Unethical Early Reviews On Google Maps

Google Maps tips & tricks
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Hello!

This might not be the right place to ask this question (please let me know): So,

I noticed a local guide posting 5 star reviews on places that have not opened/launched yet. For at least of two of the restaurants, the opening date is way out. It is likely that this person is claiming additional points for a “first review”. In the grand scheme of things, it does not really matter but is it agains the Google polices (it is definitely against mine)? I can provide screenshots and pictures if this is a reportable incident.

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Hi @trupy :

Thanks for bringing this up! You can bring up this concern here or you can also follow the information on this page.

When bringing up a concern here, it is best to tag a Google Moderator, so I’ll tag @TsekoV here and someone should be following up with you.

Thanks again for being so vigilant!

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@TsekoV Thank you! I will wait to hear from someone.

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Hi @Shirley ,

Thanks for tagging me in this post.

@trupy , if you have found a profile that has content which violates our program rules and the Maps User Contributed Content Policy, please use the Report Profile function in Google Maps as detailed in this article.

P.S.: Just to let you know, I will move your topic to the How-Tos section of the community.

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@TsekoV @Shirley @Noted although the report option does not allow for comments and we can all hope that the person reading it would be able to “connect the dots”. Oh, well. I tried. Thank you both.

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Hi @trupy i

I know it how awkward it feels when you need to report something and Google Maps does not allow us to explain/specify what the problem is. This really needs to be improved.

One more thing you can do is to report the pre-opening review itself.

And you could check if the user is making other blatant violations and report those also.

Have a great day.

Cheers

Morten

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@trupy this might be fraudulent activity by a SEO person trying to uplift the listing in search - I would report it via the GMB support community https://support.google.com/business/community

Paul

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