As Search Engine Roundtable reported this morning, Google admits to removing SEOs and Web Designers from the local business listings. Obviously this bothers me a bit. We discussed seeing this on 12-14-09 in our entry “Where did the SEO’s go?”

I am a bit confused by Google’s thinking because the bottom line is the SEO industry has helped Google become what it is today!

We are the ones going into businesses and preaching about how they need to do well on Google. We are the ones telling them how crucial Google is…we are the ones that are helping them not only have a good and optimized website, we are also the ones that are helping them market themselves online. Again, this is something Google benefits from. We are the ones helping them with PPC…how much money do you make from that?

So the question is, what is next? If you decide you don’t like veterinarians because one hurt your dog will you remove them all? I see this as a direct attack on a specific industry. There are those that do things wrong, as there are in any industry. To purposely try to hurt businesses nationwide by removing them from the local business listings is wrong.

UPDATE: Matt McGee wrote about this at SEL and showed that is you use the word “in” you can see SEO listings. In all the years I have played with the web I have never use this word. I have used location service or service location, example, “barber Dallas” and “barber in Dallas” give the same results. “SEO Sarasota” and “SEO in Sarasota” do not.

Google, what is going on over there? What are you thinking? You were suppose to be cool…

Melissa Fach – SEO Aware

ALSO, I don’t see any results for “Internet Marketing” either.