Claimed business oweners - are the biggest maps spammers

[SergeySud]

Hi team, fellows,

I have come to the conclusion that the most violent offenders on the Maps are claimed business owners. Being under the protection of the Google My Business service, they do what they want.
I, of course, don't have statistics, but according to my observations, most of claimed POIs are violate the rules - almost everyone turns the name field into an advertising platform.

The rules said: 

...
Your name should reflect your business’ real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers. Accurately representing your business name helps customers find your business online.

Add additional details like address, business hours, and category in the other sections of your business information.

Including unnecessary information in your business name is not permitted, and could result in your listing being suspended. Refer to the specific examples below to determine what you can and can't include in your business name.

Name must not include:

• Marketing taglines.
• Store codes
• Fully capitalized words
• Special characters or irrelevant legal terms
• Service or product information
• Location information
• Containment information
• Name consistency

...

Chains and brands.

All locations must have the same name unless the business’s real world representation consistently varies from location to location.

All business locations within the same country must have the same name for all locations.

...

---------------------------------

THIS IS THE RULES, not recommendations, is written "MUST NOT", "MUST HAVE", "NOT PERMITTED".

But who is care about it? No one. The verification process is fully automated. All that the owner will write as a "name" automatically gets on Maps. Also, after verification, the owner can also make any changes to the name. 

If the owner closely follows his objects, all attempts to correct the name and bring it to the rules are doomed to failure. The owner constantly restores the name.

Herewith a couple examples.

1. This one is my favorite:

The translation of the business name is "The Master of ceremonies Toast-master, inexpensive, in Moscow, Ramenskoye, Zhukovsky, Lyubertsy, Bronnitsy, Voskresensk, Reutov, Balashikha, Kursk, Zheleznogorsk, Kurchatov - Mr. Nikolay Nekrasov, the best Master of ceremonies of Moscow"

Nikolay Nekrasov is his name, Moscow, Ramenskoye, Zhukovsky, Lyubertsy, Bronnitsy, Voskresensk, Reutov, Balashikha, Kursk, Zheleznogorsk, Kurchatov - cities of region.

Sorry, deleted as SPAM, and author not recovered it, thank goodness.

2. The most expensive hotel in Russia:

https://goo.gl/maps/GsXhNArG8ak

The right name according the rules and reality must be National

But no, on Maps this hotel was written as Hotel National, Moscow. Several times I tried to correct the name, but it always denied.

Now they changed the name on maps into  Hotel National a Luxury Collection Hotel, Moscow

Super. Tomorrow, I will not surprise, will be Hotel National a Luxury Collection Hotel, THE LUXURY 5 STAR MOSCOW HOTEL FACING RED SQUARE because is written on the web site.

3. The tire shops сhain.

https://www.google.com/maps/search/SA.RU/?hl=en

The right name of the shops are SA.ru

But no, on Maps they use SA.RU - Автомобильные шины и диски, шиномонтаж. Крупная межрегиональная сеть. mean SA.RU - Car tires and wheels, tire service. A large interregional network.

As long as you can see that several branches have the correct name. Because I fixed. But it is absolutely clear that in a couple of days the owner will return the previous spam. I checked his reaction a dozen times.

-----------------------

No arguments can not be given to the owner even during personal communication by phone or email. Their answer - it was allowed and approved by Google, I went through verification, and so it was allowed as it is.

Other owners look at such ubiquitous vivid examples, and do the same or even worse.

And while the Local Guides Team, Maps Team, the Spam Team, and the Google My Business Team do not start to do their job - control compliance with their own rules, the Maps will be filled with spam.

Local Guides alone can not make Maps Spam free.

I invite everyone to join the discussion. Especially waiting for our Googlers @GusMoreira @LuisRG and others

[MWJones]

@SergeySud In your second example of the hotel, hotels have long had a standing exemption to the standardization, due to descriptors being consistent across all of their platforms, and the chance of confusion in navigation. If I book a hotel, it will say "XYZ Hotel - Airport North" on my reservation. But, there may also be an "XYZ Hotel - Airport South". If I plug "XYZ Hotel" into Google Maps to navigate me there, am I sure I have the right Hotel? I may not know the address without looking for it on my reservation, so you see where it is allowed.

As far as the others, I tend to agree it gets abused, and the companies are quick to keep the abuse going. I have changed hundreds of a nationwide (United States) chain from their names being in all caps with a descriptor, to the correct name (that one is bad enough that the document you refer to has this chain as an example of what not to do). I also had a chain that announced they were going to be closing 40-50 locations change those locations to say "Store Name - closing on date". It took an escalation on Social Media to GMB support to get somebody to look at it and stop them from reverting the listings.

But its not just names that are the problem. It's addresses and other elements as well. There is one example where a listing has an address on "Bys Rte 3", a non-existent road name. After some leg work, it was determined it should be (by Google standards) "New York 3" (the Bys should be NYS, which is New York State). I spent a week last year in a cat-n-mouse game trying to fix it, and finally gave up (but I have the link to the listing, with hopes that Google will address it at some point in the future).

Ultimately, Google Maps and Google My Business need to get in sync, and figure out a way of making some changes from Maps "authoritative" over GMB, particularly when GMB users are not in compliance. It could be as simple as turning off the pop up that GMB users get on their dashboard that tells them what was changed, and give them a one-click option to undo it (at least turn off the one-click undo, even if the pop-up remains).

[SergeySud]

Hi @MWJones

Thanks for your post!

About the hotel. The issue with the hotel:

1. National - is an only one in the country (as I know). No others. So not necessarily to add a "chain name", because it's marketing text.

2. "Hotel" is a category, not name. Should not be included.

3. ", Moscow" - is a city, mean global location. Not related to the name  Should not be included.

