The State of Spam Fighting: What We Learned From Analyzing 5,306 Listings in 16 Industries

 

In the 2021 Local Search Ranking Factors Study, there was a clear trend that stuck out. In the commentary, people listed spam-fighting as both an ‘effective strategy’ and a ‘strategy that doesn’t seem to work anymore’. Wait, what? It might make you wonder if you should be prioritizing reporting spam anymore.  To help answer these questions, I’m going to be sharing some details from a recent study we conducted at Sterling Sky.

In This Study

1. What industries have the highest percentage of fake Google listings?
2. Is spam declining compared to 3 years ago?
3. How big of a problem is keyword stuffing?

Methodology

For this study, over a four-year period, we looked at 5306 listings, across 16 different industries, that were ranking on Google.  Our goal was to try to answer a number of questions about how effective spam-fighting really is and if spam is still a problem on Google.  In this study, you’ll see us using the terminology “fake listing”.  We define a “fake listing” as a Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business listing) that was created and violates Google’s guidelines, thus they removed it after it was reported.

 

What Industries Have the Highest Percentage of Fake Google Listings?

The first thing to note right off the bat is that people’s mileage may vary when dealing with spam due to how drastically different it can be across different industries.  This graph looks at the total number of listings we looked at in each industry, and what % of those listings were removed from Google for violating their guidelines. 

 

Industry	Number of Listings	Total Listings Google Removed	% Removed
Hair Restoration	249	89	35.7%
Funeral Services	128	15	11.7%
Drug Rehab	579	301	52.0%
Realtors	237	30	12.7%
Dentists	156	20	12.8%
Home Security	321	103	32.1%
Criminal Lawyers	531	123	23.2%
Tree Service	197	57	28.9%
Personal Injury Lawyers	416	315	75.7%
HVAC	1082	243	22.5%
Bankruptcy Lawyers	199	37	18.6%
Junk Cars	767	615	80.2%
Private Investigators	275	161	58.5%
Insurance	197	132	67.0%
Locksmiths	114	48	42.1%
Handyman	259	73	28.2%
Garage Door Repair	676	592	87.6%

 

Is Spam Declining Compared to 3 Years Ago?

According to Google’s numbers, they removed 7 million fake business listings in 2021.  This number was 2 million in 2017 and was 3 million in 2018.  630,000 of the listings they removed were ones that users reported to Google to remove.  That number has grown from 250,000 in 2018. So, not only is Google preventing more people from attempting to create fake listings, but more users are actually reporting fake listings too – compared to a few years ago.

How many fake listings you find in a single market or industry can really vary based on how big of a market it is.  Here is an example of how it looked for the junk car industry, in a large city, over the last few years:

Here is how it looks for a few other industries, by year, according to our study:

There are some industries that have actually improved drastically in the last couple of years.  For example, the fake listing network that plagued the personal injury lawyer industry in 2019 actually got mostly removed from Google and they have now moved on to Bing.  Just search “car accident lawyer [insert city]” on Bing, and you’ll get results like this:

However, Google has not solved the huge lead-generating networks for other industries, like the garage door repair industry.  Fake listings are still a massive problem in this industry and fake listings, like the ones below, are constantly popping up with fake reviews on them.

How Big of a Problem is Keyword Stuffing?

Keyword stuffing has been a common practice among business owners and SEOs alike, due to how much keywords in the business name impact ranking in the local pack. For this section, we only defined something as keyword stuffing if Google actually agreed and corrected the business name.

 

Industry	Number of Listings	Total Listings Keyword Stuffing	%
Hair Restoration	249	43	17.27%
Funeral Services	128	16	12.5%
Drug Rehab	579	42	7.25%
Realtors	237	12	5.06%
Dentists	156	7	4.49%
Home Security	321	13	4.05%
Criminal Lawyers	531	19	3.58%
Tree Service	197	7	3.55%
Personal Injury Lawyers	416	10	2.40%
HVAC	1082	25	2.31%
Bankruptcy Lawyers	199	4	2.01%
Junk Cars	767	15	1.96%
Private Investigators	275	5	1.82%
Insurance	197	3	1.52%
Locksmiths	114	1	0.88%
Handyman	259	2	0.77%
Garage Door Repair	676	1	0.15%

 

Often we found with keyword stuffing businesses, it would take several attempts to get Google to fix the issue

What patterns are you seeing with spam on Google Maps? Share with us in the comments below.