It is sometimes claimed that Google is not doing anything to prevent spam from popping up on Maps or to remove it quickly (or even automatically) once is it there. This is definitely not true: they are doing a lot, but the spammers keep coming up with new methods to avoid being detected - since I myself am working in the cubersecurity industry, I am very familiar with that type of cat and mouse game, and it makes me realize that this will never stop.
On that very topic of spam on Google Maps and how to fight it, I had a interview with Jason Brown a couple of weeks ago (episode 33 of the LetsGuide Podcast), and Jason mentioned a couple of things that caught my attention (confession: I actually do those interviews to learn new things myself, and that has worked just fine until now). He said that spammers often register ābusinessesā on Maps with silly categories, most likely to avoid the extra scrutiny there is now for categories which are frequently used for fake locations (typically for lead generation purposes), such as locksmiths and plumbers. Once those places are then created, they simply edit the listings to show the info they really want to have displayed on Maps.
Should you not be familiar with this phenomenon, please check out the #LGCTM (Local Guides Clean The Map) case study on locksmith fraude and the story of what happened afterwards.
So I decided to check if I could find any unusual use of categories. And it did not take me long to stumble upon some places on Maps that seemed to fit this pattern: locksmith entries (with in fact the same characteristics as the ones I have described in the case study mentioned above) that were categorized as Dress store. Huh??? And then I found some plumbers and electricians also having Dress store as category. Some others had the more general Store category. You can see some of those in the screenshot below.
Taking the investigation one step futher, I then decided to use āDress storeā as search term on Maps. And that lead me to an amazing discovery that showcases exactly what Jason Brown had been talking about. As you can see in the Maps screenshot at the top of this post, this lead me to one particular location that seems to be a genuine hatch for fake Google listings: at a single point (the Maps location for a street) there were 15 or so POIs (points of interest) bearing the category Store or Dress store. And the names have either Magasin (French for store), mag (short for Magasin), Echoppe (French for stall e.g. on a market) or in one case even Electricien (French for electrician). A bit futher down that same road, I found a bunch of very similar ones - see screenshot below.
Almost none of these places were claimed, though, and most of the fake locations I had come across in the past were claimed. So what was going on here? What possible purpose could these fake locations serve if they did not try to lure possible customers to some or other service? Thatās when I realized that this was the other spamming technique Jason had been talking about right before my eyes: the fake listings are first created with nothing more then the bare essentials (name, location and category) and then later on adapted to serve their actual purpose. I had actually stumbled upon their breeding ground, or hatch as I referred to it earlier.
The next question I was asking myself then: would I be able to find locations that were similar to those seen at the hatch, but on other locations? And also there, the answer was yes. As you can see in the next screenshot, a targeted search lead to a list of POIs still located at the hatch and others at other locations.
Interestingly, most of the POIs at the other locations were claimed and had more info, such as a telephone number, a website (which can be generated automatically as part of the Google My Business service) or both. And one of them even already has the word Serruriers (French for locksmiths) in the name. So I was actually witnessing the creation of fake lead generation listings as a multi-step process! Iām not sure (yet 
) in which order the steps are made but, from the evidence Iāve seen, basically it could be something like this:
- Create a POI with the bare minimum data (name, location, category - although not with the data you want it to have in the end)
- Move POI to a different location
- Claim the business
- Make some changes to name
- Add a phone number
- Create a website using the Google My Business (GMB) feature
- Add the category you are targeting in the POI name
Having found out all this, I can now remove those fake POIs even before they start serving the purpose their creators have in mind - remove spam even before the real harm is done. And that is exactly what I will start doing right now. So far I have not yet marked any of them as spam to be able to make some nice screenshots for this post, but now that the post is outā¦ itās #LGCTM time!
