We’ve all seen them, those reviews from people who have only reviewed one or two places, or the alternative the person who seems to have reviewed about 1,000 places a week… These people may be from competing businesses trying to bring down a competitor or points hogs in the second instance.
People do this because they perceive there are no consequences and they cannot get caught doing it.
In Australia at least this certainly isn’t so, the courts have been taking a dim view of the practice and have ordered Google to reveal the real identities of the people and in the case of the linked article there has been a successful legal battle with significant life changing payouts. Refer https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2020/lawyer-wins–750-000-over-bad-google-review.html
If you’re tempted to lift your points through a review here and there that you’ve not experienced then you may be in for an unpleasant surprise one day.
In all things Local Guides, be truthful, be accurate and exhibit the Core Values of Connect. This will avoid legal super heroes coming to find you.
That’s an alert to the persons who create reviews based on the experience of relatives or friends, or plainly by going through the information on the web.
I wish Google would crack down more effectively on fake reviews and people who sell fake reviews (positive and negative) for a living.
I see way too many reviews from Maps users having only one or very few reviews. A minimum of a few reviews of length on places that are confirmed by time-line data could improve the overall quality of the rating system considerably IMO.
Would it be relevant to tighten your posts title using stronger words than “experienced”? How about “Been a customer of” or *Used the services of"?
Very useful feature @PaulPavlinovich , by this I remember one of my fellow local guide from my country, who add and edits places in those countries where he didn’t visit, and then complaining that my edits are rejecting by Google continuously in our messenger group chat. I advised him to not to do such activities which can be cause of his dismissal from LG program.
@MortenCopenhagen “experienced” is wording used in the support articles so I try to be consistent
@KashifMisidia indeed a lot of people do that and tend to find there are consequences. There are some circumstances when its ok, if you can find clear evidence then its ok but its important to undertake the verification and generally speaking who can be bothered doing that much work!
@PaulPavlinovich Thank you for sharing this with all of the local guides.
Many of the local guides actually does this because of earning points. By hosting more meetups we should try to make them aware of this things and make them loyal to Google maps. Thanks again.
Wow @PaulPavlinovich , this is indeed a very tough action but fully legitimate, being a Local Guides must be surely driven by core values and represent the honest reality. Good article .
This article is very worrying, I hope none of my reviews are disputed. Also because for me it would be an economic catastrophe. My reviews are true, but I would not be in the situation of being accused of something, also because now there is a sentence that can be a model for other processes.
I read the title and began to laugh. I am presenting two cases.
CASE ONE SCENARIO (AGAINST)
You know some time ago I wanted to visit a State in Nigeria.
I am not visiting a place in a state without seeing some exciting place there. I love Resorts especially.
So, I am checking out this Resort and I decide to see what others who had visited the Resort had said about the place because; well, “This is Nigeria”.
Then, I saw a Local Guide had reviewed, I was so happy! only to read the review and see, she had practically copied what was on the website as Review.
I was not on 'Connect’ then but I just knew something was off.
CASE TWO SCENARIO (FOR? NO! EDUCATE - AGAINST!)
If I want to make a case for this category of people (which I would not) Google Maps is to blame, you could pass in front of a place and then; you get a prompt; "Ewaade darling, how was your trip to SPAR TEJUOSHO and I am looking at Maps like; “Who went to SPAR?”
I think we can educate people to use the “dismiss from Timeline option”.
Work on Maps resume after all lockdown restrictions are lifted in Lagos, for me.
The lawyer (Gordon cheng) did a wonderful job by filing a defamation case (for writing false reviews of business) against the perpetrator. Any idea on why she wrote the false reviews against the lawyer, her motive of keep on writing negative/false reviews against Cheng business is strange. Thanks for sharing a great example of the consequences on writing false reviews on Gmaps @PaulPavlinovich
I agree that meet-ups are one way of raising awareness @PritishB - I like your loyalty to Maps idea, but I suggest perhaps its more about loyalty to their local community. We can really hurt our communities by being poor Local Guides in the same way we lift our local community up if we’re great Local Guides.
Indeed yes, a substantial pay out @LuigiZ and something many of us should learn from.
@Ewaade_3A it is true that the timeline prompts both for reviews and photos could have encouraged poor behaviour, but lately this automation is much better and is worded to be more clear that you should only do it if you’ve been there - this is actually something that I feel the voices from Connect Live brought about in Maps. The voices talking directly with researchers and developers brought those people to the understanding that the functionality they were so proud of was potentially having undesirable effects. One of the things that I love about having been selected for Connect is being listened to and considered. I’m really happy to have played a small part in improving the platform we all use everyday.
I don’t think we’ll ever know the answer to that question @fasi6083 there must be a story there. One challenging aspect of court decisions is we tend to only understand the story of the winner. Did these people know each other? Its very weird. I’ve seen vengeful reviews from disgruntled employees and disgruntled business partners and competitors - in some ways you can understand those because I understand the motive but in this case there doesn’t seem to be one at least from what we know.
@SP31 many of life’s decisions work that way don’t they
@PaulPavlinovich very interesting and and informative post. I see they do a lot on Social Media in Cambodia but not sure about Google. Hopefully not. However, it is interesting to know that business owner can track down whether they are clients or not who review it?
As you are sems to be very active Connect Moderator, would you tell me why my latest post is not trending although my posts likes and comments are higher than other Trending posts ? Pls give me your idea my dear wise friend !
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Google Maps is to blame, you could pass in front of a place and then; you get a prompt; "Ewaade darling, how was your trip to 
