I once helped a friend get his bar on Google Maps by claiming the business. They send a physical letter to the address of the bar.
How do they go about claiming other people’s business? Do they just say “yeah, I own the pizza parlor on food street 3, Ohio, but send verification to startup avenue 10, Silicon Valley”?
I forget this part in my blog post, but it goes like this. Once the website is accepted as the official website of the business, you can claim ownership by proving ownership of that website.
Given Slice owns the (fake official) website, it is instantly verified.
And all of a sudden Slice is almost guaranteed to get the online orders for any restaurant. Pretty slick. Also pretty disgusting. Sounds like something Google should fix, and have every interest to fix.
How did they got #1 and #2 results above real website which even has shorter domain name? My guess: They bought off fake URL in various yellow pages listing which Google then aggregates to believe it is the official URL.
Businesses built wholly on top of another business, much less a flaw in how another business operates a tiny portion of their overall business, are doomed to fail. They are 1 policy change at Google away from losing their intake funnel -- a funnel that provides no value to anyone but Slice, but that is a separate discussion.
yea, the company (I forget the name) was ordering Domino's or something, and then repackaging the pizza in the fake companies branded pizza boxes and delivering them.
Are they buying .com and .net tld's to host a fake website for every single business, just to outrank them on google? Is that cheaper than just paying for the ad?
What do the local restaurants say? Because the problem with Grubhub was that they phished the businesses' customers - no permission or relationship with the local businesses themselves.
My understanding of Slice is that they work directly with the pizza shops, so do they have this as a part of their agreement?
> Because the problem with Grubhub was that they phished the businesses' customers - no permission or relationship with the local businesses themselves.
Actually, Grubhub did have a relationship with those businesses. I imagine it’s very similar to what’s going on here. The business owners assume signing up with Grubhub/Slice means you get in the app and you pay a fee for those leads, which seems fair enough. What they don’t realize is the agreement also allows them to do any “online marketing” for you and claim any lead they drive you. They interpret that to be permission to outrank you on Google and cannibalize your free leads.
Not sure if exactly similar but I had to get a tow a while back and the first number I used on Google was not a local tow company. It was an SEO thing where they charge higher and then call the local tow company, I guess good on them but yeah idk... I suppose I did get what I wanted(a tow truck).
Whenever I find an instance of this in the wild (such as [1]), I try to add the proper website as a correction, but Google typically will not accept the change. I assume this is because the website URL was added by the "owner".
In other instances where I suggest edits to Google Places, they are accepted almost immediately, since I am a decently-ranked Local Guide.
According to the article, they aren't spending anything though. Theyre just making fake websites and using them to claim un-claimed Google My Business profiles (which cost nothing to create or maintain).
I disagree, this is not a dupe. That is a fluff piece for the company about how they did the hard legwork of signing up customers. This post suggests that they're fraudulently registering these business as their own.
Totally not a dupe. Your link is to the "official" Slice version, this submission is taking a more critical look. As there are a lot of main page submissions covering the same topic at the same time, it would be great to keep both up.
How do they go about claiming other people’s business? Do they just say “yeah, I own the pizza parlor on food street 3, Ohio, but send verification to startup avenue 10, Silicon Valley”?