Google Places Needs Some Pest Control

We’ve got rats. There I said it. I opened up the door to my furnace and found a scattering of crusty little rat droppings. And to make matters worse I think the rats have mites as I woke up this morning with a big bite taken out of my posterior (TMI?). So who you gonna call?

I fired up my trusty browser and entered “pest control pleasanton, ca” into a search box, found A Premier Rodent Company and clicked on their Google Place Page to peruse what people have said about them. Here’s what showed up:

Over the past few days I have been the recipient of an email exchange amongst several local SEOs and the amount of mismatched data surfaced from a merely a handful of people has been staggering. I don’t underestimate the level of difficulty in what Google is trying to do with Places and I am sure they are working on fixing these pesky issues, but for now it is just not a reliable tool for local service decision making.

And so I find myself actually opening a print yellow pages for the first time in years!