As part of the Local Guides Clean The Map#LGCTM project I would like to share my experience from finding empty and dormant businesses on the map. I have earned quite a lot of points from removing such companies.
First a bit of background: In my country, the politicians would like to see more people starting their own businesses. Hence they have made it super easy and cheap to establish a legal company without risking your home and savings. It is called an “entrepreneur business cooperation”. In Danish, the abbreviated kind of business is called an IVS company. Until early last year, you could set up such a company for only 0.15 US dollars. That is ridiculously cheap. Today you need to deposit a least 7500 USD to start such a company. But quite a few people created such a company. Companies that they never used. These companies are mandated to have the letters “IVS” in their company name. All new businesses are automatically imported into Google Maps.
Here is what I do:
1. Zoom into an area on the map. One with many law firms is especially good. And do a search for “IVS”. Up comes a very long list of IVS-companies.
For each on the list :
2. Open the POI.
Here it is super easy if the company is inactive. The category will be empty. There are no pictures. There are no reviews. There is no website or opening hours. Inactive companies will only have the name + an address. Hence you can be sure that this is an automatically imported and inactive company. In that case, go ahead and suggest the company be removed.
3. If there is a phone number listed, I do a quick lookup in the local online phone directory. If the number comes back unknown or the number belongs to a law firm, then I also go ahead and suggest the business be removed.
4. If there is a link to a website, I follow the link. And if the link is dead, I also go ahead and suggest the business be removed.
Then it is back to the list and do the next company.
The success rate for these edits is very close to 100% since you actually did much of the testing that the AI would depend on.
There are other types of limited cooperations/businesses where I can follow the exact same procedure and find more inactive businesses.
Of cause, “IVS” is not the term to search for in other countries. Why don’t you do some research in your area to figure out if something similar exists there? If so, please share your experience below.
Hi @MortenCopenhagen , I believe that your intention is the best possible, but I’m not sure if I agree with you on suggesting the removal of a place without visiting it. I understood the context of your country, but it may not apply to other areas.
In my area, a lot of legitimate businesses don’t have the information that you listed in number 3.
But “Remove” is a general phrase and it should be noted that an inactive business should only mark as “permanently closed”.
One another thing is that sometimes companies put additional keywords to the name, for these cases, first we should fix the name to the real name and then mark it as closed.
Hi @MortenCopenhagen you are really doing a great job here, but I am concerned about the language used, removing spam is ok but removing inactive businesses on Maps that might be something else, it might happen that the business is new and still under development, obvious it wont have all the detailed you are looking for, another issue will be the target market for that particular business, they might not be into things, like the location of the business, it might happen that the people do not use Google Maps that much, meaning that there wont be any reviews written and no photo uploaded, unless they were uploaded by the owner.
Here where I am from businesses operates without online presents, not even listed on Google Maps, so if it happens that someone added it, and never added all the detailed you mentioned, does this mean it should be removed on Google Maps as @AlexandreCampbell asked? I would like to hear from you based on this. Thank you.
I also know from personal experience that Google uses reliable sources to get databases of businesses. For example the Netherlands, there is a Company Registration office (Kamer van Koophandel) where all business traders must register. It seems that Google has used the data of this office and the Netherlands was covered with businesses on Maps that are in fact private addresses of free-lancers and “empty” holding companies. These listings are often easily recognized, like you said, as they often have no category attached to them and are not claimed businesses, exactly as you described.
In the past wealthy people would simply get themselves holding businesses to manage their private finances. It could be to manipulate inheritance, taxes and the ability to write off a certain type of expenses against the business. As far as I know, most European countries have changed their laws and these empty holdings are no longer useful for that kind of purpose.
Still, a lot of them are around and a lot of them would qualify as “places one should not add to Google Maps”. These holdings are not selling anything or are not offering any services to the public, their sole purpose is private use…
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I must admit that this concept was developed over a long time. And I failed to explain the process in my opening post. In the beginning, I was only doing this in my very local neighborhood, where I know pretty much every shop and office by heart. So over time, with a lot of real-world checking, it became evident that if there is only data only in the name and address these businesses are indeed inactive. There are many signs that they are just imported from other databases and not created by owners. Any serious business owner would not make such an empty listing.
Also here in my area beeing on Google Maps is really important for local businesses. Practically all real-world businesses have a strong presence on Google Maps. So nearly empty listings really stick out.
