I do a lot of Google Maps moderation and there’s a ton of bad changes being attempted every day. Honestly I’m amazed Google doesn’t bother to vet anyone really. Becoming a local guide is easy and not that difficult for a spam group to create enough fake accounts to get things pushed through. Just last night I caught the local Target that was reclassified as a “prison”.
What Google needs to do is lock information for verified businesses or businesses they’re directly scraping from the Corp location pages.
Google already let's people claim their maps listing via Google My Business. I would be shocked if they couldn't lock edits, or at the very least review them.
I hope Google uses their Duplex tech to review phone number changes though, should be easy to call the existing phone number a few times.
And sometimes fixes to incorrect information get rejected. My first edit was to correct an error where a restaurant had the website of a nearby shop listed. The website contained no information whatsoever about the restaurant (to my frustration, because I wanted to eat there).
My removal of the website got rejected. I think I needed to offer proof of some sort.
Adding info is easier: my second edit was adding opening hours to a shop. No proof needed. My submitted hours were not the official opening hours, because the shop always opens 15 minutes too late.
I am curious what the 3rd party bounty/revenue model is & if fixing/locking edits to verified owners would inversely affect G's & 3rds revenues. I ask b/c every licensed biz owner I know who have not utilized Goog's biz profile service(?) get dozens of calls a week to "activate your Google account NOW!". Quite off-putting & a very significant waste of their(the owners') time deflecting the onslaught.
In turn, I'm amazed that people put effort into databases that are owned by companies. Wouldn't it be much more fulfilling to do the same work for an open database, such as open street maps?
> What Google needs to do is lock information for verified businesses or businesses they’re directly scraping from the Corp location pages.
If they do that and the correct information changes without them updating, they're (rightfully) going to get sued by those businesses. By having it editable by anyone, they avoid that, even if it results in the information being wrong more often.
Proper ways to deal with this would involve employing actual human beings for moderation, for filling in / updating the map data, or for providing support and a verification process to businesses trying to correct their data.
All three of these solutions cost more money than the status quo and are things that Google doesn't really do anywhere, so I doubt this is going to get better anytime soon.
I work at a major community development charity in Canada with 100+ branches across the country. Almost every day, I have to log into Google My Business to reject the "user-suggested edits" made to a particular location's phone number or street address. Half the time, it seems Google auto-approves these user edits, so we get complaints from clients who used the Google info and showed up when the office was closed.
Almost all the time, people will see the address/number listed on Google's search engine snippet, which is larger, has an image and is much more conspicuous than anything else on the screen. They'll make their plans around that, instead of clicking on the #1 search result, which is our website showing the official hours.
It's incredibly irresponsible for Google to let any Tom Dick and Harry make changes to this type of information, and then display it to the world without posting so much as a disclaimer to users to verify with the actual site.
A local taxi company near me was relisted on Google maps using a pay-per-minute redirect service. The scammers get paid, and the customer is non the wiser until they get their bill.
Yep, years ago, we needed to call the NHS (out of hours doctor) and looked it up on Google, first result (sponsored) turned out to be a premium rate pay per minute redirect number. That turned out to be a £90, 30 minute call when we got our bill. I believe this practice is now harder to do or not possible.
I thought those were restricted to specific area codes. I think the phone company should be liable in scams like this. Also, there should be a way to block all pay-per-min calls on your phone. This is one of those areas government needs to regulate.
That is amazing! IIRC in the U.S. there's a few second "grace period" where there's supposed to be an announcement that says "this call is $2 a minute" where you can hang up immediately and not get charged. I presume that's not how it works where you are!
I got burned by a similar scam with information changes in google. I was looking for a specific restaurant in google and used the given address to get there. When I got there I found out it was a different restaurant. I asked about the other restaurant and they told me the other restaurant had gone out of business. A complete lie.
I'm sure they hired a company to promote them and they used this trick to increase their customer base.
Never trust the company info google gives you without double checking. It's very easy for anyone to change the business info without proof of ownership.
