In some developing countries, there have been many cases of businesses who want a fast track presence in Google Maps, and one way they do it is to rename/hijack an existing location (usually one with many very high reviews and ratings usually like tourists attractions or malls etc), and then claim the business. That means the actual location then becomes lost, and they would create a new location to replace the one they have hijacked. Have seen many cases like this. And reporting these cases sometimes it not easy.
Not limited to the the above. There could be many other cases of location hijacks.
1. Spammers mass renaming certain businesses or places.
2. Political hijacks where government services or offices are renamed to offending names
3. Mass category changes for certain business branches
etc
If anyone has any experience on this, you can share below and what process you took to help recover/reverse the hijack.
My suggestion is if there is somewhere in Maps that we can incorporate a report a Hijack, it would help to give an alert to Google to verify, which should be quite easy. Previous reviews are proof of a suspected hijack. And Google backend can quickly verify and revert to previous information before the change.
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