Florist Mapspam On Yahoo Local - Part 1

Do you see a flower shop here? Neither do we. But according to Yahoo Local, it's the location of NEW YORK FLORIST (FREE DELIVERY TO ALL ZIP CODES) - 60 Reade St., New York, NY.

Take a few steps east and you can stop into a real local flower shop, Langdon Florist.

Where is NEW YORK FLORIST (FREE DELIVERY TO ALL ZIP CODES) and why does Yahoo Local list them as the #1 result for Florist in New York, NY? First - they're really located at 11411 Jefferson Blvd, about 3000 miles away in Culver City, CA with a local Los Angeles area phone number - (310) 391-3333. To get to the #1 spot for their fake local florists in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Boston and many other major US markets, it appears this local mapspam abuser has used a crafty combination of tactics including:

- Keyword-rich fictitious flower shops names
- Fake addresses that indicate locations at or near the center of each city
- User review spam praising their services with mutiple identities like this, this, this and this. (Note that one of these 'objective reviewers' is the source of the uploaded photo on the New York profile page.)
- In at least a few cases, Black Hat user review ratings that anonymously damaged the star ratings of real local florists who would have been top results. (Thankfully, Yahoo has at least stopped their ability to easily hit competitors with anonymous negative reps although creating mutilpe user logins is still an option.)

Attempts to correct the bogus listings with the proper name, address or phone number via Yahoo's 'update this business' link are futile.

How could Yahoo Local have spotted these phony florists? In Yahoo's case, a 'local listing' without a local phone number should be a big clue. Additionally, none of these addresses appear on the linked website and none of them appear in conjunction with the phony business names on any other credible sources on the web (sounds like Yahoo needs an algo. ;) )

How did the listings make it into Yahoo Local in the first place? None are marked 'Merchant Verified'. Perhaps one of Yahoo's data partners knows.

A few Yahoo users have tried to warn others about these fake florists, but most warnings - like the ones in the fake Boston listing - have been met with yet more five-star reviews from first-time reviewers.

Yesterday, Florida's Attorney General announced a lawsuit against a company that used fictitious local-sounding florist names . The Tampa listing from California-based AAA Flower Mart deserves his attention, too.

AAA Flower Mart is a member of the Floral Source florist wire service.

Let's hope Yahoo Local will quickly clean up this weed patch of fake flower shops and help ensure their users get real local florists when they're looking for them.

Part 2 of this series will address a company that purchases remote call forwarding to make itself appear 'local'.