{"id":10731,"date":"2009-12-29T13:54:34","date_gmt":"2009-12-29T20:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=10731"},"modified":"2009-12-29T20:01:22","modified_gmt":"2009-12-30T03:01:22","slug":"dont-mess-with-the-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10731\/dont-mess-with-the-google\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Mess with The Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

So back in October I launched a Google Local account for The Chetson Firm<\/a>. This is an account that links your business to Google Maps and allows you to post information such as your hours, location, parking, etc. I posted some images, a link to a video I had created, etc.<\/p>\n

I shot to the top of Google local rankings for keywords in Raleigh. I’m certain that was responsible for multiple thousands in business. Life was good. I tweaked the listing a few more times, it kept performing well.<\/p>\n

Then at the end of November, I tweaked it again, this time stuffing a few more keywords into the listing. Google “flagged” the listing. Overnight it disappeared from the local search results displayed by Google maps. This was a disaster. I had difficulty undoing my mistake. Where I was in the top 7 for two months, now I was nowhere to be found. (I still perform well on Google’s organic search words, so business didn’t dry up completely. In fact, December was a strong month.)<\/p>\n

Since Google Local has no easy way to report problems, I went into Google’s local business forums, where I found lots of people in similar circumstances. Their ads were displaying fine, until the end of November when Google did something that affected them.<\/p>\n

Fortunately on the strength of other marketing – some direct mail I do to DWI defendants and the fact that my organic google results are strong – I’ve continued to pull in business, but I would guess I’ve lost about $10,000 in business because of this mistake.<\/p>\n

I’m on the way to repairing the damage, and Google is expected to refresh its results after the New Year’s. But this illustrated for me two aspects of the same phenomenon in marketing and the online world.<\/p>\n

1. Don’t put all your marketing in one basket.<\/p>\n

2. Google really is a market maker in many respects for many different kinds of businesses.<\/p>\n

I’m now looking for other ways to “diversify” my marketing. Fortunately there’s Bing and other emerging avenues. Unfortunately Google, as much as I generally like their products (Wave being an exception), is still Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So back in October I launched a Google Local account for The Chetson Firm. This is an account that links your business to Google Maps and allows you to post information such as your hours, location, parking, etc. I posted some images, a link to a video I had created, etc. I shot to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-technology","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8984,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/8984\/google-wave-goodbye-real-estate-brokerage-as-we-know-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":10731,"position":0},"title":"Google Wave Goodbye Real Estate Brokerage As We Know It?","author":"Ryan Hartman","date":"June 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I found some time to check out the Google Wave Developer preview on youtube a few days ago. And darn if I haven't thought to myself: \"This'll be way easier and more fun to do once Wave comes\" at least 10 times since. So here are some possible applications that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Supplanting the NAR"","block_context":{"text":"Supplanting the NAR","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/supplanting-the-nar\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10364,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10364\/google-places-is-a-national-real-estate-search-engine-not-so-much\/","url_meta":{"origin":10731,"position":1},"title":"“Google Places” is a “National Real Estate Search Engine”? Not so much.","author":"John Rowles","date":"November 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"...at least not yet. On Sept 24th when the Google Blog announcement of Google Places was posted, there was no mention of Place Pages for Real Estate: \"A Place Page is a webpage for every place in the world, organizing all the relevant information about it. By every place, we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Real Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"google_lbc","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/google_lbc.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":15018,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15018\/google-thinks-your-idx-site-sucks\/","url_meta":{"origin":10731,"position":2},"title":"Google Thinks Your IDX Site Sucks","author":"John Rowles","date":"September 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"There are plenty of places to go if this is your first time hearing about \u201cPanda\u201d, but the general idea is that Google has set out to target what it considers to be \u201clow quality\u201d content of the sort generally propagated by link farms, scrapers, and the eHows of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Real Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6849,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/6849\/de-commodotize-your-listing-content\/","url_meta":{"origin":10731,"position":3},"title":"De-Commodotize Your Listing Content","author":"John Rowles","date":"February 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This is in response to Greg's post about Jim Flanagan's question, \"What does today\u2019s real estate consumer want in (on) a real estate brokerage\u2019s website?\"\u00a0 \"Listings\" was the predictable, correct answer. It\u2019s no secret that Real Estate Web site users are primarily interested in listings. That's why everyone has them,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Real Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14318,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/14318\/idx-and-blogs-a-match-made-in-heaven\/","url_meta":{"origin":10731,"position":4},"title":"IDX and BLOGS A match made in heaven.","author":"Dan Connolly","date":"March 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I was trying to respond to Jeff Brown\u2019s last post about successful blogging and my comments just kept getting too long. So I thought I would send it to Greg as a blog post and see what he thought about posting it. Now, here we are! Thanks Greg! While some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":565,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/565\/google-mobile-maps-supports-treo\/","url_meta":{"origin":10731,"position":5},"title":"Google Mobile Maps supports Treo . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 23, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I never get lost, which sometimes annoys and sometimes enthralls my best-beloved. The Swann Boys as a bloodline are endowed with an extra-large kinesthesia gene. I can find my way around in cities I have been to only once, decades ago. Whenever we travel, I do all the driving, because\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10731"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10735,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10731\/revisions\/10735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}