When you look up businesses and attractions on Google Maps, theoretically, reviews from tourists and consumers should be highly accurate and trustworthy. Unfortunately, because of opportunistic manipulation by unscrupulous individuals and dishonest businesses, those reviews aren’t so genuine. In 2024, Google added a series of exciting new features to Gemini AI, and now these tools will help improve reviews on Google Maps.
Google Maps uses AI to combat fake and fraudulent reviews.
Google Maps published an article, detailing its progress in 2024 in preventing and removing deceptive and fake content in reviews. The company explained how it used multiple AI tools to remove fake reviews and scam content from Google Maps, including some illegal profile edits and misleading information.
Basically, the Google Maps reviews you see now are more complete and trustworthy than they were last year, thanks to the combined efforts of several advanced machine learning algorithms. In just the past year, Google removed over 240 million reviews. Going forward, repeat offenders may be flagged on review pages, and in some cases, reviews for specific locations may be temporarily disabled.
Google says its AI models and algorithms are getting faster at detecting businesses that try to game the system by buying fake five-star reviews for places they never visited, and it is actively re-checking reviews more frequently, having already found and identified patterns of abuse. In addition to removing problematic reviews, Google Maps has also detected and immediately deleted or updated nearly 70 million place edits that violated its terms of service. Additionally, it removed 10,000 bad actors who had taken over unclaimed or managed business profiles or accounts and added misleading information, business details, or reviews to them.
These measures not only help make reviews more trustworthy, but also slow down how quickly bad actors or business owners can post fake reviews to raise star ratings. This year, users in the United States, the United Kingdom, and India may even notice that some places on Google Maps do not accept reviews at all. If businesses repeatedly have fake or suspicious five-star reviews detected and removed, Maps will take a more proactive approach and temporarily disable reviews to slow the posting of fake reviews.
Another important aspect of Google Maps reviews is photos and videos, not just the reviews and star rating system. Google continues to use and improve AI tools to automatically evaluate all photos and videos posted by users in reviews, and immediately remove any harmful or offensive multimedia upon publication. Finally, Google detailed how it recently blocked more than 12 million fake business listings and added restrictions to nearly 1 million individual and business accounts that repeatedly violated Maps policies.
Source: KOCPC Chinese