Could very well be a scam. Or it could just be that the big tech companies really suck at information verification.
My small company gets three or four phone calls or e-mails a week from people who think it's a different business, and each time I ask, they say they got the number from Google.
Looking at my e-mail, the most recent one was from someone who wanted to place a big catering order with a Subway sandwich shop about 2,000 miles away.
I don't blame Google exclusively, though. For almost ten years, Facebook has been telling people that I am a large building in another state.
I don’t initially trust anything on he internet without second source verification. The internet is just one big scam pot today and at the same time, since using it before wide spread public use, I’m fascinated with watching it evolve, devolve since then.
If Google is going to have customers remain on their site for search information they have the duty to ensure it is accurate. More and more searches are now given a placard that is either community generated or scraped whether it be maps or the main search. A search that used to feature a link to the bank's "Contact Us" page is now being taken by Google with the link being buried further down between more ads. I get this is to help Google provide voice searches (with the great side effect that Google gets people spending more time on their site), but with that revenue comes a responsibility to do more to ensure it is accurate.
Accuracy doesn't pay. Giving results that are "pretty close" keeps people searching and searching and searching for what they need, and racks up the ad dollars.
Most people want to remain anonymous on the internet or have disposable IDs and profiles. And yet they expect Google to somehow ensure that people are who they say they are. This is a hard problem and it won't be solved as long as people want it both ways.
The dirty truth is that it isn't accuracy but what people want that keeps them coming back. If I were to set up a hillariously inaccurate database that used machine learning to generate incoherent transcripts I would get way more traffic then if it was accurate. This isn't new at all. People pay more attention to the ballad which attributed a single soldier pushing through a phalanx than the truth it was his own phalanx combined with a flanking auxiliary that broke through and gave victory.
Similarly Google was never about accuracy per say but indexing. It says what people are saying essentially. People may say that Ted Cruz is the zodiac killer but he would have been way too young in reality - amusing as the actual police sketch resemblance is. It just isn't capable of knowing the truth and that isn't its true purpose any more than a regex is to give you dictionary definitions.
I do wonder what would make a better system for maintaining these sorts of things. The whole identification and authentication systems in place are honestly pretty bad in legacy systems both technically and legislatively - combines with rightful concern about abuse potential in upgrades make it seem like something which will take generations to solve.
There is some scam going on in Lake Powell, AZ. We visited there in September and yelped a well reviewed place: CNG Burgers. We arrive there and can't find it. It simply isn't there. And not just isn't there - there is NO trace of it on the building that matched the address (like where there would a lighter shade of paint behind where the restaurant sign was - at least according to the photos on Google Maps).
Oh well, onto the restaurant across the street. Asked the waitress there about CNG Burgers - she's never heard of it and said that she's worked there for a year. I looked on Google Maps and CNG received a ton of recent reviews.
Reading this thread compelled me to look at it again. Finally, Yelp is listing it as closed (I reported it as such), however, there are reviews as recent as 2 weeks ago.
On Google Maps, it's still active - all recent reviews by Local Guides.
There's a new business model where a restaurant is just a kitchen that delivers. No need for a dining place. Uber eats and such give new restaurant owners the flexibility. Given that the majority of new restaurants fail within 5 years, this is a great option. This could be the case with CNG Burgers.
Some companies decide that they should have a physical address for places like Yelp. I suspect you have to have an address for people to review your business.
Is it a scam? In some sense yes but what do you if all you want to do is deliver?
A couple of years ago, I needed to find a limo service for an old family friend, for a memorial service. It'd been some years, but I knew of and used to use one of the top two limo services in my metropolitan area. (In my area, in a perverse historical twist, a shared limo ride to the airport was substantially cheaper than a cab ride, as well as pretty much guaranteed timely as well as more comfortable.)
I'd heard that this was one business area where fly by night companies, and outright scammers, had been stuffing and, where possible, gaming search engine results -- meaning, given their market dominance, Google results.
