Google has been pumping a lot of new features into Google Maps recently. These go beyond boosting the app’s navigation chops and show a clear new strategy from the internet giant. Features like direct messaging to businesses, highlighting favorite dishes at restaurants, and hash-tagged reviews have all helped turn Maps into an interactive business directory. It is now overlaid on accurate maps of wherever you are or will be at any given moment.
This is a clever move by Google as it makes Maps able to take users away from apps like Instagram and WhatsApp’s new WhatsApp Business app. Like all services, however, the success of this new direction for Maps will depend on trust, which means a new report by The Wall Street Journal will be worrying the big wigs down at Google HQ.
Millions of fake businesses could be on Google Maps right now
According to the WSJ investigation, a new problem has spread across Google Maps. The report claims that false businesses are hijacking the locations and addresses of legitimate businesses on Google Maps. Worryingly, there could be up to 11 million false businesses operating on the app at any given moment.
Picture the scene.
You log onto Google Maps to look for a plumber or an electrician. You find one located near to your house and arrange for them to do the work. They then turn up, do the work unsatisfactorily, and then charge two to three times the market cost for the job.
This is exactly what has been happening. The Wall Street Journal even cited the worrying story of a woman living alone who was visited multiple times by a “repairman” demanding payment for a job he hadn’t completed satisfactorily.
Unsurprisingly, Google has been quick to respond to the report, releasing its own blog post about how it deals with these types of scams. The blog post, however, is filled with less than impressive numbers. They are claiming that last year Maps took down more than 3 million fake business profiles, with more than 90% of them removed before any users saw the profile. Most of these came from Google’s internal systems but 250,000 were reported by Maps users.
This is about a quarter of the number of fake businesses, the analysts from The WSJ found. This means there are still millions of fake business profiles active on Google Maps despite Google’s best efforts. Even worse for Google is the fact that its blog post doesn’t even address the damning claim from the WSJ that a Google commissioned an academic study. It found only 0.5% of local businesses looked at were fake was unreliable due to the extremely limited amount of data considered.
How to avoid fake businesses on Google Maps
With Google’s best efforts falling short on this one and fake businesses regularly breaking through onto Google Maps, this reminds us a lot of another Google marketplace: The Google Play Store. The Play Store has time and again been overrun with false apps loaded with malware and developed by scammers.
- Look for local businesses that have other user reviews
- Look for a web URL
- Google the business and look for other sources of information other than the Google Maps listing
- Trust your gut: if something doesn’t feel right, look elsewhere
Did Google Maps just become a messaging app?
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