The business above is only one example out of bunch, and the AI should be able to easily tell these obvious fakes/paid fake reviews. At the same time, I found this business is running Ads on Google Map, so they are technically a customer of Google Map, which makes me think that they may be getting away from being punished just because they also run ads on google map and bring revenue to google map ecosystem.
Anyone can easily tell most of these reviews are fake, but they are still not punished by the AI while many of local guides are being punished without doing anything that goes against the guidelines. The Google Map AI is known to be having a bug like this for more than a year at this point:
My point here is that we need more transparency on what the google map management team is thinking about these issues. Do they think this is an issue or this is just how it is? or Is the AI functioning fine or they think it has many issues and they are actually trying to improve it? It can be a form of a simple roadmap like many software companies use so that we can click a link to see what’s happening without having to guess what is possibly happening.
@AkSakei It can be challenging to detect whether reviews are fake or original, even for Google. I suggest raising the issue in the Google My Business help forum below
Did you double check with your peers and they agree these reviews are not fake? I am trying to be constructive and transparent here for a record that will be helpful to other local guides as well.
Summary of this chat
A business that has 4,500 reviews with around 4,400 five stars (95%+ of reviewers that rated 5 star here has only 1 or 2 total reviews) can be real reviews according to Google.
@AkSakei After reading some of the reviews, I can’t tell which reviews are fake. Nothing really outstanding from my end. Some businesses will give incentives for customers to leave 5 star reviews, which is not allowed, but it can be very hard to track even with machine learning. There are too many factors and variables.
If you think something shady is going on, you can collect the proof and report it. You can also get guidance by posting on the community I posted on my earlier reply.
@iyudhi You are right that it’s possible that all of them are real reviews. It is my opinion that it looks as suspicious as it gets, and it is your view that nothing shady seems to be going on here.
