SEO Pirates Attack in Miami?

According to a recent post on SEM Sunday, someone’s idea of SEO has turned into piracy and business identity theft. In a search on Google Maps for Miami Hotels they came across a top result of Miami Moving and Movers.

Pirate Ship

(Begin Sarcasm Font) That doens’t seem odd to me because I know that when I do a search for Hotels what I really meant to search for was movers.  (End Sarcasm Font) Oh no wait, that’s not true at all.

Apparently, somebody from the Miami Moving and Movers company claimed the Hyatt Regency’s Miami listing on Google and changed the name and contact info. So the search results still showed the Hyatt’s listing because it had been such a popular result for so long (over 700 reviews), and the Miami Moving company stole all the traffic as it directed people to its website.

Silly people, lying about who they are and stealing other business’ listings. This is just another example of why Ninja’s are better than Pirates – Ninja’s believe in honesty and integrity.

It will be interesting to see what Hyatt has to say about the whole situation and what type of recourse they’ll end up taking.  With so much of the Hotel’s industry’s reservations being purchase online, the Hyatt has potentially lost more than just website visitors.  There are actual financial losses to be calculated and accounted for.

Maybe this will further open the discussion about how to handle legality and business practices online.  Some sort of accountability needs to be established.

We can’t just let pirates confuse us about where to book a hotel in Miami.

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