Thread: New Google Local Spam Patent Gives Sneak Peek at What's Coming

There is a Google Local spam patent and I think it gives us a sneak peek at how Google views spammy 3rd party business listings and the types of things they are trying to detect so they can either ignore it, block it or penalize for it.

Bill Slawski the Google Patent Detective made the discovery and shares important insights.

Google Tackles Geographic (Map) Spam for Businesses

What happens when the information from those sources doesn’t match. Even worse, what happens when one of these sources includes information that might be on the spammy side? A patent granted to Google this week describes a way that Google might use to police for such places. The patent warns against titles for business entities that include terms such as “cheap hotels,” “discounts,” Dr. ABC–555 777 8888.” It also might identify spam in categories for businesses that might include things such as…

If a resource ranks for a query in part because of information from an untrusted source (such as “best plumber in Dallas” in a category field), the search engine might adjust the rank of the resource downward based upon the measure of spam it may have calculated was from the use of that phrase in the untrusted source.

Originally Posted by Linda Buquet

There is a Google Local spam patent and I think it gives us a sneak peek at how Google views spammy 3rd party business listings and the types of things they are trying to detect so they can either ignore it, block it or penalize for it.

Bill Slawski the Google Patent Detective made the discovery and shares important insights.

Wow, nice find and a fascinating read. I always suspected they used some sort of metric as discussed in the Patent.

This would likely be important for Local people in that they don't want any Google account associated with putting up content which would be considered spam, since if you do it enough and the content is manually confirmed as Spam I would posit Google's "trust" in you as a data source goes down. The hard part for Local is that you don't know where Google is getting its information from and what weights are placed on the various info sources.

I believe that this is the link to the Google patent that Linda mentioned: United States Patent: 8332415

If anyone is a patent attorney or has a Masters in Physics, you are welcome to explain it to me. lol