Local SEO hack: driving around with 100s of phones to game Google Maps ranking
iamaliveix · x · 2026-09-16
A viral tweet shows a guy driving around with hundreds of phones in his car, exploiting a Google patent that uses directions requests and mobile location/search logs as signals of a place's popularity for local ranking.
Grey-market services now sell exactly this: fleets of phones visiting a local business repeatedly to fake demand signals and boost its local search ranking. The poster quips it'll be interesting to see how Google responds.
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