@Raphael-Mahumane@AlexandreCampbell I understand your concerns, but what @MortenCopenhagen is describing is such a specific situation from his own country and he is also explaining the background story on how this all ended on the map, that I am quite confident he is acting in a correct way.
In my personal approach, one of my guiding principles is also ‘when in doubt, do nothing’ - I plan a separate Tips post on that.
Thanks for your comment. I chose the word “Remove” only because that is the wording used when “Suggesting an edit”. I’m very aware that we only make suggestions to remove, and nothing is really removed. Businesses are just marked with the ON/OFF-flag “Permanently closed”. So nothing is deleted or removed from the database. Every review and photo can easily and quickly be restored when a Local Guide suggests that the business is not closed after all.
I agree with you that it is always worth removing search terms from the name field.
Thank you @MortenCopenhagen and @JanVanHaver for the clarification. Besides I had some concerns, I believe that I learned a lot from these tips and can apply, with some adaptations (identifying potentially nearby businesses using Morten tips and then running a Meet up to check in person (or doing it by myself).
Thank you very much for your comments and critique. You are presenting very valid concerns. Please take a look at my replies to @AlexandreCampbell and @Amiran above. Further, I would like to present the following arguments:
New businesses and businesses that are under development who took the time to add a name and an address only did not waste a lot of time on this! And they can change the “Permanently closed”-flag within minutes. Remember they didn’t even take the time to select an appropriate category!
As mentioned in my reply to Alexandre almost all serious businesses in Denmark do take the time to make and maintain their listing on Google Maps. So having no pictures, opening hours, website, phone number and reviews is really a strong indicator for being dormant or non-existing.
With respect to the rules, I recall that to be on the map a business should have a physical presence with some staff where customers can visit. This is definitely not the case here.
I understand and respect that the situation can be very different in other places. Maybe there is no automatic import of very incomplete data in your area. And businesses don’t use Google Maps to the same extent maybe because they don’t see the benefit - yet.
I hope this answers some of your very legitimate concerns. I acknowledge that this concept is close to the limit of what Local Guides should be doing. I don’t think I over-stepped, though. And if I did, I’m very open to adjust what I’m doing and edit this post accordingly. Please respond so this discussion can get more details and nuances.
Hi @MortenCopenhagen thank you for your response. I am happy the way you explained it above, it clarify everything, I must say that deference in countries or cities makes this product less valuable in other cities and countries and more valuable in other cities and countries too, depending on their development and the use of technology. Other places operates without its use and others might have it but no one cares if every required information is there or not as they might not know its benefit as you mentioned, so not everything that applies to other countries and the cities may apply to every one of us.
I just wanted to hear you how you handle this situations, here we do not have a list of operating businesses that can be added as you mentioned, each and every business do this on their own, individually or using their marketing team of they got one. Thank you for getting back, cheers!
I would like to add a few arguments to my reply from yesterday:
While developing and testing this strategy I also realized that
many of these dormant businesses only had the address of the lawyer who helped the individual setup the company legally. So the is was not even linked to the business owner’s private address.
and
Many of the business names were not very thoughtful. Examples include personal name followed by the word ‘consulting’ or ‘Nm Holding 1208’. Such names are clearly just temporary names.
Finally, I would like to mention that quite a few of them are established only to serve as help in reducing or delaying personal taxes. Such entities should not be on the map as @JeroenM explains below.
Hi @MortenCopenhagen I agree with you on that note, something like this does not really represent a business, it looks more like spam, until it gets corrected with the actual business name. I could have acted the same way, a business with someones’s name, and seeing more than two of them around the same area could simple trigger the spam filter to me too. I am learning too here, thank you for your valuable detailed information.
One final note: I think I succeeded in getting most of the inactive IVS businesses cleaned out in my area. When I now do a search for ‘IVS’ then only a short list shows up. All of them having a few or many more details in their Google Maps listing.
Bueno he aprendido y hay muy buenas sugerencias, sin embargo quiero añadir que no siempre que un sitios web este fuera de servicio quiere decir que el negocio este cerrado, hay empresas que a pesar de seguir abiertas no renuevan sus dominios o los cambian, y ellos no están pendientes de actualizar la ficha en el mapa.
Por eso es bueno cerciorarse de otras maneras, añadir más verificaciones para estar seguro si la empresa esta abierta o no. Lo mismo pasa con los números de teléfono, a veces los cambian sin actualizar la ficha del mapa de google.
Agradezco este espacio y estare atento para aprender y aportar.
