Here below are some personal ideas, hope these can help putting Google Map in even better position.
Those who ACTUALLY VISITED a certain location, their comments or review for that place, can be calculated with more weight in total score. Or, at least, Google can put a mark on those who DID visited , with a note “visited this site”
Example: an “On site” note
*** For hotel review, user comments shall not have “On site” mark or note unless have stayed in or close that hotel more than 3 hours(And can then be timed by 1.5 for their rating star weight – timed by 2 while stayed more than 12 hours ). It’s just sometimes, we really have no ways to tell whether this person who left comments had really been there or not.
Also, let users easier to find out the lower evaluation comments. (In amazon, customers can specifically pick out 2 stars reviews, or 3, or 4,etc. to look into)
The Amazon example: they understand that, peer reviews are important to future customers. And unfortunately, some sellers have had lots of friends(or friends get paid) pour in 5 stars, hollowness reviews, try to raise their products’ rating.
And Amazon had a simple way to deal with this phenomenon-let customers easier to find every level review.
That’s all I had for now.
Final words, I myself find it more and more hard to leave negative comments or review, people might get hurt. But it also feels bad to step onto wrong places due to false guide, or cannot find any warnings in advance.