10 Pack / Map Spam... Again

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spellham

spellham

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Oct 24, 2003
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Paragould
www.flowershopnetwork.com
State / Prov
Arkansas
This may have already been brought to your attention, or been seen in other areas, but I wanted to give everyone one in the community the opportunity to check their respective areas.

Please check some of the following search results and see if you are seeing the same thing that I am - seems that florist concierge and some others are showing up in the google local 10 pack results. These are quite strange as some of them don't have a physical address - only CSZ - and stiil show up in these searches as local results.

morrow, ga flower shop

anderson, indiana flower shop

paragould, ar flower shop

brookfield, ct flower shop

I called a couple of these numbers yesterday and Florist Concierge indeed answers the phone... and they don't have a local presence in all locations, unless I'm mistaken of course.

After a bit more research I found a few more related businesses as well, etc...

nationwidefloristdirectory.com/listings/search - may have been mentioned or brought up here before...

nationwide411.com and a few other related domains hosted on the same servers at aPlus in California.

I've started a thread about this in the Google Maps group, but was looking for more examples if anyone else had run across this, recently.
 
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I did find some overlap in some of the yellowpages.com and other such properties, and I understand that LBC gets data from a variety of sources... but this is the first I've seen them list these in the 10 box with no local address. Zip can provide them with proximity, but it surprises me that Google allows 10 box entries from ANY source with no local (verified and/or mappable) address.

Given the latest few hiccups with Google: marking the entire internet as serving Malware and the recent Gmail outage, it doesn't surprise me that this has happened. They are not infallible either.
 
Yes, I figured that they were a trusted provider (as are many others that promote paid vs real, local) I guess I just wasn't aware of how wide spread the issues were.

As I stated before, I entered a pretty detailed post in the Google Maps / Local Group with several examples for them to research this. I'll update on that if/when I get any feedback.
 
Not sure what it means, but none of the phony listings for California cities can be found in YellowPages.com, nor SuperPages.com but I've found all I tested in YellowBook.com.

As to http://nationwidefloristdirectory.com/, every phone number for every sincge shop currently shows as 800-650-5058. ???

Due to the massive amount of phone numbers (both local & toll-free) and the amount of listings showing up seemingly all at once through G Maps, I have a sneeking suspicion there's a phone provider/pay-per-call scheme afoot. None of the phone numbers has a history AFAICT.

Still no idea who's actually taking the orders as 'Florist Concierge'.

Like Mac, I'm gonna chime in with a blog post on this. It's very, very serious, and most damaging to local florists in small towns.
 
CHR said:
Not sure what it means, but none of the phony listings for California cities can be found in YellowPages.com, nor SuperPages.com but I've found all I tested in YellowBook.com.

As to http://nationwidefloristdirectory.com/, every phone number for every sincge shop currently shows as 800-650-5058. ???

Due to the massive amount of phone numbers (both local & toll-free) and the amount of listings showing up seemingly all at once through G Maps, I have a sneeking suspicion there's a phone provider/pay-per-call scheme afoot. None of the phone numbers has a history AFAICT.

Still no idea who's actually taking the orders as 'Florist Concierge'.

Like Mac, I'm gonna chime in with a blog post on this. It's very, very serious, and most damaging to local florists in small towns.
Click to expand...

Cathy did you try calling 800-650-5058? All I get is the Peanuts theme song. However the number 888.356.7241 is working.

This number is listed in "about us" at Florist Concierge's website: http://www.floristconcierge.com/

floristconcierge.jpg
 
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Dude, you could be a detective! :>

I Googled the number and got zilch so I never dialed it. Those jerks have all 36,266 florist phone numbers listed as their own.

The FloristConcierge is definitely a TF affiliate. The About Us pages says
There is no sales tax applied to orders delivered within the United States.
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Oregon? Nevada? or ????
Spellham's right, according to whois.sc, even though the domain ownership is masked, floristconcierge.com shares a server with

  1. Floristconcierge.com
  2. Geuce.com (mirror of nationwide411.com)
  3. Nationwide411.com and 2 others.
There's also
NationWideFloristDirectory.com All Rights Reserved. Powered By NationWide411.com Nationwide411.com.
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Someone from the company apperently tried to become a member here last year.

An old copy of the Nationwide411.com site lists an Orlando FL address but G Maps says it does not exist.

IMO TF has some serious explaining to do about this affiliate. Massive spam, far worse than the hijacks from last fall.

Excellent catch on that info, Darrell!
 
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FYI, this is what he said when he requested FC membership:
Hello All,

Just wanted to introduce our service which seems to be greatly needed in your industry. Order gathering plagues many industries but affects nobody more than florists. Hope we can help. Check out Nationwide411.com for more information. Call or drop me an email anytime if you care to discuss how I can help your business stamp out the weeds for good.

Warm Regards,
Joe Murphy
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I really thought it was weird when I read
The Nationwide 411 Pay Per Phone Call platform will help grow your business by driving phone sales leads directly to your telephone, sales reps or call center, whether or not you have a website. Our anti-order gathering business model is a proven way to virtually eliminate the effectiveness of order gatherers and their tactics. Your business will attract and retain more customers. As a Pay Per Phone Call advertiser, more interested and motivated buyers will be much more able to contact your company.
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on the FAQ page from the Nationwide411.com site. Now it makes sense.

It's all our fault! If we'd have just let him into FC and bought those phony phone numbers and local names, he wouldn't be forced to become a dOG. :cool:
 
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I posted in the RF Blog in hopes some of the higher-ups in G Maps read it.

According to Mike Bluementhal, G Maps uses an algo to moniter discussions about problems and spam in Maps. In order to get good/better help, you have to raise enough ruckus to hit their radar. It's basically a squeaky wheel thing.

Here's the post. Hope folks go over there to read it. I'll just quote the last two paragraphs here.

We local business owners are hoping Google Maps wins the battle since many of us have given up on the IYPs (and taken our ad dollars elsewhere in the process) for the very reasons discussed above.

Here’s also hoping Teleflora takes a long, hard look at the business practices of their affiliate reseller order gatherer. This kind of duping of consumers by a phony local florist is on par – actually worse than - the nasty talking boxed flowers in Teleflora’s Super Bowl Ad.
Click to expand...
 
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