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Eric Wu started noticing many local knowledge box results on Google link to URLs that have little to no information provided by SinglePlatform. He posted a screen shot on Twitter which I can replicate.
In short, if you search for [alpha floral santa barbara] for example, it shows in the "Products and Services" section a link to places.singleplatform.com but when you click on it, you are given little to no information. Why doesn't Google show the link to the main site's web site, as opposed to the SinglePlatform URL?
Here is that screen shot:
When you click on those URLs, you go to a page that looks like this:
What is SinglePlatform? Well, they have and do power the menus for Google's menu results for the past year or so. But why are they showing up for floral shops?
Former Googler Pedro Dias said it looks like maybe URL hijacking by someone informing Google to use this URL over the main site's URL. In this help document Google writes "To add or update any menu data, please email our partner, SinglePlatform, at menu_updates@singleplatform.com with the following information..."
I am hoping this is just a temporary bug on Google's end and nothing more but time will tell.
But we all know that this user experience is horrible for the searcher.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
