Earlier this week, Danny Sullivan reported on the hijacking of thousands of local hotel listings within Google+ Local. Those listings had been replaced by third-party hotel booking services. And while it’s unclear how long those third-party links were in place, several knowledgeable people have surmised it may have been at least a month, if not longer.
Without offering any substantive comments about the situation, Google appears to have cleaned up the problem and mostly, if not entirely, restored the proper links. There’s been no explanation forthcoming about how this might have happened from the company, though Google acknowledged the incident.
As a follow-up to the first article, I reached out to a number of local SEOs and people familiar with the intricacies of Google+ Local and related products. I asked them how this might have happened and whether they had any suggestions about how to guard against this type of hijacking in the future.
Below are a selection of the theories and responses I received via email. It’s important to note that these remarks and observations are speculation, based on second-hand knowledge of the incident.
Mike Blumenthal, Local U and GetFiveStars.com
Nyagoslav Zhekov, Director of Local Search at Whitespark
David Mihm, Director of Local Strategy at Moz.com
Steve King, Vice President of Product at SIM Partners
Feel free to add your theories and speculation or reactions to their observations in the comments below.
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