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An Extremely Good Google Map Spammer

So I have been doing a bit of work in the pest control scene lately, and I have come a cross a rather good listing. Their company name happened to be “city of choice” Pest Control. And when I clicked through to their site it was a dynamic one page site that will gather 3 or 4 bids from local pest control companies and call you back with the best deal.


While this seems to be a great service…It doesn’t belong in local search at all! I can’t seem to find any relevancy to any of the addresses they have listed. My attempts to call their “local” numbers instead of the 800 numbers have been in vain, but they are owning the 10 pack in a lot of big markets.

What to do

If any one finds a situation like this, I think there are a few basic steps you follow to ensure this comes to the attention of customers, google maps, and resolve the issue a.s.a.p.

  • Write a blog post about the company including pictures of the spammers work while enjoying a nice spam sandwich
  • Contact The Google Maps Spam Group and let them know what happened while wrapping up on your spam sandwich
  • Find a low calorie juice to get that rotten taste out of your mouth
  • Wait…wait…and wait some more to see if anything happens.



I figured I would take a few pictures to show you the subtle spammer, and their very subtle work that has probably brought in a subtle amount of pocket change.

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 4

Picture 3

My Thoughts

As you can see this is a very basic example. This group is smart enough not to try have have 5 or 6 links at the top. Heck, they are barely in the 10 pack in some places. But, they have done this in every major market across the country. They are probably bringing in ton and tons of phone calls every day and finding low prices for people…But, is it right? Is it fair to real “brick and mortar” companies who are actually pest control service companies? I am going to have to say no.


Now, I have submitted this to Google Map Spam and will be very interested to see if this issue gets resolved in the coming days. If it doesn’t…it is a major problem, and would fall under Mike Blumenthals Hall of Shame Post. (which I highly recommend)

One More Gripe For The Road

While dealing with the same pest control listing I have been working on, I moved to the 3rd spot in a very competitive market and somebody went in and changed the listing address and company name. While I tried to resolve this through the simple community edit..It hasn’t fixed anything.


Even though we claimed the listing and had it verified it was hijacked and now my “verified” listing information is not correlating with the one appearing and I can’t seem to merge the two files. Any thoughts?