A woman wakes up in pain in the middle of the night. Her husband searches Google for an urgent-care center. They drive 10 miles… and it’s not there. Here’s how you can spot fake and misleading local listings.
Misleading information in Google local search can lead you astray. Photo: Emil Lendof/The Wall Street Journal By Katherine Bindley June 22, 2019 5:30 am ET Caroline Ige of Silver Spring, Md., woke up recently in the middle of the night with sharp pain in her lower abdomen.
“To have to drive 10 miles and to find out that this facility, so called urgent care, didn’t exist was very scary. That could be life threatening for some people,” she says. Tom Waddington works with local businesses as a search consultant and flags fake or misleading listings to Google on a volunteer basis as one of its product experts. He says he frequently comes across listings for urgent-care centers that don’t have a physical location.
“It’s one thing to rely on the fake listing to get your tires changed,” says Gyi Tsakalakis, who runs a search marketing firm for attorneys in Chicago. “It’s another thing when you go online to do a search and you think you’re talking to a lawyer and you’re talking a lead generator.” There are ways for you to spot a fake. No one method is foolproof, so instead you’re looking for a combination of these signals that something is off:
If you really want to sleuth out the company, you can look for records about it on your secretary of state’s website. Look for a link for the state’s business directory or search, then type in the business name to see if it’s listed. Mr. Fisher warns however that some businesses aren’t required to register.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
How to Get Free Coffee Today to Power Through the Longest Day of the YearIn honor of the summer solstice (a.k.a. the longest day of the year), Dunkin’ will be giving away the new “Shot in the Dark” espresso beverages nationwide. And apparently it will be as easy as talking to your Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant device. Just say, “send me a sample of Dunkin’ Shot in the Dark,” and you should be good to go.
Read more »
Business services like Zoom and Slack make for better listingsIn technology, as in life, history doesn’t repeat itself. But it does rhyme
Read more »
Iran foreign minister tweets map with detailed coordinates of droneIranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted a map on Saturday with det...
Read more »