A few days ago Google published a blog post about how it keeps information on Google Maps “reliable.” Google writes, “In a world that’s constantly changing, it’s important for Google Maps to give you the freshest, most up-to-date information possible — so you can know whether the restaurant down the street from you reopened or if your neighborhood grocery store has curbside pickup. One way we do this is through contributed content.”
Every day, Google receives 20 million contributions from Maps users who are willing and eager to tell Google about changes to businesses’ hours of operations, phone numbers, and other important information that helps Maps users find out when they can visit a particular business and how to get in touch with the company. Google also receives photos and reviews among the contributions that Maps users send it daily.
Of course, Google needs to be alert to make sure that the contributions being received are accurate. After all, 20 million contributions a day is a logistics nightmare and one incorrect phone number or bogus review posted on Google Maps could negatively impact a company. And some of the 20 million contributions that Google receives daily are bogus or faked on purpose, possibly by a company’s competitors, or by some malicious users.
Google wrote, “As with any platform that accepts contributed content, we have to stay vigilant in our efforts to fight abuse and make sure this information is accurate. Thanks to a combination of machine learning and human operators, we continue to decrease the amount of content seen on Maps that is fraudulent or abusive – in fact, it’s less than one percent of all the content that is viewed on Maps.”
Last year, Google was able to update information for 30% more business than the number it revised the year before. Using Machine Learning tools it blocked over 100 million fraudulent edits from going live by using ML technology to find malicious bots and abusive edits.
That includes 7 million totally fake business profiles it removed and 12 million fake Business Profiles it took down. In addition, it stopped 8 million bad actors (and we don’t just mean those that didn’t win an Oscar) from claiming Business Profiles that weren’t theirs. Google added, “Thanks to continued improvements in our machine learning, our technologies and teams disabled more than 1 million user accounts due to policy-violating activity, such as online vandalism or fraud.”
Earlier in this article, we mentioned how competitors could potentially post negative comments and reviews to damage a targeted store or business. Google itself alludes to this in his blog post by stating, “We also saw individuals and groups attempt to use fake reviews as a tactic to hurt local businesses — oftentimes spurred by public attention on differences in opinions.” So after detecting abuse and suspicious activity, Google protected 100,000 business from getting attacked on Google Business Profiles.
Google also blocked or removed more than 95 million reviews that violated its policies. It also took down 1 million reviews that were reported to it and blocked over 190 million photos and 5 million videos that were blurry, low-quality, or violated Google’s content policies.
As Google notes, “Local knowledge that our global community contributes is a huge part of what makes Google Maps more than a navigation tool. We’ll continue to invest in keeping this information fresh and reliable so you can discover information about the world around you.
An app like Google Maps attracts bad actors because of its reach and the number of people that use it. For example, more than one billion people use Google Maps each month. And some companies that demanded that customers wear masks were the recipient of fake reviews posted by anti-maskers as a way to get back at them. Luckily, Google stands guard to make sure that these fake commends and ads are taken down.