Excuse me @CaribbeanCooking again, I find nothing strange in this behaviour.
All of these are ratings, not reviews, and we always mark a place with a rating (several rating in the same day) and, later, we add a complete review.
It's a usual behaviour.
And, again, you cannot tell that all these ratings have been made in the "same time"; you have an idea about the timings, but you cannot tell that this is made by some bot in milliseconds.
Believe me, there is nothing wrong with these ratings. 😉
@LucioV Respectfully disagree. The system is flawed if it allows anyone to just drop a bunch of reviews with no way to demonstrate that the review is legitimate. In our case we know something is wrong because: 1. We can prove these are reviews by individuals who did not attend a class; and 2. The reviews are therefore fake [This is therefore considered fraudulent and libelous by our laws].
The first rule by Google's local guide use policy is that reviews should be legitimate, but their complaint system does not allow victims of their flawed system to identify the reason for the complaint if a review is fake. We have to pick other reasons that don't apply and thus decrease the prospect of getting the review removed.
You are obviously an honest person and I thank you for that. We would love if you came to our class and gave us a review because it would be honest, heartfelt, and we would appreciate it. But the system allows unscrupulous people to do the opposite and this is hurting our business.
Google let you review any place, there is no way that Google can prove you are a customer, have you ever been there or something else; no one will ever require your localization system to be turned on.
I don't understand why you say it's a flaw system.
Do you want a system that requires a physical proof you are a customer before giving a rating? No one is doing this, except legacy rating systems.
Google works with big numbers to ensure that a real average rating will pop out from the crowd 😉
LOL @LucioV. We're going in circles. We're debating something that is outside our control.
That said, I run software teams and there are things that Google can do to minimize fake reviews. Here are some ideas: 1. Have a more rigid sign up process to qualify as a Local Guide. Require layered authentication other than just an email address; 2. Require geolocation recording so that one has to prove they actually visited a site; 3. Supply "fake review" as an option for the complaint form and require certain measures for a person to prove a fake complaint; 4. Do not allow batch reporting. That is a fail which malicious people can use to just improve their points given the system's other inadequacies [such as no geolocation reporting]; 5. Time on site via geolocation to verify actual time on site. The list goes on. If I were paid by Google, I could probably figure out more, but, alas, that is not so.
Now I'm really laughing hard @LucioV. I just checked out your profile and you are a software engineer. You can probably come up with better ideas than me. What stack do you work with... If you are serious about Google, then does that make you an Open Source guy?
Now I'm really laughing hard @LucioV. I just checked out your profile and you are a software engineer. You can probably come up with better ideas than me. What stack do you work with... If you are serious about Google, then does that make you an Open Source guy?
All the best!
Adam
Eheheh @CaribbeanCooking I think Google is the best place for software engineering, but this time the whole thing is getting bigger than ever (2 years ago the LG were reported to be roughly 50 millions!) and I think that they intentionally decided not to force rules on this kind of contributes (ratings and reviews) and simply let the average stand out, and leaving the user the opportunity to report something really wrong 🙂
I'm an open source guy, but not so involved in development in these days... I love Go, Python and Gcloud computing, and I'm really interested in big data crunch. 😉
I suspect you are right @LucioV regarding Google's strategy to leave the platform as wide open as possible to increase numbers and content. This is a logical strategy for growth but can cause pain for businesses too.
There is a push in the US for platforms like Google's LG to not be legally immune from the content entered by their users. Google needs to be careful because they risk encouraging this movement by not regulating their users better. Google operates out of California and thus is at greater risk of class action lawsuits resulting from cases such as our binding together with other businesses in a lawsuit. I would expect that they are vulnerable given that a classification such as "Google Local Guide" suggests that there is some authority bestowed on the individual by Google and thus they should be honest in their evaluations of businesses. We'll see... I like Google too, but I don't like the pain they are causing my wife's business.
All that said, I work with Xamarin and the MS ecosystem of machine learning and Power BI. I have a heart for Open Source, but a wallet for MS.
2022