I searched for the company -- mind you, a relatively large livery service with a diverse and well-heeled customer base, sure to still be in existence -- and sure enough, the search results were full of hits purporting to be them or part of them, or just playing on minor variations of their name. If nothing else, the phone numbers didn't look right to me as compared to my vague memory, formed back when people still dialed numbers.
Anyway, eventually I pulled out an old, physical yellow pages I'd been hoarding, looked them up in that, and called. They had changed that particular number, although not to something looking like one of the scam results. They had numbers from back when people faced in-state toll charges on phone calls, and since they covered an entire large metropolitan area, they had at that time registered numbers in several local exchanges, to make customer calls to them a local call (just pick the number having a local or non-toll exchange).
They still had the number from the yellow pages, though, assigned to an internal extension, and the person who answered took time out of their day to provide first rate customer service for the family friend.
The first rate service was still there. However, finding it through a Google search was a risky venture.
I'm not at all surprised that Maps contents is being exploited and gamed. I guess I'll hold on to that old yellow pages book a bit longer.
> They had numbers from back when people faced in-state toll charges on phone calls, and since they covered an entire large metropolitan area, they had at that time registered numbers in several local exchanges, to make customer calls to them a local call (just pick the number having a local or non-toll exchange).
Totally unrelated to people scamming others on Google, but I love little bits of telephone trivia like this. A large plumber and an unrelated large handyman company in my hometown metro both have the same style of phone number: "just dial your area code then [seven digits]."
One other thing we had growing up in that area were the concept of "metro numbers." Back in the day, the area was divided up into three different incumbents and it wasn't always the case that a person physically near you would have a number you could call for free. So metro numbers were ones in specific exchanges that anyone in the six-county area could call with no toll charges. Since all metro numbers were in a handful of exchanges and, because the three old incumbents crossed area codes as well, didn't always follow area code rules (e.g. you could be physically in area code 123 but get a metro number in area code 198), you'll see old businesses with old numbers in area codes where they "shouldn't be."
My mobile number is like this. It is a metro number and has an area code and prefix of one side of the metro area but if you look it up in any of the telco databases, those listings say it is "homed" to two counties away in a different area code.
Wait, Google is seriously just taking people's word for this stuff? What happened to the Semantic Web and getting information from official websites? They've essentially created OpenStreetMap, but with less transparency.
In college I was somehow made the owner or something of my department building’s google maps entry. I worked for the department, so my .edu google account was in some admin/staff group I guess. I kept getting emails asking me to update the listing and definitely considered some harmless pranks/light vandalism.
I've considered myself fairly resistive to various devious scamming efforts but recently they have upped the game at completely new level. Other day I received text message that my XYZ card had suspicious charge and my card was disabled. To re-enable the card I must call 1-800- number. I absolutely believed that! That number is in fact fake number to get all your bank details!
These are clear attempt for theft. For physical attempts I would call police and that's one of the big restraint on rampant theft attempts. But there is no law enforcement infrastructure set up to report and act on electronic thefts easily. These thieves can easily be traced otherwise as their 1-800- numbers are public.
How do you know this is legit? Does the yellow pages verify every listing? If a company neglects to register a yellow pages slot, how hard is it for someone else to register it? Genuine questions (and I'd guess it changes by country); Google does a fair bit of effort to get business owner to claim their property on Google (again, probably changes by country); if they don't do so, then how different is it to someone neglecting to put their yellow pages entry in?
I basically don't trust the search engine "summary" info that is presented in search results. I always go to the actual website of the business to get contact info, addresses, etc.
I am lol as I changed the profile picture for one country's central bank a long time ago because I was dumbstruck by the offer to "Claim this business" and just had to try it out.
It has been fun watching the edit wars over the hours of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site. There are times it has been OPEN and times it has been CLOSED and times when it is OPEN for 2 hours on the weekend, presumably for a pickup of household radioactive waste.
I know "Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps to defraud people" is 4 characters too long but maybe "Scammers changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps to defraud people" is better than what it currently is? "changing the contact" alone doesn't make a lot of sense.
