
Ask HN: Google won't remove my site URL from random business using it on Maps - federicoponzi
Hello HN,
I have a personal CS blog named X. When you search for X on google, on the right side, it will show a business located somewhere, with that very same name X. This business is for helping people for computer problems. They&#x27;re even showing my website url.<p>If you search for the X business name on official channels, it doesn&#x27;t exists obviously. I&#x27;ve tried to have at least my website removed from the listing, but fun fact my removal request is handled by the listing owner itself. I&#x27;ve contacted Google directly, the answer was along the lines of the following:<p>&gt; We don&#x27;t care if the business is using your website name and your url, we are just showing information. If you want to get the website removed please contact the owner of that listing.<p>What makes me angry is that I legally hold the mark name in europe. It&#x27;s possible to check my name on the whois of that website. And there is no way for me to get that sh*t removed.
What&#x27;s also incredible, is that people will need to do all the verification crap for singing on adsense, but everyone can put every website in the listing with no verification and no one can&#x27;t do anything about that.<p>What is even worst is that business will be associated with myself, and my users might call that business thinking to be speaking with me. And a business showing false information doesn&#x27;t seems a business to trust. I&#x27;ve also explicitly talked about this, but Google didn&#x27;t care.<p>Please HN. Tell me what to do.
======
throwaway_jobs
It sounds like someone is impersonating you on Google’s services, you put
Google on notice you are being impersonated (your Mark infringed) and as a
result you are suffering (legal) damages and google’s official response
acknowledges this and simultaneously says they have no duty to prohibit
infringement of your mark on their services and they have no duty to provide
accurate information to their end users/the public.

In other words in the old phone book days, imagine if you were to list your
business in the phone book but next to your business was a competitors phone
number so they get all your business...you put the phone book on notice and
they just say sorry we have no duty to provide accurate information.

Many have said get a lawyer to send a letter...that’s a waste of time while
you will continue to be damaged. Get a lawyer to file a small claims case for
damages and injunction. A few benefits: 1) you could probably get a lawyer to
do it on contingency (no out of pocket expenses for you, they would get a % of
damages if and only if they win); 2) small claims cases can often fly under
the radar of big companies and so maybe as soon as 20 days after filing you
get a default judgment; 3) if the do respond a small claims case means 1 thing
to them, their attorney’s fees will exceed your damages so they will probably
look into it and resolve it; 4) if they want to fight it (which would be
stupid if your claims are legit) small claims are extremely expedited,
typically there is no formal discovery and it’s just a pretrial (where the
parties will be encouraged to settle) and then a trial (possibly a mandatory
mediation at pretrial or at the court on the day of the trial).

~~~
newacct583
> It sounds like [...]

It does indeed. Except the actual details are scant to nonexistant, and as
others are pointing out the paraphrased "response" from Google just doesn't
sound right. Google gets IP violation reports like this _all the time_.
Clearly they have some kind of appropriate canned response that notes why they
feel they aren't liable and not the "We're totally guilty!" phrasing we read
above.

My guess is this is more complicated than the OP is letting on.

~~~
Judgmentality
In my experience, outside of engineering, most people at Google are
surprisingly incompetent at their jobs. I absolutely would not assume Google
knows what they're doing - in fact, at this point, I tend to assume Google has
no idea what they're doing.

This is based on interacting with a couple dozen people though, so it is a
small sample size.

~~~
Silhouette
From direct personal experience, they do not reliably have processes in place
to deal with their legal obligations. We had YouTube DMCA issues for a while,
and getting past their standard forms to deal with persistent offenders was
difficult to the point where I would have expected to win a lawsuit, though as
it turned out we found a way to go after the uploader directly and that was a
quicker way to solve that particular problem.

------
cyberpanther
Here's a hack. Use the referral header or url tracking parameters to redirect
the URL to some place seedy or maybe their competitor. I'm sure they'll change
it quick after that.

