Report: #1294075

Complaint Review: 411 Locals or 411Locals.com - Nationwide

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Submitted: Wed, March 16, 2016
Updated: Wed, March 16, 2016
Reported By: Robert — Las Vegas Utah U.S.A.

Author Confirmed

Why?

411 Locals or 411Locals.com Nationwide USA

Phone: 866-391-0622
Web: www.411locals.com
Category: SEO - Reputation Management

411 Locals or 411Locals.com 411Locals 411Locals.com Caught Trying to Blackmail Companies Around the USA as "Official Google Partner" Las Vegas Nationwide

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411Locals.com Caught Trying to Blackmail Companies Around the USA as "Official Google Partner"

Las Vegas, Nevada USA

DISCLOSURE:

1. I was working as a VIP Executive in the Las Vegas Office . This is an international fraud ring.

2. All of the information is first hand

3. We setup a website., along with using Ed's Site to document the fraud for America. www.411LocalsFacts.com

THIS MEANS CURTAINS FOR 411LOCALS.COM

http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-penalty-awaiting-removal.html

This is the ARTICLE LINK FROM THE NATIONAL MEDIA:

http://www.stateofdigital.com/agency-caught-trying-to-blackmail-companies-in-places/
(Keep Reading America!)

-We are NOT TRYING TO SHUT 411Locals.com Down.. These are the real facts for all clients of 411Locals The Link to this article written by the national media at SASCON is right above.

At SASCON last week we talked about Negative SEO and the tactics that can disrupt competitors, we carried on that discussion on our radioshow Tuesday. Some of them were funny, some were nasty and others seemed harmless. There are cases however that you are not talking about ‘negative SEO’ anymore, but now a case has come to light which touches closer on extortion than on Negative SEO.

Linda Buquet, a blogger about local and Google Places, yesterday found about a hundred results in Google Places with in the title “Awaiting Removal”. At first it seemed as if they were getting penalized by Google, it turned out to be a company trying to fraud unknowing business in Places.

Buquet found the listing and assumed it was Google who had put the “Awaiting Removal” in there (see example here), maybe as a warning. But it seems highly unlikely that Google would do this public. She checked some of the listings but at first saw nothing wrong with them. In fact, they were all pretty nicely optimized. And they most of them were gathered in the center of the US. She then already figured: “So one thought I had is that these could all be listings from one big agency?”

Buquet didn’t have more time to dive into it so her readers did, and they found some interesting conclusions. The thread (read the comments!) then reads on like a real detective story. It wasn’t Google, it was a company trying to con other companies.

Commenter Kevin Phelps figured it was “a marketing firm that is getting rid of these listings for some unknown reason.”

Commenter “Stever” eventually found the fraud. He found that a company “411 Locals” was the owner of several of the claimed domains. They apparently are threatening companies into removing the places and “offer the .info websites as an option, probably an upsell.“

Phelps then actually called some of the agencies:

“I’ve called a few of these people and they’re all telling me that they signed up with a company and the company is threatening to remove the page for non-payment. Some people report the company billing them numerous times though.”

So what has happened here is that unclaimed listings had been claimed by one single company, “411 locals” who then contacted the companies which should have claimed them, offered to handle it for them, sends them invoices and then threatened to delete them. Which means they could not be recovered that easily.

This is not negative SEO anymore, but pure fraud, blackmail.

According to Buquet Google says they are closing down “a lot of shady local SEO players”, hopefully these will be one of them, also because it is these kind of companies that give the industry a bad name. Google also announced recently it will start to charge for Places, which on the one hand seems a bad thing, but as David Mihm said in our radioshow two weeks ago where we discussed this topic in depth, it will also force Google to actually give some customer support.

The big lesson which can be learned here however is that you need to claim your listings as soon as you can.

Just got a cold call from a company that states they are Google partners and they are certified to do SEO and Local and help small to medium sized companies get ranked on page one of Google. Then the guy directs me to their website where, yes, they are Google Partners and yes, they are A+ members of the BBB. Of course they have had 22 complaints that have been resolved or that the BBB felt they offered a reasonable settlement and the people refused unreasonably.

I am stunned that Google did not realize people were going to do this type of thing and that they were opening a Pandora's box. You could hear that it was a large call center making the call and when I challenged the guy to give me the names of their SEO experts, he kept saying, "They don't take phone calls!" Curious if any of you have reported companies like this and if you felt it changed anything? I reported them to the BBB and to Google, but doubt that anything will happen to their "partner" status. Thoughts?

Edit: As I researched I found that these guys do a lot of this. http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/02/06/411-locals-back-in-the-news/ This really makes it worse that the Google Partners program can be so abused. I am surprised Google did not realize this type thing would happen.

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This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 03/16/2016 11:56 AM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/411-locals-or-411localscom/nationwide/411-locals-or-411localscom-411locals-411localscom-caught-trying-to-blackmail-companies-1294075. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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