Jill:

I didn't specifically articulate this. Google does fix things. Sometimes they do it quickly. They tend to do it when the problem might become embarrasing: The situation I referenced with Danny Sullivan, and the Google Places record that refereenced the phone number to the town jail rather than the police department; Another instance that generated a quick fix was a couple of years ago when Bill Slawski found a map record that referenced the girl scouts for a search query for Miami gun shop. (I'd fix that one right away, too) ;) They can fix things quickly in many cases. Sometimes the issues are deeper and require a systemic change. They in fact have communicated in several of those cases. In most cases, though, they are simply mute. SMB's are urged to come into the forums for Google Places; they have problems; they generally go unanswered. Its an incredible general fail with regard to customer service.

Jill:Clearly there are misdirected questions.  That is not the issue.   Spend some time inside the Google Places Forum.  You'll find that questions go unanswered.  There are many powerful disturbing problems.  They don't get answered.  They don't get resolved.

I'm involved in an issue right now.  Some businesses are simply losing their visibility.  There is an existing algo problem.  Data is getting misdirected.  Its a mess.   There was google commentary on either 9/24 or 9/25.  There have been a myriad of comments since then.  The issues continue.   A google staffer commented today.   That is about 2 weeks without a peep.

  Here is my worst example:   A couple of years ago I assisted a business that had a plusbox issue.  The plusbox information was highlighted and it gave the wrong address for the business.   The business kept reporting that people were driving to the wrong address.  In every case wherein a potential customer complained the reason for the wrong address was always given as google.

After a couple of complaints a google employee said they would look at the problem and get back to the business shortly.  Isn't that great and a fine example of potential customer service?  Nine months later, and nobody from google ever responded to the business.  Hm...babies were conceived and born during that period.  I aged a lot.  Google never got back to the complaining business.

After nine months and a lot of research by non-google people on why this plusbox and many others were giving out wrong addresses...a couple of us began to write that we were about to reveal the inner workings of what was seeming to occur and why erroneous plusbox addresses were showing.  Bingo.  the problem got solved.   Google corrected the plusbox flaw, pretty much across the board.   Coincidence or not?   Can't say for sure. 

It does remind though of the time Danny Sullivan tried to contact his local police department and found that google places/maps record was providing the phone number of the town jail.After that outrageous example....that misinformation got solved in a day.

  The contrast is that the complaints in the Google Places forum go largely unanswered and unresolved forever...if not for a long time.   Very rarely do google employees respond.  The response efforts are sporadic at best.Look through the google places forum yourself and form an opinion on how the responsiveness works.

All they have to do is respond.  It appears Google's rate of response compared to other businesses is dismal, far worse than that of other businesses, and only marginally better than it was a year ago.   They still choose not to respond in many cases.That is in stark contrast to other businesses.  I can't think of businesses that simply choose to ignore complaints and manage to get away with it and don't get criticized for that type of consumer reaction.As Mike suggested its simply an incredibly low and simple method of measurement that any business could do well with should they choose not to be stubbornly close mouthed.

Haha.  There is no way Matt and I can disagree and both be right.  LOL.  Afterall he lives out toward the West Coast and l live toward the East Coast.  LOL.Wihout revealing which businesses get which kinds of searches....I can tell you there are pretty good quantities of searches using state names versus major city names for some search phrases.  Actually one of the ways to check this is to simply do some phrase searches using Google's keyword tools.I'm sure its mostly a matter of topic.  I know if I lived in the Southwest Corner of Utah and a search for Utah pizza mostly turned up places near Salt Lake City....I sure wouldn't drive 4-6 hours for a slice and a piece of pepperoni!!!Suppose you were searching for a relatively rare type of medical specialty.  That might just be the kind of search that is more beneficial on a statewide basis than a local basis.In any case, we have certain types businesses that get traffic and conversions off of state searches.  We have others for which state phrase searches are pretty irrelevant.  It depends on the type of business.

Guys:  I commented on Mike's article at SEJ.  There is definitely traffic out there.  Some of our businesses see good quantities of that traffic.  It depends on the service/product.   I've also researched volumes of traffic for products/service names for different states and its major cities.  Volumes differ by many factors.  I've not looked at enough to give definitive answers as to how much traffic there is either way.

I'd guess though that the traffic is significant enough that Google has created maps to satisfy the search demand.  I'm guessing this expansion of maps for states from some of the Eastern smaller states to a wider number of states is somewhat of an experiment.  I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be doing it though if they weren't seeing the search traffic with state terms.

That one cracked me up!!!!

Gab:  I can vouch that they ignore complaints.  I'm tracking the number of times I complain.  I'd have to go back and look at my records but the # is already in double digits.  It does tick off SMB's, at least this one.  If you go into the records and see the comments from SMB operators or the SEO's that work on behalf of SMB's you will see how ticked off operators are.  Google's response within the forums are sporadic.  It almost seems like they "sporadically raid" the forum to address issues.  This can occur for a day or two or three and then for days there aren't responses.Meanwhile, one thing left me terribly suspiceous.  A short while agoI was looking for the phone number for a local Holiday Inn relative to some real business issues to discuss.  I searched for the Holiday Inn by name.  A onemap appeared with a link to Ramada!!!!  (whoa).  I did 3 things quickly.  Entered the problem in google groups.  Then made 2 contact phone calls to Holiday Inn to get the info corrected.  Whoa...next day the record was corrected and the onebox was showing the Holiday Inn link.  Meanwile I got back to the 2 Holiday Inn contacts.  They hadn't acted.Google quietly fixed the record within a day.  A google employee never commented.Hmmmm......Is Google taking care of big clients ie big PPC clients.....and leaving small SMB's to hang out to dry?  Very suspicous.

Very nice list.  I liked the one about connecting to local bloggers.  Time consuming but invaluable.  Soooo modern day networking.

Mike:  It appears you grew close and intimate with this topic and handled it firmly and with affection.

Well done.

That is inciteful and worthwhile research.

I'm not going to desphinn this, in fact I sphunn it, but I don't exactly care that the NY Times didn't link to the company that generated the fake reviews.  After all that company is simply providing false advertising to the public.  Why should they get link love?  Why should anyone want to help them?  Maybe the company/website that was accepting the obviously faked reviews shouldn't get link love either.  They are pretty much co conspirators in this spammy game.Its bad enough that the SE's weigh endless reviews and use it as a sign for higher rankings.  Its clear when looking at Google Maps, based on what spammers have done, that a large volume of reviews helps w/ Maps rankings.  Why encourage the SOBS that feast off of this.  It only makes life harder for any business that tries to operate with a modicum of honesty within a brutally competitive world.Andrew:  Its interesting how you discerned a possible "bias" based on where the links went.  Its also revealing how you identified that some of the links go right back into keywords for which the NYTimes is trying to get rankings.  That is quite inciteful.  Frankly all sites do this.  I don't see any reason to give link love benefit to the sc*m bags that make life harder for other businesses though.