Update: Matt McGee just emailed me that he contacted Yelp, and they claimed the link has been added by a user, and they are going to update the listing.
Today I stumbled upon one of the most curious listings I’ve seen in a while. And I am seeing literally hundreds every day.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
The link to the Google Maps listing is dead. It leads to this URL:
https://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl=en&georestrict=input_srcid:
This is the way a Google Places listing’s URL was appearing previously (before the transition to Google+ Local) when someone looked it up when they clicked on “See your listing on Google Maps” from their Google Places dashboard. With the obvious difference that the actual Source ID is missing in this particular URL. This means that no one can actually have such a link except the verified business owner, or someone that has access to the business database of Google.
As the listing is obviously unclaimed, it is very doubtful it was the business owner who created it. It is also impossible that it was created by a user, because they’d not have such a link. Overall the listings seems to be automatically generated.
Do you think it is possible that Google and Yelp went into some deal in which Google (!!!) provides data to Yelp? Or do you think it is possible that Yelp is now scraping content from Google (payback?), and is simply placing a dead link to Google Maps?
