Hi,
Good Local Guides try to be genuine, to be themselves, and to share original content on Google Maps, and of course on Connect.
But we see many Local Guides copy content from the web and add them to Google Maps to earn points! We all know that this is kind of stealing to use others’ work as their own, but these users are stealing another thing, too.
Indeed their stolen reviews and photos, also steal the views of other users’ contributions. If there were no copied content, people see genuine reviews and photos but when there are, people see those stolen ones and not ours.
I know that the automated system filters many of such contributions but in many cases it lets! And even puts those stolen contributions on top!
Photos because users steal the photos from resources that shoot photos by professional photographers and AI also prefers such besties for photos that imply Perfect photography tips.
About reviews because users steal long descriptions from Wikipedia, Tourism websites, or the About section of companies and those have more than 200 characters with details about the place. So, the system thinks those are valuable ones and puts them on top!
Just as examples, you can check some tourist attractions like Naqsh Jahan Square and Saadabad Complex or top shopping malls like Iran Mall and Kourosh Mall to see many top reviews and photos stolen from the web.
In this way, our genuine contributions go down and behind the stolen ones so has less chance to be viewed by people. Even sometimes we put time only to take pictures for the Maps and experience places to share reviews on Maps and copied content easily destroys our efforts. This not only affects our total views but also does not guide people in the best way and they only see general and similar reviews that they can find on other places over the web.
I reported many such spammers, and in many cases, they were banned but their stolen contents are still visible publicly on the map and still on top! These days the condition become even harder and it seems Google pays less attention to stopping such spammers. I reported several copy-pasters and even level 10 ones that collect the most points by stolen content but no result at all!
The situation is even harder when you see that your genuine reviews and photos are hidden because of the system mistakes and such copied content is visible!
I think a simple text/image reverse search before showing a review/photo/update/Q&A publicly is necessary. I know this may use a lot of Google server resources but engineers could trade off to do their bests in this case.
In the end, note that this is not a complaint. This is only a thought to share with the community and Googlers to understand the negative effects of copied content on Google Maps. This is feedback to help engineers to help AI better understand genuine and fake content.
What is your idea to help prevent stolen content on the map?