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Category Archives for Businesses

Search Point UK SCAM

Businesses, Google, Maps, Marketing, Reputation, Security, SEO, Social Marketing
By   May 22, 2019

I came across this today with a new client of ours. They rang us up asking about renewing their ‘Google places subscription?’ My response was quite short (sorry client) ‘renew google places, what are you on about?’

After that exclamation we stated again and they explained that they bought a subscription from google places. That is obviously inaccurate as google places is free! So we dived a bit more into it and we found out that the company they were using was SearchPoint UK.

Ok we have a starting point, after a bit of searching on the web I found them. I found them at the top (that’s a good start) so going through their website. Which is a bit thin on content, but on the footer you find this statement…

‘SEARCH POINT UK IS IN NO WAY ASSOCIATED, AFFILIATED OR ENDORSED BY GOOGLE.

WE ARE A THIRD PARTY COMPANY THAT PROVIDES MANAGEMENT SERVICES OF A GOOGLE PRODUCT.’

So NO affiliation with Google. I am starting get bad feeling about this.

Then number three on the list of results from Google for SearchPoint gives this WHICH? Article

Google Maps Trap? What is Search Point UK?

So alarm bells are falling off the wall now! I’ll give you the highlights of the page below. [sic]

  1. ‘I run a photography business and about two years ago I got a call from Search Point UK – I believed they were calling from Google. I agreed to have them manage our Google My Business listing for a year and paid about £300.’
  2. Search Point UK Ltd was dissolved 6th November 2018.
    https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10668759
    It uses a virtual address that it shares with over 300 other ‘companies’:
    West House, King Cross Road, Halifax, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom, HX1 1EB
    It was previously called Map Registrations Ltd for a period of 3 days in March 2017.
  3. Just been phoned by these pests saying my Google Business registration had not been set up correctly. I seemed to recognise the name and Googled it whilst caller still on the phone. I suggested to him that it was a scam and said I was not interested. I have never been called “sir” so many times in one conversation.
    He finally rang off when I asked why Google was showing the company as a scam.

For a dissolved company they are still very much active. So at the very best this company is taking advantage of vulnerable businesses and at the very worst it’s a SCAM.

We don’t like that here it has made us quite angry. So if you are in the Pontyclun, Llantrisant, Cowbridge, Cardiff well anywhere in South Wales we will get your Google listing back for you and put it in an account in YOUR name for free!

Contact us using our contact form now!

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools

Analytics, Businesses, Google, SEO
By   November 24, 2017

Why do you have a website? You want to promote yourself, sell a thing-a-ma-gig or get a message out there in the big world of the internet. So how do you know if it is doing the job you had planned for it to do?

If you had a shop this can be easily done, you count how many people come in, you can ask them how they found you and you can note what they are looking at in your shop. So why not do this on your website? You can and it’s not that hard to setup and work with… and if you do it yourself it’s FREE!

Google offer a set of tools on your Google account for all the websites you own. the tools that you need to set up immediately Google Analytics, Google Search console, Google Webmaster Tools and Google Business. If you have not got these tools then set them up immediately.

After you have created your Google account and validated all of your websites with analytics, search console and webmasters tools you will gradually build up profile data of your visitors, where they come from and how they found you. Now that is useful, you can see if your website plan and goals are being hit. If not then you can adjust it and then measure your websites change.

So what info can you get?

Search Queries

The Search Queries section shows the keywords that led users to your site.

This list shows which keywords users searched for when they came to your site. This tool is essential as you will see if your search engine optimisation (SEO) is working the way you want it.

In the Search Queries section, you can also see the number of impressions and the number of clicks, which gives you an idea about the Click-through Rate CTR for this keyword. All equal, a higher CTR means the keyword is relevant, so you might want to invest some more efforts into this keyword.

 

Google Analytics Sample
Google Analytics Sample

Links

An equally useful section of Google Webmaster Tools is the Links to your site section. You need to get inbound links for your website as soon as possible, this is especially important at your websites launch.

Here you can see where your backlinks (internal and external) come from, as well as the pages they are linking to one of the advanced uses of the Links section is to disavow links to your site you deem harmful. Links from bad sites can hurt your rankings, so if you will need to remove them.

 Keywords

Similarly to the Search Queries section that also deals with keywords (but it is the ones users type to get to your site), the Keywords section also shows keywords. However, the difference is that here you see what keywords (and their significance) Google has found on your site. The two lists (of keywords users’ type and the keywords Google finds on your site) could be very different, which means you are not optimizing for what users are searching for.

The Keywords section also allows to see the subject and proposition of your site, which post Panda has become even more important.

There are other more advanced tools that we will not discuss here as this post is an introduction into getting data from your site. These include crawl errors, Sitemaps, Robot files and other stuff!

In conclusion you have to ask yourself or the person/company who is managing your website do we have Google tools set up for it. IF NOT…WHY NOT?

All of our packages come with Google Tools set up free as standard. Find the right package for you in our pricing page.

Pontyclun Community Shop Front

Working for the Pontyclun local community

Businesses, Google, Reputation
By   October 25, 2017

Last week we had a clearout, that produced several bags that needed to go to the charity shop. I had a look on google to see what time the  Pontyclun community shop closed as it was bad weather and I didnt fancy walking there and back with heavy bags.

It said on google that the shop closed at 1.30pm. I was sure they were open when I was over there at 3pm. So I picked up the phone, luckily the number was right and called them to see what time they closed. Bonus 5pm!!!

When I got there I met the Manager, Vanessa. I mentioned that google had all their opening times wrong. She said that they have tried to find out who set it up so they can change it but had no luck.

We love to help the local community, so here was an opportunity for us to help. I introduced Fungrenade and our services. I explained how we could sort out their google places for them and yes NO CHARGE!!!

Fungreanade was born from the need to provide services to our local community for reasonable costs. Here was a business that was putting its profits back into the community so why wouldn’t we help. It would be our pleasure.

As of today Pontyclun Community Shop is now up today with google so people of the community can find out when they are open. We will continue to look after their google places for them and anytime they need anything they just have to ask.

We are proud to have helped out. Fungrenade strikes again!!