~~~
Aspos
> redirect the URL to some place seedy

That business can potentially claim damages.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
They can claim them but I very much doubt they'd win in court - "we're
infringing someone's Trademark and impersonating them on Google and they
redirected traffic on their own website and that redirection is harming our
ability to fraudulently profit from their trademark" ... kinda like suing
someone you murdered because they made your knife messy.

~~~
dylan604
The OP would still suffer expenses defending the messy knife claim in court.
If the bad actor has deeper pockets, this would be just one more way for the
bad guy to continue being a bad actor

------
halflings
Could you please share the exact answer you got from Google support?

You can definitely report false information on a listing, so I don't
understand how they'd tell you "We don't care if the business is using your
website name."

You could suggest an edit that removes your website from that place:
[https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7084895](https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7084895)

Or even better, report that the place doesn't exist in the first place.
[https://support.google.com/maps/answer/3094088?co=GENIE.Plat...](https://support.google.com/maps/answer/3094088?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en)

~~~
federicoponzi
I cannot update my post anymore, but I already wrote it in another reply. The
edit suggestions goes directly to the business owner. They can accept / deny
the update request. I've also asked friends and colleagues to ask for the same
edit and to report the listing as non existent but nothing happened.

The answer from the Google support I'm referring to in my post, is from a
legal request I've sent to them.

This is the full response in Italian (this is the reason why I didn't attach
it to the post):

    
    
        Gentile Sig.
    
        La ringraziamo per il suo messaggio.
    
        Le facciamo presente che Google è un fornitore di informazioni, non un mediatore. Forniamo informazioni su luoghi, attività commerciali e altre informazioni relative ad una particolare parola di ricerca di ricerca, ma non rivendichiamo alcun diritto sulle etichette associate a tali contenuti. Per ulteriori informazioni, la invitiamo a consultare i nostri Termini di servizio all'indirizzo https://www.google.com/policies/terms/. Per questioni riguardanti il marchio, la preghiamo di rivolgersi direttamente al proprietario della scheda o del luogo in questione. Se il proprietario dei contenuti in questione decide di modificare eventuali informazioni in seguito alla tua richiesta, tale modifica si rifletterà nella scheda la prossima volta che i robot di Google eseguono la scansione del relativo materiale di origine.
    
        Se ritiene che informazioni personali come il suo numero di telefono vengano visualizzate nei risultati di ricerca relativi a un'attività o a una località, può segnalare il problema tramite Google Maps seguendo le istruzioni riportate in questa pagina: https://support.google.com/business/answer/6163683
    
        Cordiali saluti,
        Il team di Google
    
    

Please notice that Sig. doesn't include my name in the email I've received.

This is google translate:

    
    
        We would like to point out that Google is an information provider, not a broker. We provide information about places, businesses, and other information related to a particular search word, but we do not claim any rights on the labels associated with that content. For further information, please consult our Terms of Service at https://www.google.com/policies/terms/. For trademark issues, please contact the owner of the listing or location directly. If the owner of the content in question decides to change any information following your request, this change will be reflected in the tab the next time Google's robots scan its source material.
    
        If you believe that personal information such as your phone number appears in search results for an activity or location, you can report the problem via Google Maps by following the instructions on this page:

~~~
elliekelly
Since the business listing is fake and your website/blog is real can you
contact Google and claim that _you_ are the actual owner of the business and
this person has fraudulently claimed it?

~~~
ratww
Since he owns the trademark and (according to his other answers) the business
doesn't seem to be legitimate, or even located in the address, that's what I
would do as well.

~~~
federicoponzi
I don't think this is the "correct" path. Google should be more open to
requests, and try to be more understanding on users' requests.

Anyway, as I wrote in another comment the person behind this is either a
normal person using his home address or someone working for another company
located at that address.

This means that Google has assigned the ownership to him already. I couldn't
find any way for requesting the ownership to the entry, but only a "ask the
owner access to this entry" page.

Also, a business might exists in that address, but it's certainly _not_ called
like my blog.

~~~
Avamander
> I couldn't find any way for requesting the ownership to the entry, but only
> a "ask the owner access to this entry" page

Pretty sure that's the link your looking for if you want owner's access to the
entry.

It probably is your fastest and best path forward.

~~~
federicoponzi
Sorry, I really meant to write "ask the current owner to get access to this
entry". Meaning that I would need to ask the current owner to allow me to
access the entry.

------
yodon
It sounds like you are the trademark holder and know the address of the
offending business in question. Any lawyer should be able to compose a
suitable nastygram to send to that business quickly and cheaply.

