verticals, different devices & depending on whether the search query was branded or non-branded. I'm after some rough average data, so if anyone could point me in the right direction, that'd be great! 🙂
Local Listings | | Dave_Eddy0