I was reviewing some emails that I receive from the Google Local Business Centre for a number of my clients that run through my account, and came across an email for a client that wasn’t one that I instantly recognised. At first I didn’t think too much about it, in part because I have a client in the same industry, and I initially thought that the name of the organisation had been changed without me realising.
However, later in the day, I came across an article from Mike at Blumenthals.com, who had received an email from Elaine Filadelfo at Google’s Global Communications & Public Affairs office apologising for the error, which had beenidentified as a human mistake, which made me take a closer look at the original email I had received:
Whilst others have reported client names for this data, I didn’t think that this was particularly fair, so I have blocked out the specific details of the other company here.
However, as you can see, there is data being supplied here that I have no business knowing – the number of times a listing appeared in November 2009, the click details and the locations of those clicks.
There are wider implications for this data breach as well. If Google can make mistakes with this, who is to say that that they can’t do the same with Google Analytics or AdWords data too? Really, although a fairly serious breach of information, the actionable data that I could take from this with regards to my client in the same niche is neglible to nil, but with access to Analytics or AdWords reports should something similar happen with those in the future, there could be serious concerns.
We’ve also recently moved offices and had a nightmare in getting our local listing updated. Due to the way our phone systems work, we initially decided to try and verfiy the new location via the Postcard option, and were surprised that it hadn’t arrived a couple of months later. We were also receiving a phone call fairly regularly from a Beauty Salon in Old Portsmouth, which we initially thought was an enquiry for Local SEO, though eventually found out that our Google Local Listing pin number had been sent to the wrong address!
Add in that Google Local results have been stopped for most SEO and Web Design based phrases and this is an area that Google are not looking too strong in at the moment!
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