If you search for the X business name on official channels, it doesn't exists obviously. I've tried to have at least my website removed from the listing, but fun fact my removal request is handled by the listing owner itself. I've contacted Google directly, the answer was along the lines of the following:
> We don't care if the business is using your website name and your url, we are just showing information. If you want to get the website removed please contact the owner of that listing.
What makes me angry is that I legally hold the mark name in europe. It's possible to check my name on the whois of that website. And there is no way for me to get that sh*t removed. What's also incredible, is that people will need to do all the verification crap for singing on adsense, but everyone can put every website in the listing with no verification and no one can't do anything about that.
What is even worst is that business will be associated with myself, and my users might call that business thinking to be speaking with me. And a business showing false information doesn't seems a business to trust. I've also explicitly talked about this, but Google didn't care.
Please HN. Tell me what to do.
In other words in the old phone book days, imagine if you were to list your business in the phone book but next to your business was a competitors phone number so they get all your business...you put the phone book on notice and they just say sorry we have no duty to provide accurate information.
Many have said get a lawyer to send a letter...that’s a waste of time while you will continue to be damaged. Get a lawyer to file a small claims case for damages and injunction. A few benefits: 1) you could probably get a lawyer to do it on contingency (no out of pocket expenses for you, they would get a % of damages if and only if they win); 2) small claims cases can often fly under the radar of big companies and so maybe as soon as 20 days after filing you get a default judgment; 3) if the do respond a small claims case means 1 thing to them, their attorney’s fees will exceed your damages so they will probably look into it and resolve it; 4) if they want to fight it (which would be stupid if your claims are legit) small claims are extremely expedited, typically there is no formal discovery and it’s just a pretrial (where the parties will be encouraged to settle) and then a trial (possibly a mandatory mediation at pretrial or at the court on the day of the trial).
You can definitely report false information on a listing, so I don't understand how they'd tell you "We don't care if the business is using your website name."
You could suggest an edit that removes your website from that place: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7084895
Or even better, report that the place doesn't exist in the first place. https://support.google.com/maps/answer/3094088?co=GENIE.Plat...
"This website is not associated with company X which have been misrepresenting themselves by linking to my site from their maps listing."
The easiest thing to do would be to make them want to remove your website. At the top of your main page put a little note saying something like "If you're searching for Alternatively, if you don't care about your websites reputation, you could just fill it with porn, popups, or other content that users won't expect or want from a business.
...
"Use the referral header or url tracking parameters to redirect the URL to some ..."
...
I just searched this comment thread for the string "goat" and got nothing.
Come on! Where is the fun ?! Where did it go ?!
Google needs to be broken up and competition introduced again in this space. If Google Maps or Google Search didn't rely on the revenues from Google Ads, they would take things like this more seriously because they would need the revenues.
This happens tens of thousands of times per day, and the fact that they can ignore this is because they have a monopoly and they are abusing their monopoly position.
In the United Kingdom, you can sue Google for libel, as their misrepresentation of someone else as you harms you, and if you prove malice ('reckless disregard for the truth', which Google is clearly demonstrating) you can not only compel Google to remove the libelous material but also win damages from Google for their flagrant disregard for the truth.
What jurisdiction are you in?
The only way to deal with this is to get the listing removed. Use The google my business redressal form to do that.
Searching on Google for your website name, including the TLD, does not yield the business result, only searching for the equivalent of "itlab".
All in all it seems to me like Google should remove the business suggestion for that search, but I don't think it's as clear-cut as you put it.
The business has reviews that suggests there is actually some IT consultation or support business there, is it possible they are actually operating under your name? Have you tried calling the number associated?
It's possible that it'd overwrite the other business entry, or you might be able to report the business as a duplicate. At the very least, you might end up with both showing up stacked instead of just the one so you might reduce how many people interact with the fraudulent listing.
other than that... hire a lawyer and send them a cease and desist
It would be a terrible thing to do (you'd never get your reputation back), but it would be interesting to see what happened.