SE-Side Local Search Errors

Attempts to correct mislabeled SERPs for Google and Yahoo!

[mrjohncory]

I'm seeing problems with local search listings in the main serps in BOTH Yahoo! and Google.

Yesterday I noticed Yahoo! inserting local search hyperlinks for the wrong company into listings in their main serps.

Today I'm seeing Google inserting a listing for an Orthopedics facility into our Web Development company's listings in their main serps.

This means people are getting the wrong directions to our brick and mortar business and, in the Yahoo! situation, it looks like one company works with another company . . . and that's ALL KINDS of scary.

Anyone seen this before, have any suggestions for a "front door" approach to a resolution?

I'm going to go ahead and make a new local search listing for the Yahoo! situation because that site didn't have one.

But the Google situation, we already have a local search; it's just been "Awaiting next update" since November. Not sure what I can do there.

[Silvery]

Mention this on Matt Cutt's blog -- he's a Google engineer, and he's specifically invited people to mention search results errors which he'll report to the appropriate team for resolution.

[mrjohncory]

Thanks for the tip on Cutts but as usual, the fault is not Google's.

For the Google Local Search error, it seems that one of our clients created a website and pointed one domain to their site and the other to the general direction of their site on our server. They didn't look into the host mapping and Google has been crawling our site as this other domain name. I guess it's still sort of Google's shortcoming - I mean, if they would have published my pending Local Search listing by now maybe it would better-qualify to post in the SERPS than this other listing, I don't know. For now, we're killing access to the server for this rogue domain until we can work it out with the client. I hope that will cause Google to stop using matching the listing to our site.

As for the error in Yahoo, I still can't figure that one out. Problem is I'm not sure that giving that site a local listing would be a good idea.

[SEOPTI]

Mention it to Jen from Google Maps Group:

[groups.google.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

...it seems that one of our clients created a website and pointed one domain to their site and the other to the general direction of their site on our server. They didn't look into the host mapping and Google has been crawling our site as this other domain name. I guess it's still sort of Google's shortcoming....

johncory - Your description isn't completely clear, but, offhand, I say that you've got some server setup issues that need taking care of.