Finlly, people that were searching for my services were finding me- and rightfully so! After all, I’m not only the best on my location, but one of the best in my industry, credited with multiple awards and years of expertise. At the time, I was so happy with Google that I would have kissed their shoes. They gave me the means to connect with clients where my limited resources could not.

My home business grew to more than I could handle by myself. I needed to hire help, but to do so, I needed to get an office. I hired an attorney to draft up a business plan and we shopped it to the banks. Our pitch was simple “We need this much to expand- we’re making twice as much so it won’t be hard to pay back.” The loan was approved.

I paid thousands for all the right licensing, hired 2 employees and moved into a warehouse. As sales increased and I expanded my inventory. Here’s where it turns bad:

We moved into a warehouse lot with similar businesses. We all shared the same street address but different suites. One day, callers started complaining about products that we didn’t even carry and services that we didn’t perform. Turns out, one of our competitors had managed to rack up multiple negative reviews on his Google local listing and it had somehow MERGED with our listing.

Now, dealing with damage control isn’t so tough. We explained to callers that they had the wrong number and gave them the correct one. The icing on the cake- when our business came to a screeching halt- was when we found that our phone number was nowhere to be seen. No one called for our business. To put it lightly, our phone lines had become the enemy.

For nearly 2 months, we struggled with finding new customers. We passed out flyers but that proved to be ineffective. We heavily relied on Craigslist advertising. In fact, that was our ONLY source of revenue.

Google was no help. They would not even entertain the idea of listening to us. What baffled me the most was how a company that employs 20,000 people (that’s right, twenty-thousand) didn’t have a single person to answer the phone. Here’s Google’s phone number, call them and ask them about anything and see what happens: (650) 253-0000. They will shut you down like a light.

Like a broken record, Google’s android receptionists repeatedly chanted the anthem of: “We do not offer tech support for ‘free services’. We do not offer tech support for ‘free services’. We do…” Ok, as a professional I can understand that a business would not give free support for a free service, but I was willing to PAY. Alas, there was no one at Google that would take my money. Then I remembered that I had paid Google thousands of dollars in Adwords, a $21 Billion dollar company and they couldn’t help me.

Finally, I ended up deleting my Google Local listing. I created a new one and waited a week for my conformation code. After verifying the code I searched daily for my listing to appear. About a week later I found it… It was on page 4. I’m sure you can figure out what happened in the proceeding weeks. We liquidated.

There’s an old proverb: “Don’t put your eggs into one basket”… Whether that’s true or not, I know that basket is not Google.

Thanks for debt,
Out Of Business

I agree on your point that the data provided by Google in the LBC is useless for a Search Marketer because the data is not actionable. The privacy claim is not consistent with how Google handles their analytics.

The data is clearly woefully insufficient. However, for the average SMB who is new to the online landscape the data shows the beginning of action and value. The SMB cares about visits and phone calls. As the SMB gains exposure to the data and expectations change they will quickly become dissatisfied with the data and come to expect more. Hopefully more is provided sooner rather than later. Google seems to be taking an introductory approach. It will be interesting to see what they do with the data in the coming months.

Useless.

Not exactly sure what you’re saying here… city is certainly a ranking factor and a major one, but Google Maps (Google Local > Google Maps 3+ years ago) doesn’t “search according to city name”.

If you want to get right down to it, the geographic unit that GM uses it lat/long pairs; any geographic element in your search (city, zip, landmark, address, etc.) is geocoded into a lat/long pair. Any business listing in the database has been geocoded into a lat/long pair.

When you do a search, a whole bunch of ranking factors (proximity as determined by lat/long, city name, keywords, number of reviews for the listing, etc.) are run through the algorithm and the results are generated.

What you’re seeing is based on city name being a strong ranking factor. But it’s not the only one; part of our job as local search marketers is understanding all of the dynamics and behaviors (both consumer and search engine) that are going on in a certain market. To say it’s all about the city that your listing is in really misses the boat. People cross city lines to visit local businesses, so analyzing the raw query data can give you great insights into the local dynamics for your business.