More Power To Deal With Fake Reviews.

[ChadR]

Hello all,

I have seen a few threads touching on this subject already and I havent really found a satisfactory answer on any of them and I'd like to bring the subject up again.

Im well aware that there is always going to be trolls on the internet, businesses posting false reviews of their competitors, and/or people who just dont know what they are talking about when they post reviews on certain establishments out there. A lot of these people arent quite aware of the severity that a misinformed or outright fictitious review can have on a business and I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on better dealing with these problem reviews that doesnt cross the line into censoring or crosses into the line of conflicts of interest.  Of course the "flag/report" option exists but, the categories doesnt always quite fit the nature of the problem about a particular post and there is no way to submit a written statement/evidence such a post.

I propose a potential solution. Would it be possible for Google to ad both an "other" option to to the flag feature as well as requiring a brief description or evidence of the particular reason the review was flagged? I think that something like that would strike a balance between giving the report feature incentive to potentially be abused/overused and having truly false/misinformed/ect reviews being able to stay up because there isnt enough evidence against the review for it to be taken down by the Google Map mods.  Of course Im sure the Google Map's team gives more credit and consideration the higher in level you are/more experience you have as a reviewer when you flag things but, it would be really nice to be able to clean up honestly false/misinformed (with evidence) reviews from our communities.

I would love to hear everyone's input.
-Chad

[ShafiulB]

@ChadRthanks for your feedback ...

i also agree with you , its need more appropriate solution for flagged any spam reviews.

I have been faced like this problem many time.....

[JosephDewey]

Great idea. I'd like to see an "Other reason it violates policy or shouldn't be here" for pictures, too. Those categories are too narrow, and different on the App and the website.

[ShafiulB · Accepted solution]

I want to request to our Local Guides team for look into this matter.

If we can give thumbs-up button for helpful reviews , why not thumbs-down  button for spam or fake reviews

Because i have been seen many many spam reviews like as Good or others, flagged these  but nothing happen and dont received any one e-mail still one .

[RonneBD]

Hey @ChadR you raised a real issue and @ShafiulB gives a practical solution.

Hope google will adopt this solution soon.

[YK1001]

The generic mechanism of up/down vote itself is not enough.  (As we are measuring Fakeness, I think only down vote button is enough.)

We need a clear definition what we are measuring - we are measuring how Fake a review is here.

While helpful / not helpful is another measurement.

"I like this place." is very likely valid (as cannot prove otherwise) , but not that helpful.

We should have quotas of down votes that we can use everyweek.   Say Level 1-5 is 3 votes per day.  Level 6-7 is 5 per day, Level 8-9 is 6 per day, Level 10 is 7 per day.  If our down voted reviews got taken down, we should get extra votes in the next cycle equal to the take down counts.  (Per week quotas should be used, as we cannot expect LGs to be on duty everyday to use up the quotas.)

Current total down votes of a review should not be displayed - so people must give down votes by their own judgement only.

The scheme can be extended to Photos similarly.