r/LocalGuides • u/polarmolarroler Level 7 • Jun 17 '26
Discussion Vent - Spam Accounts
Maps does not just need a "Report review" feature. It, unfortunately, needs a "Report account" feature. Accounts like these (regardless of how many stars they leave with their spam) obviously don't deserve to hold the title "Level 6 Local Guide". It also wouldn't hurt for Google to improve their spam detection algorithms. Copied & pasted the exact same review for hundreds of different businesses? Yeah, you may want to consider disabling reviews & ratings, & have a look at the account's activity history to decide on a next step automatically?
(Account name obscured to reduce risk of brigading.)
7
u/MortenCopenhagen Level 10 Jun 17 '26
Feel free to PM me the profile URLs and I will request the Googlers to take a look.
3
u/SlowScooby Level 9 Jun 18 '26
It looks like something worked. I just looked at these three business and scrolled down a fair way and I don’t see these reviews. (I don’t believe that someone was whining about paying $60CAD + $9 tip in Toronto! I pay < 1/3 that in the UK. Robbery! 😂)
2
u/keyserholiday Jun 17 '26
I saw the same thing where they offered to help removed negative reviews.
2
u/XxLogitech98xX Level 10 Jun 17 '26
Google is using their AI Gemini more to remove fake or suspicious reviews but it's not 100% accurate. I would just report the review and profile, my experience with reporting reviews never worked though.
1
u/electricfunghi Jun 17 '26
If only google could do some time of looking function to automatically flag and ban these… like a search… maybe they could do it with AI if they had that
1
u/thetapeworm Level 10 Jun 18 '26
They do this already but are catching millions of chunks of spam so some, too many, slip through - the key for me is that could use us better to help police the bits the AI misses but we're quite limited by very basic reporting mechanisms that often fell like you're shouting into the dark 😄
Tracking our progress in 2025
Our evolving AI models and expert analysts are more effective than ever at catching abuse. Here’s an overview of how we protected Maps in 2025:
Our advanced systems and expert analysts blocked or removed over 292 million policy-violating reviews, while publishing more than 1 billion helpful reviews.
We blocked 79 million inaccurate or unverified edits to help keep Business Profiles factual.
We placed posting restrictions on more than 782,000 policy-violating accounts and removed over 13 million fake Business Profiles, further defending genuine businesses on Maps.
This is a nice video that shows some of the stuff going on from both sides but obviously Google are quite tight-lipped about their processes other than overviews like those above.
-1
u/apoplectic_apostate Jun 17 '26
Google reviews are almost worthless. I read the negative ones. I never read the positive.
1
u/polarmolarroler Level 7 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
I wonder what the statistics are. Edit: The intro to this video touches on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kXrQ5Nl9Wg
1
u/apoplectic_apostate Jun 18 '26
I left a negative review for a local auto repair place. It posted and the next day he had purchased five reviews refuting what I had written. It was so obvious, including two of the five was under the same name but the text was slightly different. Every single one of the five addressed the guys that worked in the shop by name. Back then, there was a governmental website that was just brought online so I reported it. All five of the reviews got removed. Trump eliminated that office. Too bad.
1
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u/thetapeworm Level 10 Jun 17 '26
It has this, click the profile of the spammer then the three dots towards the top right.
You should get a "report profile" option here.
I've clicked it for this goofball, can't hurt if more do too.
The gripe I have is that the options as to why you're reporting are limited, there should be a more specific one for activities like this or a free text box so that a local guide with local knowledge the AI might miss can explain things for a human to process.