~~~
federicoponzi
I am the holder of the trademark, but I'm not sure it will be that easy
unfortunately. The issue is that according to my research, there are no tech
business located at that address. So maybe it's a private person or someone
working in other businessess at that address. Also, since I have a feeling
that there is a scammer behind this, I'm not sure if a robber will care about
this kind of threaten. Of course it might be worth a shot, but I think it's
incredible that google is allowing these kind of things to happen leaving
users powerless. And I'm also kind of lucky because I hold the trademark
(something valued zero at google, but it might help me getting out of this)
but think about people not even knowing their website is associated to other
businessess.

~~~
bloak
You're probably right. They would only be infringing your trademark if they
were doing business in the same category of goods and services. What they're
doing sounds much more like some kind of defamation than any kind of trademark
infringement. But if they're criminals they probably don't care much about the
possibility of a civil action.

Google Maps are rubbish. In my experience they don't even show streets in the
right place. When you're ordering something you can always write in the
"delivery instructions" something like: "Don't use Google; try
openstreetmap.org instead." Then, if they turn up an hour late somewhat
grumpy: "I did warn you!"

~~~
viraptor
> In my experience they don't even show streets in the right place.

The map editing link / tools have been made much more prominent and accessible
over the last year or two. I've moved done streets in my town and the
experience was fairly painless.

~~~
nerdponx
Better to spend that time contributing to OSM, no?

~~~
viraptor
I'm doing both. It's not an exclusive choice.

------
randombytes6869
You can probably just check the referrer header and display a giant nag
message to people coming from that business listing.

"This website is not associated with company X which have been misrepresenting
themselves by linking to my site from their maps listing."

~~~
federicoponzi
Thanks for the suggestion but:

1\. I would need to do that for every referral from google, something which I
would avoid.

2\. Users might not click on the link and still think we're related.

Also, the very same listing is showing facebook and twitter links on which I
cannot do much about.

~~~
nullc
You could also treat probes from google's address space differently, perhaps
if you return 404s they'll automatically delist it.

~~~
rhizome
It's bad luck to return something different to GoogleBot than what regular
people see.

~~~
lovemenot
Fascinating use of language. Superstition implies belief in fate / deity.

It doesn't surprise to see this written now, even if only ironically. "The
algorithm cannot be understood by anyone" \- which is a fact. So we summon the
fates to describe its expected behaviour.

If this comment seems personal, that wasn't intended. I really don't know how
people in SEO tend to communicate. But I just heard this kind of language for
the first time. So it's just a sign of the times.

More like this to come. Surely.

~~~
Kye
Showing different content to Google and visitors is genuinely against Google's
webmaster guidelines. It will get you delisted. It's known as cloaking.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking)

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en)

~~~
lovemenot
>> It's bad luck to return something different to GoogleBot than what regular
people see.

It's [against policy] to return something different to GoogleBot than what
regular people see.

The facts are on your side, but GP's language choice remains interesting. Not
right now perhaps, but down the road?

~~~
Kye
I can't tell if this is a bit where you play the oblivious pedant, or if you
can't tell they were referring to this policy. Either way, I don't think they
were suggesting some cosmic influence.

------
galvin
You might be able to claim the business. If they are using your info you
should be able to verify ownership and take over the listing.

~~~
vageli
> You might be able to claim the business. If they are using your info you
> should be able to verify ownership and take over the listing.

Verification of ownership is done via snail mail to the business address.

~~~
herman_toothrot
When I claimed a business it let me pick between that or an email to any email
box on the domain for the site in question.

But I'll defer on that not being an option all the time since it's not my area
of expertise.

------
fredophile
I'm assuming that you already tried contacting the listing owner and they
haven't been cooperative.

The easiest thing to do would be to make them want to remove your website. At
the top of your main page put a little note saying something like "If you're
searching for <foo business> in <location> we're not them. Please click here."
Then, since they don't have a website you can send users to a page that
explains the situation, suggests that they may want to do business with a more
reputable company, and provide links and phone numbers to their local
competitors.

Alternatively, if you don't care about your websites reputation, you could
just fill it with porn, popups, or other content that users won't expect or
want from a business.

