Thai Food Near Me, Dentist Near Me, Notary Near Me, Plumber Near Me — businesses across the country picked names meant to outsmart Google Search. Does it actually work?

    • willington@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      So you never patronize any business that uses the .99 and .95 pricing schemes? Gas stations are the worst offenders with their sub-penny pricing schemes.

      Practically all ads exaggerate to the point of lying. “Luxury apartment for rent” <– just a run of the mill apartment, not luxurious. Etc.

      Business culture is a culiure of lies.

    • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They’re not trying to trick you they’re trying to rank up in Google. It’s basically SEO in real life. Every business with any online awareness is trying to juice their SEO. This isn’t the businesses fault, this is the world Google made for us.

      • thanevim@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Of course, an argument can be made that this is the evolution of the number of companies that used a variance of “AAA” to appear first in the phone books of old

    • HeavyDogFeet@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      How is this tricking you? If anything it’s tricking Google, but who gives a fuck about Google. This is a business trying to work within a broken system.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Thai Food Near Me is a small but powerful symbol of Google’s far-reaching impact on businesses over the past two decades and the lengths their owners will go to try to optimize their operations for the company’s platforms.

    The term “Thai food near me” is searched, on average, nearly a million times a month in the US, according to Semrush, a company that provides keyword research and other popular SEO tools.

    Semrush notes you’ll need referring domains and optimized content to try to compete for the term and grades it as “difficult” to rank for — competitive, but not even the hardest category.

    Owners should have basics like updated hours of operation and accurate location details, but they should also respond to reviews, add photos, and even post individual items in stock to their Google page.

    Ironically, a search I did in Google Maps for “Thai food near me” from Wisconsin surfaced the Manhattan restaurant as a suggestion, above any local businesses — it was easier to find it from the Midwest than it was from Brooklyn.

    As New York Magazine reported, the allure of a social media hit is shaping the very food being served — gooier eggs, more obscene cheese, sauces exploding and gushing across a plate.


    The original article contains 2,243 words, the summary contains 209 words. Saved 91%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!