Google has finally taken the issue head on, the leader in Internet search has announced that it is drastically strengthening its control over the pages of businesses involved in fake reviews on Google Maps. The Mountain View firm will now impose restrictions on business profiles that violate the search giant’s “Fake Engagement” policy, such as temporarily removing reviews, blocking new reviews or ratings, and displaying a warning message on profiles whose fake reviews have been removed. Enough to warn potential customers and force brands to do their best include.
Google Maps cracks down on fake reviews
These restrictions for business profiles were introduced in the UK earlier this year, but the site Search Engine Roundtable notes that the support page was updated in mid-September, seemingly indicating a global rollout. For now, however, only UK users are seeing the warnings, like the example posted on X by Mike Blumenthal, “Suspicious reviews have recently been removed from this page.”
https://twitter.com/mblumenthal/status/1835746813032177806
There prohibited and restricted content policy Google’s policy states that contributions to Maps “must reflect an authentic experience at a location or business.” Business pages are not allowed to display content that does not “accurately represent the location or product in question,” or that has been incentivized by payments, discounts, or gifts offered to reviewers. Google Maps will also look for reviews that attempt to manipulate ratings by posting from multiple accounts, or by using emulators, modified operating systems, or other methods that “mimic authentic engagement.”
Still, the technology used to differentiate real from fake reviews is not specified by Google. We imagine that the GPS location history of the user’s phone will be involved, as well as many other contextual parameters. The threat of being publicly singled out could be enough to dissuade some companies from trying to artificially increase their ratings. The warning message can also help users avoid wasting their time, or even their money.
In any case, it was time for Google to look into this scourge, which affects both potential customers, but also young companies that are sometimes severely attacked from the moment they are launched and do not always recover. For the moment, this is not yet the case on Apple Plans.
Let us also recall that Google Maps recently merged road information with Waze, including speed cameras.