~~~
fiatjaf
Clever, but unlikely to work. The business owner probably won't ever check or
know about these things.

~~~
fredophile
I think you underestimate people's desire to complain about things. If the
website pops up a dozen new windows full of porn that autoplays with audio I
guarantee someone will call the business to let them know.

------
onion2k
As a Google search user (just like everyone else) stories like this make me
wonder about the accuracy of all the data Google displays. Loads of people
claim Google search is terrible. Is Google actually still good at
understanding the information on the web these days, or are they just riding
the reputation they build a decade ago?

~~~
jschwartzi
I stopped using Google 2 or 3 years ago because the search quality is really
bad and it “helpfully” corrected many search terms to be not what I was
searching for at all. It’s not really a good search engine anymore.

~~~
ljm
Sadly even DDG does this for me now. The other day I searched for 'gradle get
environment variable'. DDG 'helpfully' corrected it, saying "showing results
for gradle _set_ environment variable", with a smaller text link below
essentially saying "search what I _actually_ asked for".

It took me a while to spot that while wondering why most of the results are
not relevant. Internet search just doesn't feel very good in general these
days.

I mean, that's not really an appropriate place to be second guessed by a
computer.

~~~
wpietri
Unfortunately, we software developers are unusually precise with language. I'm
sure that Google (and now DDG) get better results on average. But yes, I spend
an awful lot of times strategically adding quote marks to Google searches that
at one point would have just worked.

~~~
cgriswald
I think that’s the core of the problem. With strong googlefu you used to be
able to find what you wanted if it existed. Google have made search far
easier; for imprecise searches the top few hits are probably going to be what
I want. But if I need something precise, Google can’t help me anymore, no
matter what arcane set of search terms, symbols, and flags I use.

I also wish Google would detect when one page and another page are just the
same content with different wrappers. You see this a lot with multiple sites
that re post mailing list conversations. Google will not only return all the
different sites, but will return replies, etc. as if they are unique results.
So your entire first page can be a single conversation that just happens to be
plastered all over the internet.

~~~
pessimizer
This began the day google decided that quotes were no longer an instruction to
ignore pages without the exact sequence of characters that were between those
quotes, but instead a tag indicating that the part of the search in quotes
couldn't be silently discarded as if you hadn't typed it.

I've always suspected that this was actually a way to reduce their database
size and simplify calculations (i.e. reduce costs and response time) rather
than a way to make non-expert searches more forgiving. Non-experts weren't
using quotes, and when they were, they meant them to be literal.

> I also wish Google would detect when one page and another page are just the
> same content with different wrappers.

I've never quite understood this. I consider it an abdication from even the
attempt to be a useful, complete search engine, and the indication of a change
in company direction.

Incidentally, DDG (my SE of choice) isn't much better at this stuff. Lots of
repetitive listings of the same copy as top listings, and I think it stems
quoted stuff. I'm forgiving because I think most of its results are derived
from the results of larger indexes that adopted google's style.

------
gniv
Have you tried marking the listing as "Spam, fake, or offensive"? (Under the
"Mark as close or remove" menu). Those are treated specially, they don't go to
the owner. Assuming of course that you know for a fact that the listing does
not exist. (You might want somebody else to do it if your recent edits were
rejected.)

~~~
federicoponzi
As I said elsewhere, yes I did. I've asked colleagues and friends to report it
as spam but it didn't help apparently.

~~~
gniv
That's surprising. The only other suggestion I have is to create a new listing
on Maps with your website, a service-area listing where you don't have to
provide a public address, but you still need to give Google some contact info
in order to verify it. And then hope that -- over time -- Google ranks yours
first when searching for that name.

~~~
federicoponzi
Is it, though? I assume they tried to reach out to him, and he just said "no
I'm real and not spam thanks bye".

WRT your second suggestion, I disregard that option because:

1\. Even though I own the trademark, I'm not selling anything. I wanted to own
the trademark to avoid these kind of situation from happening.

2\. IMO It's just not fair that I have to challange a scammer in this race,
since he doesn't even have the right to be there in the first place. Google
should just fix their broken process.