In fact, if you live in China, you will know that the information provided by search engines is not always right. Some frauds are even carried out with the help of search engines, for example, putian
[+] [-] dawnerd|7 years ago|reply
What Google needs to do is lock information for verified businesses or businesses they’re directly scraping from the Corp location pages.
[+] [-] black-tea|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Eridrus|7 years ago|reply
I hope Google uses their Duplex tech to review phone number changes though, should be easy to call the existing phone number a few times.
[+] [-] optimiz3|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcv|7 years ago|reply
My removal of the website got rejected. I think I needed to offer proof of some sort.
Adding info is easier: my second edit was adding opening hours to a shop. No proof needed. My submitted hours were not the official opening hours, because the shop always opens 15 minutes too late.
[+] [-] tunap|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gniv|7 years ago|reply
Here are a few problems with that:
1) Businesses also have incentives to spam by adding lots of vaguely-related words to names, categories and description.
2) Businesses forget that they claimed the listing, and so stale info remains locked for too long.
[+] [-] Sylos|7 years ago|reply
If they do that and the correct information changes without them updating, they're (rightfully) going to get sued by those businesses. By having it editable by anyone, they avoid that, even if it results in the information being wrong more often.
Proper ways to deal with this would involve employing actual human beings for moderation, for filling in / updating the map data, or for providing support and a verification process to businesses trying to correct their data.
All three of these solutions cost more money than the status quo and are things that Google doesn't really do anywhere, so I doubt this is going to get better anytime soon.
[+] [-] rchaud|7 years ago|reply
Almost all the time, people will see the address/number listed on Google's search engine snippet, which is larger, has an image and is much more conspicuous than anything else on the screen. They'll make their plans around that, instead of clicking on the #1 search result, which is our website showing the official hours.
It's incredibly irresponsible for Google to let any Tom Dick and Harry make changes to this type of information, and then display it to the world without posting so much as a disclaimer to users to verify with the actual site.
[+] [-] atmosx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lwhi|7 years ago|reply
I was charged about £5 for a 30 second call.
[+] [-] tonylemesmer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x0054|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tommyanthony|7 years ago|reply
I work on maps spam. I was wondering if you could dig up a link to the maps business, and include a rough idea of when this occurred.
Thanks!
[+] [-] MagicPropmaker|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notimetorelax|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WheelsAtLarge|7 years ago|reply
I'm sure they hired a company to promote them and they used this trick to increase their customer base.
Never trust the company info google gives you without double checking. It's very easy for anyone to change the business info without proof of ownership.
[+] [-] reaperducer|7 years ago|reply
My small company gets three or four phone calls or e-mails a week from people who think it's a different business, and each time I ask, they say they got the number from Google.
Looking at my e-mail, the most recent one was from someone who wanted to place a big catering order with a Subway sandwich shop about 2,000 miles away.
I don't blame Google exclusively, though. For almost ten years, Facebook has been telling people that I am a large building in another state.
[+] [-] qrbLPHiKpiux|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Buge|7 years ago|reply
How do you know it's a lie?
[+] [-] specialp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|7 years ago|reply
Accuracy doesn't pay. Giving results that are "pretty close" keeps people searching and searching and searching for what they need, and racks up the ad dollars.
[+] [-] Drdrdrq|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phkahler|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nasrudith|7 years ago|reply
Similarly Google was never about accuracy per say but indexing. It says what people are saying essentially. People may say that Ted Cruz is the zodiac killer but he would have been way too young in reality - amusing as the actual police sketch resemblance is. It just isn't capable of knowing the truth and that isn't its true purpose any more than a regex is to give you dictionary definitions.
I do wonder what would make a better system for maintaining these sorts of things. The whole identification and authentication systems in place are honestly pretty bad in legacy systems both technically and legislatively - combines with rightful concern about abuse potential in upgrades make it seem like something which will take generations to solve.
[+] [-] abtom|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starik36|7 years ago|reply
Oh well, onto the restaurant across the street. Asked the waitress there about CNG Burgers - she's never heard of it and said that she's worked there for a year. I looked on Google Maps and CNG received a ton of recent reviews.
