Millions of Business Listings On Google Maps Are Fake -- and Google Profits (wsj.com) 47
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Google's ubiquitous internet platform shapes what's real and what isn't for more than two billion monthly users. Yet Google Maps is overrun with millions of false business addresses and fake names, according to advertisers, search experts and current and former Google employees. The ruse lures the unsuspecting to what appear to be Google-suggested local businesses, a costly and dangerous deception. Once considered a sleepy, low-margin business by the company and known mostly for giving travel directions, Google Maps in recent months has packed more ads onto its search queries. It is central to Google parent Alphabet's hope to recharge a cresting digital-advertising operation.
Often, Google Maps yields mirages, visible in local business searches of U.S. cities, including Mountain View, Calif., Google's hometown. Of a dozen addresses for personal-injury attorneys on Google Maps during a recent search, only one office was real. A Viennese patisserie was among the businesses at addresses purported to house lawyers. The fakes vanished after inquiries to Google from The Wall Street Journal. The false listings benefit businesses seeking more customer calls by sprinkling made-up branches in various corners of a city. In other cases, as Ms. Carter discovered, calls to listed phone numbers connect to unscrupulous competitors, a misdirection forbidden by Google rules but sporadically policed by the company. Hundreds of thousands of false listings sprout on Google Maps each month, according to experts. Google says it catches many others before they appear. According to the report, Google Maps is estimated to carry "roughly 11 million falsely listed businesses on any given day," and a majority of the listings "aren't located at their pushpins."
Google didn't provide its own figure, but they did say that false map listings are a small percentage of the total. A 2017 academic study that the company paid for found that 0.5% of local searches examined on the service had yielded fake results. But that's likely because "Google provided limited data and diluted the study with listings for restaurants, hotels and other businesses that rarely post false locations," the report says.
Often, Google Maps yields mirages, visible in local business searches of U.S. cities, including Mountain View, Calif., Google's hometown. Of a dozen addresses for personal-injury attorneys on Google Maps during a recent search, only one office was real. A Viennese patisserie was among the businesses at addresses purported to house lawyers. The fakes vanished after inquiries to Google from The Wall Street Journal. The false listings benefit businesses seeking more customer calls by sprinkling made-up branches in various corners of a city. In other cases, as Ms. Carter discovered, calls to listed phone numbers connect to unscrupulous competitors, a misdirection forbidden by Google rules but sporadically policed by the company. Hundreds of thousands of false listings sprout on Google Maps each month, according to experts. Google says it catches many others before they appear. According to the report, Google Maps is estimated to carry "roughly 11 million falsely listed businesses on any given day," and a majority of the listings "aren't located at their pushpins."
Google didn't provide its own figure, but they did say that false map listings are a small percentage of the total. A 2017 academic study that the company paid for found that 0.5% of local searches examined on the service had yielded fake results. But that's likely because "Google provided limited data and diluted the study with listings for restaurants, hotels and other businesses that rarely post false locations," the report says.
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And Slashdot profits.
deja vu (Score:2, Informative)
Re:deja vu (Score:4, Funny)
Are we discussing this one again??
The first article was a fake. This is the real one.
Maps has product design issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Google Maps is following Quora and /. on the same path, in order to increase activity they support low quality contributions.
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"One d4 damage" with "a helm of disintegration" sounds about right for asinine video game design.
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I am a Level 7 Local Guide with some experience and knowledge to share on my local area. Over the time both UI/UX and data quality has decreased and still is decreasing.
All I really want is for Google to believe me when I select "I haven't been here". I stopped in a supermarket parking lot to meet someone once, and it's been asking me to review it since... for over a year now. I've probably told it I haven't been there at least a dozen times.
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WSJ = Faux News Lite? (Score:1)
Diluted (Score:2)
But that's likely because "Google provided limited data and diluted the study with listings for restaurants, hotels and other businesses that rarely post false locations," the report says
Shouldn't it be clear that the problem is not the listing process itself when said process works for most types of businesses?
My experience has been the exact opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm not going to read the article because the summary is enough for me to point out that my experience with Google Maps has been the exact opposite. I've never once had Google Maps direct me to a business that didn't exist, but I have seen some relatively new ones that I know for a fact exist not show up in Google Maps for a long time. I've run into this when trying to get to a new place and I know only one way to get to it, but traffic is bad and maybe Google Maps knows a better, quicker way for me to use. The thought occurs to me too that the issue in the article, if it's even a real problem, could simply be specific to lawyers and not be an issue for other types of businesses.
This. Google maps isn't perfect, not by a long shot but it's reliable enough and the simple fact is no other mapping application comes close, either in functionality, usability, datasets or price. You can get better functionality out of ArcGIS, but the cost is insane and user friendliness goes out the window (we used to say ESRI was the Microsoft of the GIS world, monopolists and they knew it). You can get better individual datasets, but they're expensive and you have to tie them together yourself.
Google
No Problem (Score:1)
Just use Bing Maps, it runs much much faster in Firefox, without any of the "glitches". It also has more detail and generally looks nicer.
It's interesting how Bing Maps can show more detail at a larger zoom while being much more responsive. Bing Maps even has details that Google Maps doesn't like bike and walking paths in my city, that Google doesn't. It just feels nicer in general too, I guess it's because they're not trying to take over Internet standards by breaking everything that isn't Chrome.
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This Microsoft-sponsored ad copy, and especially its ironic final sentence, shows competition can work.
If Microsoft ever dominates again, they will revert to their old behaviors, decried of Google in said sentence.
I don't get it (Score:2)
Google lures me into a place with lots of restaurant ads on maps but if I go there, I don't get anything to eat?
So it can't be to up the ratings since sure as hell I'm deyelping them to hell.
Mrs Carter (Score:1)
Mrs Carter was unhappy.
That's great.
Who is Mrs Carter and why do we care?
E