~~~
otoburb
>> _1\. Even though I own the trademark, I 'm not selling anything. I wanted
to own the trademark to avoid these kind of situation from happening._

I'm not a lawyer, but my layperson's understanding of trademarks is that
filing and owning it also bears the responsibility of defending it. When
trademark challenges are left unchallenged, the trademark you own becomes more
likely to be further impinged on in the future (i.e. you must show a history
of maintaining and challenging other claims). This is the flipside of David
vs. Goliath horror stories where large companies go after small business
owners or individuals -- they're defending their trademark.

In this case, you might be able to argue deliberate trademark tarnishment[1]
as a form of trademark dilution[2]; not sure if it will help but worth
thinking about legal options now if this bothers you this much.

[1]
[https://www.inta.org/TrademarkBasics/FactSheets/Pages/Tradem...](https://www.inta.org/TrademarkBasics/FactSheets/Pages/Trademark-
Dilution-\(Intended-for-a-non-legal-audience\).aspx)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_dilution#Blurring_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_dilution#Blurring_and_tarnishment)

------
gear54rus
Post 'illegal' content on your website and send them a DMCA haha. Fight
bullshit with more bullshit.

------
dcminter
Talk to a lawyer. Probably they will write a nasty letter to the appropriate
party. Nasty letters from lawyers tend to get respected.

~~~
netsharc
I have the same thought, send them a physical letter. Since they're on Google
Maps OP already has their postal address!

------
exabrial
If Google wonders why antitrust action is inevitable, The complete lack of
customer service for free services is going to cause it.

------
rsync
"They're even showing my website url."

...

"Use the referral header or url tracking parameters to redirect the URL to
some ..."

...

I just searched this comment thread for the string "goat" and got nothing.

Come on! Where is the fun ?! Where did it go ?!

------
jennyyang
Google's behavior is that of a monopolist. Now that there is no competitive
pressures, they simply ignore legitimate requests to save money.

Google needs to be broken up and competition introduced again in this space.
If Google Maps or Google Search didn't rely on the revenues from Google Ads,
they would take things like this more seriously because they would need the
revenues.

This happens tens of thousands of times per day, and the fact that they can
ignore this is because they have a monopoly and they are abusing their
monopoly position.

~~~
ViViDboarder
Or if Google Maps results weren’t presented as facts in Search over organic
results containing first party information, this would not happen and other
companies would have a chance to get more viewers and ad revenue themselves.

------
floatingatoll
In the United States, you can sue John Doe (the anonymous party who created
the listing) for identity fraud and trademark abuse, and then file a discovery
motion compelling Google to divulge their identity so that they can be
identified and prosecuted by the court, with your lawyer optionally noting to
the court that Google removing the domain from the other entity as you
originally requested (and paying your court costs and lawyer fees as damages,
as they were notified of the fraud and refused to act) would be an acceptable
settlement.

In the United Kingdom, you can sue Google for libel, as their
misrepresentation of someone else as you harms you, and if you prove malice
('reckless disregard for the truth', which Google is clearly demonstrating)
you can not only compel Google to remove the libelous material but also win
damages from Google for their flagrant disregard for the truth.

What jurisdiction are you in?

------
bhartzer
While redirecting or displaying something based on the referrer is a cool
concept, it won’t work. Referring traffic from google maps shows up as direct
traffic unless yiu specifically add tracking code, which the OP can’t do.

The only way to deal with this is to get the listing removed. Use The google
my business redressal form to do that.

------
lultimouomo
I understand your frustration, but I don't think you're giving a complete
picture. I did a quick 5 minute search on the internet to figure out what the
website in question was, and it's the Italian equivalent of itlab.com (as in
IT Lab), which is a bit generic to say the least. The business in question
appears to be an actual business, but with a somewhat different name, and
which is, actually, what could reasonably called and IT lab, as in a computer
repair / network installer / small time website developer shop.

Searching on Google for your website name, including the TLD, does not yield
the business result, only searching for the equivalent of "itlab".

All in all it seems to me like Google should remove the business suggestion
for that search, but I don't think it's as clear-cut as you put it.

~~~
kedean
I think the OP intentionally didn't identify their website for privacy
reasons. Don't you feel like this comment is kind of doxxing them?

