Setting up multiple fake offices to get Google listings – Hades Awaits my friend

Image credit and tutorials here. Pretty kick ass image, No? http://tinyurl.com/cx8kys

You may be tempted to try and setup multiple fake offices around town or in your region — maybe even in other cities so you can have a presence there. It makes sense. If you can get an actual address and phone number then you can do almost anything — including setting up and optimizing multiple Google+ pages for your business.

There was a detailed discussion of this practice in NYC when I attended GetListed Local U. The guy from Google was there and they obviously frowned on this practice. From their perspective you should be able to call a local number for a local business and drive there to get service. If not it’s going to be bad for you

Here’s the big issue that you should be concerned about. Google has minions overseas that randomly verify businesses. They’ll call the number listed and if they can’t speak to a real person, they can’t get directions to that address or that they somehow find out that the business is not actually located there, they will instantly zap you from the listings and your listing for that location will burn in Google hell for all eternity. It’s happened to people like lawyers and doctors that try to setup multiple “offices” but route the phone number listed to the real central office. If the minion calls and asks for directions to the location and they give directions to another office it will be bad for you.

In general I would say that every tactic that we employ should be completely above board. Go ahead and try these things but when Google calls your staff will have no idea that it’s them and if you don’t convince the person on the other end that they can get in their car and drive to the location listed in Google — well, hades awaits my friend.