Google has unveiled new data revealing its recent efforts to minimize fake listings on Google Maps. Remarkably, the search giant has decreased the number of fraudulent listings by 70% since the all-time peak in June 2015.
The company acknowledges widespread abuse within Google My Business, affecting Google Maps and Search. Bad actors often register fake listings to deceive businesses or extort customers.
Local listing scams are distinct from other online scams because the perpetrators need to be geographically close to their victims. Google notes that this significantly alters the scale and types of potential abuse.
To bolster its defenses, Google collaborated with the University of California, San Diego, commissioning a study on the misuse of Google Maps. The study provided several key insights:
### Most Common Types of Fake Listings
Around 40% of fake listings involve bad actors posing as locksmiths, plumbers, electricians, and other contractors. Despite Google’s efforts to discover and disable these listings, perpetrators continued creating them using nonexistent postal addresses and disposable VoIP phone numbers.
About 10% of fake listings were legitimate businesses fraudulently claimed by scammers. These included hotels and restaurants, where customers would see genuine services. However, the businesses were being defrauded into paying referral fees for organic interest.
### How Google is Keeping Fake Listings Off Google Maps
Based on its findings, Google has introduced an advanced verification process for locksmiths and plumbers. Other measures include:
– Prohibiting bulk registrations at most addresses
– Preventing businesses from relocating significantly without additional verification
– Detecting and ignoring intentionally scrambled text in address fields designed to mislead Google’s algorithms
– Adapting anti-spam machine learning systems to detect discrepancies common to fake or deceptive listings
Since implementing these measures, Google has managed to identify and disable 85% of fake listings before they become visible to the public. Now, less than 0.5% of local searches lead to fake listings.
Google will present its comprehensive report on Google Maps abuse at the International World Wide Web Conference on April 7, 2017.
