One user is spamming vastly and and marking POIs as temporary closed!

[Amiran]

Hi all,

These days we in the Iran Local Guides community see many POIs marked as temporarily closed on the map of Iran, while these POIs are open in real and it is totally wrong to be marked as closed on the map.

The number of POIs marked as temporarily closed are too high so it clearly shows one user is editing POIs randomly to earn points. Marking as temporarily closed is one of the simplest edits for approval and I think because of this spammer user selected this edit.

Note that this is totally different from that time in starting months of the COVID-19 that Google marked all training centers and shopping centers as temporary closed.

Because edits history is not visible for users, I can not find spammer (Although my investigations continues ) but definitely Googlers can check and stop the user from doing more spams. So I bring some examples to be checked and find the spammer user.

Attention: For some examples I also edited and re-opened them so do not consider last edit as spam, Just see who temporarily closed the POI in edit history and stop him, please.

Examples:

1. https://goo.gl/maps/mPYSxisY4rnfbLVN9

It was wrongly temporarily closed and I opened it.

2. https://goo.gl/maps/fuxojP9CNHYzjjyW6

I also edited this one to re-open it again.

3. https://goo.gl/maps/iEd7jWjVnZfutwye6

Still I didn’t edit this to re-open.

4. https://goo.gl/maps/mKW7fn2uwkbHQZ2i7

Still I didn’t re-opened this.

Although we check our around areas repetitively but this is not possible for us to check all the country and re-open all POIs those wrongly marked as temporarily closed. So definitely this issue needs help form Google.

Dear @DeniGu I really appreciate it if you can check and help in this issue.

Thanks a lot

[DeniGu]

Hi @Amiran ,

Thank you for raising this issue with us. I’ll escalate it to the relevant team and will let you know if we need any more details. Thanks again!

[Amiran]

@DeniGu Many thanks. Your always kindly help, results to have a reliable map

[Amiran]

Hello dear @DeniGu

Any investigation? I see hundreds of closed POIs on the map and it seems these are increasing! May you please inform me about the result?

[DeniGu]

Hi @Amiran ,

Apologies for not confirming this earlier, but the team did investigate this. They took actions about the places you reported and other locations of a similar kind.

Can you please tell me more about what kind of places you see as closed now? Are they again parks, or some other category (like attractions, businesses, etc.)? It’d really help if you shared examples, too!

[Amiran]

Thank you so much dear @DeniGu , You’re most welcome.

Indeed I wanna to know if the team found any spammer and banned him/her? If so then I can consider these places remnant from old spam edits.

But if they didn’t find or didn’t ban any spammer, then something different is happening on the map!

These days I see many kinds of places. I have doubts about some educational places those could be old one that Google Marked as temporarily closed because of pandemic. But I also see this closure for other categories like stores, restaurant, cafes, bakeries, parks and many other daily categories those are wrongly marked as temporarily closed.

No need to search a lot. In any area in any cities (many indeed since I can not check all ) I can find lots of such places while we in Iran Local Guides community, corrected many of our around areas till now. This is not normal!

Some few examples in different areas of different cities:

https://goo.gl/maps/LFfksJsVtJbcatJX7

https://goo.gl/maps/NaVJSk9LwVZoKzwv8

https://goo.gl/maps/rcEzs5hQNar6h3xE8

https://goo.gl/maps/vRYBVE3nP37neAtb9

https://goo.gl/maps/6WU5K8yEyrASw2Kd8

https://goo.gl/maps/23NVGY1CgRJUcsJ46

https://goo.gl/maps/P7JacyMYnkEZBicN9

https://goo.gl/maps/gFon3jdb15vr6aMX7

https://goo.gl/maps/jiHu7AWGf3nAUxTC7

https://goo.gl/maps/gQAxmYiL6FZJWCSw9

https://goo.gl/maps/hsTxohRyHM5fuDMDA

https://goo.gl/maps/WUDjw2tYg1vgCBka7

https://goo.gl/maps/7mcy9o8mxBrbo9By7

https://goo.gl/maps/pPNCAw89wwRV1sY6A

https://goo.gl/maps/meKGD4Zf3ZyUqniq7

https://goo.gl/maps/aq32XVQrb1WoqoE58

https://goo.gl/maps/zHrdnENtddjbrpV2A

Due to the signs and because such a situation didn’t happen in other countries, I can say this is not system and I can guess the spammer searches one general phrase of a category and mark all results as temporarily closed. And then he/she goes to search another phrases and in another cities.

I’m really confused of the number of closed places on the map! Please let me know what is happening in the background. Is this a spammer still continuing to spams? Is this automatic edits by system? Or what?

Thank you so much for your help

[DeniGu]

Hi @Amiran ,

Unfortunately, I can’t share with you the results of the investigation. However, I will forward the examples you so kindly provided so the team is aware that this is happening to places across different categories. Please keep in mind that the investigation might take some time due to the volume of places.

Thank YOU and the entire Iran Local Guides community for being so vigilant and passionate about the right information being shown on Google Maps!

[Amiran]

Thank you dear @DeniGu

That’s OK. I understand the situation.

It is enough that I know you and the team, support for being correct information on the map and our efforts to keep map reliable, will not be ineffective.

Thanks a lot for your help and for your kindness

[DeniGu]

Hi @Amiran ,

The team did a thorough check of the places you flagged. Many of them were marked as ‘Temporarily closed’ due to an internal process and not by a user. This was done to ensure that information on the map is correctly represented. If you come across a business or a place that shows as temporarily closed but is, in fact, open, please suggest an edit directly in Google Maps, just like you did with the parks you escalated earlier. Thank you!

[Amiran]

Hi dear @DeniGu

So many thanks for this reply. This helps us to better know the conditions and to be sure that our edits to open a really open place, will not be closed again deliberately by a user

Definitely we will do our bests for the map and we’re so happy to have such a great and responsive support team and to have you as a member of support team.

[DeniGu]

Thank you too, @Amiran , for your dedication and passion!!