Add an option to report or flag a business listing

[#1]

As a Local Guide, particularly those who have reached the higher levels of the program, we often spot errors in business listings, and in trying to do what's right will submit edits that will improve the quality of the listing, or remove clear violations of both Maps and Google My Business guidelines for listings.

Currently, these edits will appear in the businesses Google My Business dashboard, with a "one-click" undo, cancelling those edits (and with many businesses now employing 'bots' to auto-undo, many times these edits are cancelled in minutes). It should be possible for a Local Guide to flag such edits, for them to go to a Google team member for review and publishing that will circumvent the "undo" option, thus allowing the change to remain.

Such a feature could include a comment box for the Local Guide to provide details why they think the change is appropriate, which could then be reviewed by the Google team member.

[vvbellur]

You got my vote here! There must be some value when a local guide is reporting or flagging wrong content and it must be immediately actioned. E.g. I have seen several reviews where people have added incorrect photos and vidoes to a review just to bump up there points. Its so frustrating to see these.

[JedR]

I am seeing some famous places with thousands of reviews, ratings and photos are being claimed by other business owners or incorrectly edited by other local guides for their own benefit. It is hard to bring back the original name or details of a place because the system is just giving us a "NOT APPLIED" result. Having a flag or report option can help us to give the Google Maps Admin an idea that a place was abused. And the Google Maps team should review it. You can easily identify that by checking the reviews. Most of the reviews are not related to the recent details of a place. Here's an example, someone edited the name of this place. The original name of this place is Alabang Town Center (famous shopping mall in Metro Manila) and it was renamed to Chopstop (a small fast food restaurant). As much I would love to bring back its original name but I can't because the system is rejecting my edit automatically. 

[MWJones]

I agree that there should be a means to flag listings for escalation. It would go hand-in-hand with my previous suggestion regarding being able to view the history of a listing.

[Phunky]

@JedR Very interesting post. Someone was doing something similar in Barcelona, Spain - renaming businesses.

Maybe there's a mod here who can put me right as well, but I'm pretty certain this is more Google My Business and that definately breaks the guidelines - read them here.

You should be able to get help from a moderator here under spam

[MWJones]

Another variation of this was previously suggested by me over at Flag errors in claimed listings to prevent reverting by business owner.

[AngieYC]

Hello @JedR,

Since this idea already exist. I am going to merge your idea here Flag errors in claimed listings to prevent reverting by business owner.

[TraciC]

@MWJones Thanks for sharing your idea! As it has been six months and this idea has not received 10+ votes and we are unable to implement at this time, we will be marking your idea as clos.... We will, however, keep all ideas submitted in mind for future reference. Thank you.