Listings spam, and what it costs the business that buys it

Addresses the business does not occupy

The pitch is that a second or third profile at an address across the city extends reach, which it does, because distance is a ranking factor. The address is a mailbox, a virtual office or a relative's house. Google's guidelines require a real location with staff during stated hours, and enforcement in some categories is aggressive.

When it is caught, the profile is suspended. Reinstatement is slow and uncertain, and a suspension can take the legitimate profile with it. The business loses its most valuable local asset; the supplier loses a client. That asymmetry is the whole point.

Names padded with search terms

Changing a business name from its real name to the real name plus a service and a place is against the guidelines, and it is the easiest violation for a competitor to report. It also produces a profile that looks exactly like the ones customers have learned to distrust, which is a conversion cost on top of the risk.

The legitimate version is to use the real name and put the service terms where they belong: in the categories, the services list and the description.

Bulk directory submission

Submission to hundreds of directories is sold on volume because volume is easy to invoice. Most of those directories are not read by anyone, and a proportion actively introduce errors by mangling the address format, which undoes the consistency work the same supplier is charging for elsewhere.

A small number of relevant, real directories is worth having. A spreadsheet of four hundred is a report, not an outcome.

How to spot it before you buy

Ask where every listing will be created and expect a list of names. Ask whether the business name will be changed, and refuse. Ask what happens if a profile is suspended, and note whether the answer involves the supplier bearing any consequence at all.

The trade with the worst version of this problem is locksmithing, where fabricated listings are widespread enough to have shaped how the category is policed. Any locksmith buying local SEO should read that page before signing anything.

The publisher's position

This page is published by a company that sells local SEO in Dublin, so treat it as an interested party arguing for the way it works. The underlying rules are not the publisher's, though: they are Google's, published, linked below, and checkable without trusting anyone here.