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're even showing my website url.<p>If you search for the X business name on official channels, it doesn't exists obviously. I'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've contacted Google directly, the answer was along the lines of the following:<p>> We don'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'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'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'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't seems a business to trust. I've also explicitly talked about this, but Google didn't care.<p>Please HN. Tell me what to do.
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.<p>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.<p>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).
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.
Could you please share the exact answer you got from Google support?<p>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."<p>You could suggest an edit that removes your website from that place:
<a href="https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7084895" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7084895</a><p>Or even better, report that the place doesn't exist in the first place.
<a href="https://support.google.com/maps/answer/3094088?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/maps/answer/3094088?co=GENIE.Plat...</a>
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.
You can probably just check the referrer header and display a giant nag message to people coming from that business listing.<p>"This website is not associated with company X which have been misrepresenting themselves by linking to my site from their maps listing."
I'm assuming that you already tried contacting the listing owner and they haven't been cooperative.<p>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.<p>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.
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?
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.)
"They're even showing my website url."<p>...<p>"Use the referral header or url tracking parameters to redirect the URL to some ..."<p>...<p>I just searched this comment thread for the string "goat" and got nothing.<p>Come on! Where is the fun ?! Where did it go ?!
Google's behavior is that of a monopolist. Now that there is no competitive pressures, they simply ignore legitimate requests to save money.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>What jurisdiction are you in?
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.<p>The only way to deal with this is to get the listing removed. Use The google my business redressal form to do that.
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.<p>Searching on Google for your website name, including the TLD, does not yield the business result, only searching for the equivalent of "itlab".<p>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.
Based on your HN profile, I assume the blog you mean is <a href="https://blog.informaticalab.com/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.informaticalab.com/</a>. 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.<p>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?
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.
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?<p>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.
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.
Did you get a closure on this ? You can also use this form to file a request. <a href="https://support.google.com/business/gethelp" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/business/gethelp</a>
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.<p>other than that... hire a lawyer and send them a cease and desist
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.<p>It would be a terrible thing to do (you'd never get your reputation back), but it would be interesting to see what happened.