Why does Google accept 1-word reviews?

[YannisS]

I have noticed local guides with more than 1,000 points, who abuse the program in every possible way. For example, they write very short reviews with a couple of words only. Such reviews should not be accepted and they should offer no points to the person that submits them.

It is so easy for Google to count characters or words in a text and stop people from abusing the program. Please protect all of us who spend time to write a useful review! 

[iyudhi]

Hi @YannisS, eventually those 1 word reviews will get caught by the system and will be removed. You can help by reporting the offending profile to the Local Guides team. Just send an email to Local Guides support, along with the information of the abuser.

[YannisS]

@iyudhi thanks for your reply, but unfortunately I see reviews with no words at all, which exist in the system for many months. For example, I just found a 0-word review which is 9 months old and it is still there.

I can report a few local guides, but that won’t solve the problem. Google has the technology to identify very short reviews and stop people from publishing them. 

If Google allows people to submit such useless reviews, it means that Google wants all kinds of reviews because it makes Google Maps look more active and popular.

[LucioV]

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@YannisS wrote:

@iyudhi thanks for your reply, but unfortunately I see reviews with no words at all, which exist in the system for many months. For example, I just found a 0-word review which is 9 months old and it is still there.

I can report a few local guides, but that won’t solve the problem. Google has the technology to identify very short reviews and stop people from publishing them. 

If Google allows people to submit such useless reviews, it means that Google wants all kinds of reviews because it makes Google Maps look more active and popular.

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@YannisS what do you mean with "0 word reviews"? Only stars? These don't count in the LG program.
Anyway, it's harder to automatically rate reviews quality; one bad review could also be a long review made of "lorem ipsum", or a cloned out review. Someone could also try to steal reviews from other websites as like as tripadvisor, yelp, etc.....

I think it's better to give users the chance to report a bad review and let someone else evaluate the report.

[PMJ]

I ALSO ACCEPT TO THIS 

[AlidAbdul]

I noticed an user with high level with poor review like this

[LucioV]

@AlidAbdul this looks definitevely a BOT, please, report this user.

[YannisS]

@LucioV you are right of course... If someone wants to abuse the system, he/she will find the way to do it.

Users must be able to report bad reviews, but the system should also be clever enough to stop reviews with zero or very short content (a couple of words) from being published. An automatic control of this kind is easy and it would make the work of Google moderators a lot easier. I don’t see any disadvantage in the automatic control, only benefits.

[AlidAbdul]

@LucioV there is no button to report an user 😞

[LucioV]

You are right, send an email to <REDACTED> with details of this user.