Misleading websites affect local auto glass business

Published August 14, 2013 | By admin

A company out of California has set up hundreds of websites that appear to be local auto glass repair shops throughout the country. The websites look legit, with working phone numbers, but the addresses are bogus. Some addresses are even residential. This is quickly affecting local auto glass companies with similar names.

Middletown Auto Glass has been in business for over 20 years in Louisville. They recently were alerted to a website that had a similar web address and the same exact name. When one of their customers called the number on the site they were told the location had closed, but they could still come to their location and replace their windshield.

These bogus websites all stem from Qualtechautoglass.com which lists windshield repair places from around the country. This appears to be a one stop source for windshield repair, but all the sites are exactly the same, but with different names and phone numbers. The creators of this site and all the offshoot sites even went as far as to register them on showmelocal.com, taking advantage of the “support local” trend.

It may be worth the time in the future to look into company websites a bit deeper and not take what they say at face value. Google mapping the address listed may assist in legitimizing the site. Google and other search engines have ways of weeding out these sites so they have a harder time showing up on the search results, but aren’t able to catch every misleading site.

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