Is there a term for guides who simply post hundreds of "Good experience" reviews for places?

[MariaBi]

Hi @BobL ,

You can revise our policy in this article about how to report a spam.  

I have edited your post to remove the personal information of another user as we respect everyone's privacy and discourage the sharing of private information. If you find a review or photo that you think violates our policies, you can use the 'flag/report as inappropriate' icon next to the contribution. A team of specialists will then check if it violates any of our policies (https://goo.gl/dsVNTC & https://goo.gl/G87xzJ) and will take appropriate action.

@PhilipF the content review sometimes takes time as the team is careful to only remove content that violates policy. Please note that we'll never be able to share the specialists' decision as we respect everyone's privacy. 

Many thanks to both of you for your help and patience.

[BobLepp]

I hesitate to criticize anyone who contributes, but if you bump into a person who simply posts a word or two about hundreds of places and it is apparent they are just building their points count, is there a term for that? 

The example that got me wondering is an electrical distributor which is not a tourist destination or even a place that accepts visitors, yet two people from India posted reviews of it.

Does Google have a way to check out the validity of such people? Can people be paid to post 2 word 5 star positive reviews? 

How does it help the community?

Thanks

Bob

[MariaBi]

Hi @BobLepp

Thanks for asking. If you find a review or photo that you think violates our policies, you can use the 'flag/report as inappropriate' icon next to the contribution. A team of specialists will then check if it violates any of our policies (https://goo.gl/dsVNTC & https://goo.gl/G87xzJ) and will take appropriate action.

The content review sometimes takes time as the team is careful to only remove content that violates policy. Please note that we'll never be able to share the specialists' decision as we respect everyone's privacy.

Many thanks for your help.

[Pea]

@BobL wrote:

a person who simply posts a word or two about hundreds of places 

Great question @BobLepp there are certainly a lot of Local Guides posting one or two word, nonsense reviews, but I think they fall into two categories:

1, a lone LG posting rapid reviews solely to gain points for LG rewards

2, a group of fake LG accounts posting five star reviews on behalf of businesses to gain market credibility

The lone LG posting nonsense for points is an issue largely driven by their need to accumulate points before a deadline, so you could call them point chasers and I've written about the problem here

A group of fake LG accounts posting reviews I'd call a spam farm (similar to a Link Farm). I wrote about such a group back in December in the thread Florists Scam in London. If you read that and click on the first link in the post you'll find a fake florist business with 11 reviews, if you then follow each of the reviewers you'll discover a network of dozens of shops and maybe hundreds of LG accounts all posting 5 star reviews for other fake florists. 

@MariaBi you say we should report these things when we see them (though it may understandably take some time), yet I reported these fake accounts more than three months ago and they're all still live and some of them still posting more fake 5 star reviews.

[BobLepp]

This guy: [REDACTED]

put in dozens of reviews in the same time period in Canada and India. he just picked places off the map and put in generic comments, got his level 4. I tripped over him on a review of my brother's industrial supply company which no one visits, it is not retail. Multiple copies of the same photos, just like he was rushing stuff in. Oh well!

[Cooker3]

I hesitate to criticize anyone who contributes, but if you bump into a person who simply posts a word or two about hundreds of places and it is apparent they are just building their points count, is there a term for that? 

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Yeah the word for me is spammer. I am not saying I have never left somewhat short reviews for some places, although I don't think I have left 1-2 word reviews, if I felt that did the job but someone who just leaves that is spamming and clearly trying to get get to level 5 as soon as possible. Personally If I worked for Google I would ban someone like that or least take down the reviews to stop them getting to level 5 but that's just me.