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Comment by oftenwrong | Hacker News Reader

Slice hijacks Google Maps listings with their own websites that mimic local pizzeria websites.

For example: Mario's Pizza in Dorchester, Massachusetts

The Google Maps listing [1] links to https://www.mariospizzeriadorchester.com/ , which is a site owned and operated by Slice.

The ACTUAL Mario's Pizza site is https://www.pizzabymario.com/ .

This "growth hack" was previously discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16824992

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mario%E2%80%99s+Pizzeria,+...

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The Google search results do show the owner' site as #1.

https://seobrowse.com/share/25c8f9129eaea94bf34531dd780a9438...

But if you look at the right sidebar under Menu and Order, you get all the Valley players who are trying to get a cut from the order...

Update: wow this is even worse. Slice is "verified" by Google as owner and abuses this by posting their coupons as "news" in the sidebar (look at "Mario's on Google" part lower down).

https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/7534902?hl=...

Looked into what tricks they are doing in a short write-up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23348815

Sucks that it seems like it got flagged off the front page almost immediately, thanks for doing the research and writing it up. I'm surprised to see just how aggressive Slice is about this, they must believe the upside outweighs any associated risks from being caught. Wouldn't be the first startup I've seen try to play games like this with Google though...

I'll try again: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=23349819

So another "tech" start-up using (VC?) money to outby competitors and others on SEO and marketing. And pretty sneaky, registering duplicat websites for pizzerias in order to divert traffic and a take 20% share for that "service".

EDIT: The pitch they used to get pizzerias on board has nothing to do with the "growth hack" described in OP's link.

UPDATE: looks like Google finally accepted the website change, which had been pending for many months at least. I must assume these posts had something to do with it.

This may be a bit off-topic but their pizza is actually pretty decent by Boston standards.

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