Names common violation is CAPS. To separate marketing text from the name, owners common use the formula: "NAME IN CAPS, the marketing text". It also common violation for points of interest, added by Google bots.

Branches names common violation (almost constantly) is a location of the branch mentioned in the name field (nearest subway station name, locality name, street name).

About address.

I have many examples, when owners add in one address field ALL addresses of all branches of the chain.

Other common violation is a "parent business"/location name mentioned in the address.

[Flash]

Hello @SergeySud,

As @MWJones mentioned, one of the main exceptions for the naming rules are for hotels.

This does not mean that they are able to call themselves anything they want.  What it means is they must use the same name that is used everywhere; not just on their website but also across the network of hotel and vacation booking sites, tourist agencies, etc.  These systems normally all use one common name for each hotel, and by using that one (and only that one) on the map the end user can then search for exactly the hotel he booked.  It's a system that makes sense as, using the previous example, "XYZ Hotel - Airport" might not even be the closest XYZ Hotel to the airport anymore, so if a person looks up XYZ Hotel as they drive their rental car out of the airport and goes to the closest one, they might be at the wrong location.

Looking at the name of this hotel, I fully expected you to be right that this is not an appropriate name.  But when I started looking up how this hotel is named in the system of booking sites, the name is fairly consistently exactly what is on the map.  Samples are Kayak, Travelocity, Amoma, and Hotels.com.  By the rules this one is OK as it's using the name that's used consistently on the booking sites; but it's certainly an unusual example and just like you I don't like the results.

For items other than hotels, please also remember that while descriptive elements such as categories should not normally be in a name, the rules allow for a descriptive element if it is integral to the name.  What that means is that if the name is never used without it and/or wouldn't make sense without it; then it's allowed.  So similar to your "National Hotel" example; let's imagine a place in Moscow name "Moscow Restaurant".  Let's also imagine there are places called "Moscow Hotel", "Moscow Bank", "Moscow River", "Moscow Park" and Moscow Grocery".  Since you can't just say to a taxi "Take me to Moscow" nor tell someone "I'll meet you at Moscow", in these cases the descriptors become integral and thus are allowed.

As for the overall issue, I don't know what can easily be done about it.  Years ago when people such as yourself, MWJones and I were using Map Maker; we were the filter applied to GMB users; at that time our edits were given a priority and the owners would not be able to revert them.  As Map Maker grew, though, too many people didn't know the precise rules and too many business owners started using the tool; so an edit from Map Maker couldn't automatically be assumed to be better than the owner's own entry in GMB.  Now with editing being in Maps and thus presented to every user as an option, the level of rule knowledge from the majority of mappers is even less, so I can understand why Google has to trust the owners more than the average mapper.  What I'd personally like to see to solve the issue is a system whereby if people with very high editing trust make an edit and then the owner reverts it, perhaps that then will be flagged for Googler review.  I'd also like to see that supplemented with a system whereby the Maps TCs could escalate bad cases; perhaps not single stores or small chains, but rather large offenders.  My idea would be that when reviewing a Googler finds the owner is not following the rules that then an pre-written email could be sent to them explaining it; and then if they get flagged again in the future their renaming ability would be turned off.

If you can think of a better suggestion please do bring it up, as I'm sure if we can come up with something that's reasonable to implement then Google would probably consider it.

[SergeySud]

Is anybody home?

The purpose for publication on Connect is for me more and more unclear. I see no reason or motivation. No dialogue, no reaction.

[SergeySud]

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Flash написано:

Hello @SergeySud,

If you can think of a better suggestion please do bring it up, as I'm sure if we can come up with something that's reasonable to implement then Google would probably consider it.

---

Do you want a suggestion? You are welcome! Everything has long been thought up before us. And it worked fine on Map Maker several years ago.

My suggestion for Google My Busines team:

1. Filter:

• If the name is longer than 2 words, than manual moderation.
• If the name contains CAPS words, than manual moderation.
• If the name contains special characters, than manual moderation.

2. Turn off the "one-click undo" for owners.

3. Manual verification of all fields after Local Guides users complaints. Sending to the owner a written warning about the inadmissibility of violation of the rules. Blocking GMB account in case of a relapse.

Currently, the vast majority of owners do not even suspect about the existence of any rules and restrictions.

And in the meantime, manual moderation (censorship) works fine on Connect only, but completely missing on Maps.

[Ur]

That's interesting.

[Briggs]

One million percent agree with your sentiment @SergeySud. I believe that due to the influx of Google My Business as well as Google Maps users, the platform is starting to grow much more rapidly than it could handle, especially with increased activation rates and digitalisation. However, the issues that you have highlighted are very much spiralling out of control. There are reversion software programs being utilised by businesses that would quickly revert any edits made even if they were in accordance with the representation guidelines of the map, and more power is being centralised on the listee, rather than Google itself. To lose control of your own program's standard of representation is quite a concern, and could steadily start to become a fatal blow. Maybe one day, Uber might actually start to give directions for suppliers and trucks to use certain roads for logistics purposes to both small businesses and from the industrial factories too.

I have made attempts to report companies and businesses that aren't following the guidelines on the GMB forums but I have instead met backlash instead.

[Cosmo]

@SergeySud Thank you for your favorite example - the best Master of ceremonies of Moscow. I think that Russian Cyrillic is little problematic for Google algorithms. But the main problem with GM&GB&LGC is chronic lack of vertical and horizontal communication.

[SergeySud]

Hi @Cosmo,

For a long time the Cyrillic is not a problem for Google. Moreover, the Google My Business Team has a bunch of Russian-speaking moderators. In the time of Map Maker, these people were represented as Google Listing Editor [Name]