Episodi

  • Closed on Saturday, Sunday and Monday

    Closed on Saturday, Sunday and Monday
    Oct 25 2026
    In early 2012, the Serbian Crown in Great Falls, Virginia, had been open at the same site for nearly forty years. Then its weekend customers fell by about three quarters. Its owner, Rene Bertagna, found out why only when a regular phoned to ask why he was closed on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The Google listing showed the wrong hours. Staff were laid off, and Wired reports the restaurant closed in April 2013. He sued Google. We found nothing on the record about how the suit ended. Nell takes the story in order. Hank works out what a quiet weekend costs and why the books never tell you the reason. Together they look at how listings actually change: suggested edits from strangers, Google's own automatic updates, duplicates, hijacked phone numbers and listings nobody has touched in months. They also look at what nobody measures. The episode ends with what we'd steal from this: small, regular habits for any barber, lash tech, food truck or cafe that gets new customers from 'near me' searches. Sources: https://www.wired.com/story/hacking-google-maps/ https://www.businessinsider.com/restaurant-blames-google-for-struggles-2014-7?op=1 https://www.eater.com/2014/7/8/6191875/restaurant-owner-sues-google-over-maps-sabotage https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/08/restaurant-owner-sues-google-over-maps-listing-sabotage https://www.sterlingsky.ca/category/maps-spam/ https://www.seroundtable.com/google-maps-spam-fighting-2025-41176.html https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009255165.006 https://whitespark.ca/blog/keeping-gmb-accurate-during-covid19-pandemic/ https://ozvadigital.com/en/blog/google-says-my-business-is-permanently-closed-how-to-fix https://getwimi.ai/blog/google-profile-says-closed https://guard.io/blog/google-business-profile-review-listing-scams https://reddoortechnologies.com/blog/google-business-profile-hijacked https://proofreports.com/blog/imposter-google-business-listings https://www.replyonthefly.com/blog/local-seo-ranking-factors
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    23 min