Sleepless Again
The majority of this post was written while my insomniac mind continues to mull over the MerchantCircle case. After about 45 minutes of laying in bed, sleepless I decided I might as well get my thoughts out here.
Wrong URL?
To be honest I find it puzzling how the wrong URL to many of these listings. Taking MerchantCircle’s words as truth this points to Google Algorithm. Mike Bluementhal has outlined several times how Google has been attributing the wrong URL to business. These examples point out that Google still has a large amount of tweaking to do to the Local search algorithm. Which is a major reason I am so interested in local search.
Thinking Like a Search Engine
Now when I think of SEO in general, I try to think like a search engine. In the case of attributing a website to a business, what is nearly 1 fool proof way to find out if a website belongs to a company? Well after reading Rose’s comment on Mike Bluementhals blog, it jumped out at me, The Copyright phrase.
I’m not sure if this has been discussed but if you look at nearly all websites on the web, most have copyrights. Well in the case of the MerchantCircle registered business domains, each website had a copyright symbol associated with the business name. Get that? Not just the domain name but the business name. This coupled with a nice amount of link juice and other sites from each local area linking to the domain may have attributed to “Google’s Confusion” in assigning the wrong domain to the business listing.
Thoughts?
Now I know this isn’t fool proof, and yes it could be gamed, but it would make sense. People want to claim their work and so do businesses. It is an interesting theory I would love to get some opinions on. Ideas?
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Nick, it’s an interesting theory that copyright conveys authority for un-claimed LBL’s…although in the specific case of Faux and Art it looked like the actual business owner had registered himself with Google Local. So now the question becomes: why is Google showing ANY website in that position, assuming that the owner himself did not include it in his claimed listing?