Local Means Local

Have you ever tried to find businesses based in a specific city on Google?

Recently I was looking for a web hosting company based in Houston. Never mind why; the point is, that is what I wanted, so that is what I searched for, starting with a search on "Houston web hosting."

Among the results I got on Google was this.

Here's the interesting thing you find if you dig a bit deeper into Hostik: they are based in Sacramento, California.

Why did they come up in my search results? Because they created a special city-specific page, just using the word "Houston," not with anything specific to Houston.

This is the nature of search today: people game the search engines to get you to their site even when it does not match what you're looking for. Some marketers might call this clever search engine optimization; I call it a waste of time. Because Hostik wasted my time by getting themselves into search results for a query that they do not match.

I only wish it had been a paid placement, so I could have cost them a bit of money in exchange for the time of mine they wasted. Making specialized pages for specific queries is a great idea - if you really have something of interest to the people making those queries.

Things like this are just a waste of your money and customers' time. Hostik is not the only one doing these kinds of things; they're just a particularly obvious abuse.

The net result: it took me longer to find what I wanted. When I hear the name "Hostik" from now on, I think, "schmucks." Google is less useful of a tool for me.

A lose-lose proposition, caused by bad search engine marketing.