ivan_collins's comments

I'm sure they could get their domains back through court. But just updating their Google Places Profile is a lot easier. Most are just clueless.

whoops, I mean to post that comment to the papaver comment:/. Nice to spot this link building scheme in the background. This could aggregate some significant link weight over time if they have some more complex than Google normally catches and penalizes with reciprocal linking.

I wrote this post. We claim their Google Places profiles in the same way the hijackers did and then submit a request to Google to update the URL back to their original URL. Here's a link: https://www.google.com/business/placesforbusiness/

I wrote this post originally and totally agree about the Flash sites and PDF menus being debatable for those types of websites. But these restaurants have good websites and these hijacker sites aren't more useful. The Eat Street sites have a map, order online button, and a menu...and it's not sexy. The Order Ahead App is pretty solid. But it was promoting downloading an app to order food at Bar Pintxo. But Bar Pinxto wasn't even an "available option" to order. It's driving traffic to download their app and not a bit of value to the restaurant. It's OK to build a website to promote your online ordering. It's hijacking the Google Places profile that is sketchy. These restaurants are upset when I explain what happened.

I'm the author of this blog post and just want to comment that it's very hard to rank a fresh site ahead of the restaurant's true website. The inbound links from Yelp, Trip Advisor, Urban Spoon, and Open Table give carry a lot of page rank and it's likely got more history behind it too. Although I bet Order Aheads App could be doing some cross linking schemes in the background to elevate their sites. But it's only by claiming their Google Places profile that they get to intercept the primary traffic. Look at what happened to Order Ahead site for Bar Pintxo after updating Google Places...it fell to 4th in the SERPs.

I don't doubt that these restaurants might have authorized these companies to do this by signing a contract that they didn't read fully or understand. It may have been completely legal, but it's still taking advantage of these restaurants' lack of internet savvy and awareness. I spoke to them and 4 out of 4 were not aware they had authorized anything and asked me to fix it immediately. Each case varies in severity, but all the motives behind each of these cases could have been done strategically and in a way that did not compromise the restaurant's website traffic. They could add online ordering to their website. Their profiles were hijacked for a side agenda of the company who made the site.