Encountered hijacking and abuse of local google maps listing, where do I report it?

Google Maps tips & tricks
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I’ve been going around reviewing malls, especially a new one. There’s a new mall that opened up in my area, and shops have been slowly opening, and more crowds coming in over the past year.

I found out today that one of those mall listings got hijack and claimed by a small business. They forced changed the listing of the name to their business, then created another listing of the shopping mall itself.

There was about 500 reviews on the state of the mall. And now since the small business has hijacked the page, it looks like 500 reviews of their business instead. You can clearly see from the older reviews and photos of the listing people were uploading were talking about the mall.

Now the question is: Where can I report this? This is obviously an abuse of google maps and hijacking.

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You just did the correct thing, @DJ_Htx

Please make a reply with Maps links to the two pins. And make sure to specify which is the original mall pin. And if possible please check the latest reviews and photos to clarify where the cut is between mall and small business reviews and photos. Maybe they all belong to the mall.

Make sure we have the correct opening hours for the mall and phone number and website.

With this info @DeniGu might be able to escalate this for you.

Cheers

Morten

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This is the hijacked page in question

https://maps.app.goo.gl/HaC9FZY2VEyAFeA78?g_st=ic

I’m sure with an official google employee with access to the google map listing history, they can tell this was changed fairly recently from a mall to a business page.

This is the “replaced” google map listed https://g.co/kgs/hJbfW4L

Feel free to ping me again @DeniGu if you need more information.

Thank you @MortenCopenhagen too

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Hi @DJ_Htx ,

Thanks for reporting this issue and for sharing the Maps links! I’ll escalate it to the responsible team for investigation.

Thank you for the tag, @MortenCopenhagen . :blush:

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Hi @DJ_Htx ,

Good news! Sengkang Grand Mall is now appearing correctly on Maps, and a new pin has been created for the Twyst restaurant. :blush:

Thank you again for reporting this.

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Hello @DeniGu

Thanks for your help earlier.

however I realised that the old listing while marked as permanently closed and removed still remains as the hijackedname.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ok2Mi3t4KkXjxSCG9

Would it be alright to request the old mall listing to be renamed back to its original name “Sengkang Grand Mall” and merge the “newer” listing here with the original one.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/9CCCYRPfj9SPTVyX6

so that all the old reviews, photos, etc are relevant once again instead of laying dormant— potential for another hijack attempt?

best regards.

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Hi @DJ_Htx ,

I will forward this information to our responsible team to look into. Thank you for reporting this!

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Hi again @DJ_Htx ,

I’m happy to share that Sengkang Grand Mall now appears with only one listing on Google Maps. Contributions from the two separate listings you flagged have been merged together.

Thanks again for reporting this!