~~~
lultimouomo
He link to his personal website in his HN profile, and in his personal website
he prominently links to the blog we're talking about. I thought about it and
it really didn't feel like doxxing.

------
advisedwang
Based on your HN profile, I assume the blog you mean is
[https://blog.informaticalab.com/](https://blog.informaticalab.com/). When I
search for "informaticalab" on Google (US) I do indeed see a business result,
but it doesn't have a URL on it (any more). The Facebook and Twitter links
seem to be legit, although obviously the address and telephone may be dubious.

The business has reviews that suggests there is actually some IT consultation
or support business there, is it possible they are actually operating under
your name? Have you tried calling the number associated?

~~~
felixarba
I don't know if it was a good idea showing the link in the comments, since OP
clearly didn't want their business mentioned.

I understand anyone could've done what you did, but that means that they would
have to care enough to actually go looking through OP's profile and them
finding out the name would be deliberate and not just plainly advertised for
anyone.

~~~
ISL
It makes it really hard to understand the issue without seeing it firsthand.
For the community to dig into the issue effectively, pretty much need to see
it in order to suggest solutions.

I reached the same conclusion as @advisedwang by following OP's profile
information.

------
jccooper
Bad publicity on a major news site seems to be a major Google support channel.
So you're halfway there; had you included names in this post you'd have a
chance at that avenue.

------
thomaslord
I'm not sure if this would help, but have you considered trying to add Local
Business metadata to the site that Google can pick up?

It's possible that it'd overwrite the other business entry, or you might be
able to report the business as a duplicate. At the very least, you might end
up with both showing up stacked instead of just the one so you might reduce
how many people interact with the fraudulent listing.

------
blahpro
Please consider adding instructions for reproducing the issue to this thread.
E.g. what's the name of the business that's using your URL, and what's your
URL? Without such instructions it's much harder for others on HN, or from
Google, to help.

------
ingend88
Did you get a closure on this ? You can also use this form to file a request.
[https://support.google.com/business/gethelp](https://support.google.com/business/gethelp)

------
thrownaway954
what is the name of the listing? i am a google guide and by some mysterious
google power, whenever changes i make get approved instantly so i can try to
mark them as fake or remove the information you want.

other than that... hire a lawyer and send them a cease and desist

------
jrockway
I'm not saying you should do this, but I bet if you put malware on your site
it would be gone from Google overnight.

It would be a terrible thing to do (you'd never get your reputation back), but
it would be interesting to see what happened.

~~~
atoav
If only there would be a way to serve a differnt sites to users coming from
maps.google.com....

------
kull
I am trying to change our business location on google maps for the last 6
months.

------
6510
Did you contact the listing owner? Did they reject your changes?

------
sds357
Did you recently register the domain?

------
sebastien_b
[removed]

~~~
dang
It's not ok to post like this to HN. No doubt your intentions are good but we
don't want HN to be used to harass people, and definitely not to incite an
online mob, which in the limit case is what this point to.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
sebastien_b
Fair enough (I’d delete it but cannot now)

------
elcomet
But did you try to contact the owner of the listing ? They might remove it.

~~~
Operyl
Given the poster learned that requests are forwarded to the listing owner, it
sounds like they (the other business) don’t intend to fix it.

~~~
federicoponzi
^ Exactly this.

I've also asked friends and colleagues to request the same removal and report
that listing, but nothing happened.

~~~
cirno
Call me cynical (which is fair), but I would be very pleasantly surprised if
Google's "report inappropriate results" links were actually logged and
analyzed by an actual human instead of routed to /dev/null, because that seems
like a whole lot of work for a company famous for not having reachable human
support.

The message feels more like one to placate users into believing their concerns
will be addressed, and hoping said users won't follow up on it to see if any
action has been taken. I do hope I'm wrong.

~~~
federicoponzi
This is one of the things that got myself very mad at Google. They didn't even
bother to put my name / surname in the response email they sent. The follow up
response to my response, was a subset of the first response, and still without
my name after "Sig. ".

In my last email with no response (4 days ago) I've asked to be called on the
phone. They probably have a special place in /dev/null for emails sent by my
address.