Reading this thread compelled me to look at it again. Finally, Yelp is listing it as closed (I reported it as such), however, there are reviews as recent as 2 weeks ago.
On Google Maps, it's still active - all recent reviews by Local Guides.
Still not sure what it all means.
[+] [-] WheelsAtLarge|7 years ago|reply
Some companies decide that they should have a physical address for places like Yelp. I suspect you have to have an address for people to review your business.
Is it a scam? In some sense yes but what do you if all you want to do is deliver?
[+] [-] ksherlock|7 years ago|reply
Google maps has an image capture from May 2018 with their sign up.
[+] [-] pasbesoin|7 years ago|reply
I'd heard that this was one business area where fly by night companies, and outright scammers, had been stuffing and, where possible, gaming search engine results -- meaning, given their market dominance, Google results.
I searched for the company -- mind you, a relatively large livery service with a diverse and well-heeled customer base, sure to still be in existence -- and sure enough, the search results were full of hits purporting to be them or part of them, or just playing on minor variations of their name. If nothing else, the phone numbers didn't look right to me as compared to my vague memory, formed back when people still dialed numbers.
Anyway, eventually I pulled out an old, physical yellow pages I'd been hoarding, looked them up in that, and called. They had changed that particular number, although not to something looking like one of the scam results. They had numbers from back when people faced in-state toll charges on phone calls, and since they covered an entire large metropolitan area, they had at that time registered numbers in several local exchanges, to make customer calls to them a local call (just pick the number having a local or non-toll exchange).
They still had the number from the yellow pages, though, assigned to an internal extension, and the person who answered took time out of their day to provide first rate customer service for the family friend.
The first rate service was still there. However, finding it through a Google search was a risky venture.
I'm not at all surprised that Maps contents is being exploited and gamed. I guess I'll hold on to that old yellow pages book a bit longer.
[+] [-] techsupporter|7 years ago|reply
Totally unrelated to people scamming others on Google, but I love little bits of telephone trivia like this. A large plumber and an unrelated large handyman company in my hometown metro both have the same style of phone number: "just dial your area code then [seven digits]."
One other thing we had growing up in that area were the concept of "metro numbers." Back in the day, the area was divided up into three different incumbents and it wasn't always the case that a person physically near you would have a number you could call for free. So metro numbers were ones in specific exchanges that anyone in the six-county area could call with no toll charges. Since all metro numbers were in a handful of exchanges and, because the three old incumbents crossed area codes as well, didn't always follow area code rules (e.g. you could be physically in area code 123 but get a metro number in area code 198), you'll see old businesses with old numbers in area codes where they "shouldn't be."
My mobile number is like this. It is a metro number and has an area code and prefix of one side of the metro area but if you look it up in any of the telco databases, those listings say it is "homed" to two counties away in a different area code.
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adiian|7 years ago|reply
According to his tedtalk, Google was not to eager to fix the problem and it seems things didn't change much since then.
https://youtu.be/5c6AADI7Pb4
[+] [-] seanieb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franga2000|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tgb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rlyshw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sytelus|7 years ago|reply
These are clear attempt for theft. For physical attempts I would call police and that's one of the big restraint on rampant theft attempts. But there is no law enforcement infrastructure set up to report and act on electronic thefts easily. These thieves can easily be traced otherwise as their 1-800- numbers are public.
[+] [-] olivermarks|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] askvictor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marmshallow|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w8rbt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulHoule|7 years ago|reply
It has been fun watching the edit wars over the hours of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site. There are times it has been OPEN and times it has been CLOSED and times when it is OPEN for 2 hours on the weekend, presumably for a pickup of household radioactive waste.
[+] [-] joshstrange|7 years ago|reply
I know "Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps to defraud people" is 4 characters too long but maybe "Scammers changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps to defraud people" is better than what it currently is? "changing the contact" alone doesn't make a lot of sense.
[+] [-] mattnewton|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TomJoeJohn|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruffrey|7 years ago|reply