So...it's fine that anyone can suggest to change the name, address, phone number and website of the restaurant, but letting people suggest a new menu URL will open the door to hijackers and spammers?
As I already stated, the hijacking of menus has a higher than normal occurrence on the map.
Your argument is that we should be able to edit nothing, or absolutely everything. Since letting people edit absolutely everything would just lead to a useless map; your argument then becomes that we shouldn't be able to edit anything. Instead, what has been done is that features that produce good data when opened to editing have been opened to editing. There have been features that were open to editing, were highly spammed, and the ability to edit them was removed. It doesn't even have to be spam that causes an item to not be made available; if other data collection methods provide better results than public editing then the ability to publicly edit the particular feature has been removed.
@Flash, you seem to be going to great lengths to explain why something that is clearly a user-interface oversight is actually a "feature". No; Google did not lock down the Menu URL to protect from hijackers, while letting anyone change the restaurant's main website, phone number or even their name. If you don't know why GMaps is currently set up the way it is, it's perfectly okay to simply say, "I don't know".
I have spent years as a reviewer approving and denying edits; along with years as a spam fighter identifying spam trends, providing them to Google, and removing spam. As such, I am quite aware of where spam occurs and many of the measures are taken to combat them.
I will not go into restaurant spam in more detail in this public forum, as that leads to road maps for spammers; but hijacking menus is a very prevalent thing. If the same level of issues occurred with POI telephone numbers then Google would shut down their editing also. Google only accepts data when the result is overall better data
As for "multi-million dollar enterprises", let me remind you of the Metro supermarket thread you were involved in. Metro is one of the largest supermarket chains in Canada, a multi-billion dollar business. And yet, they had wrong information posted online for months, and appreciated we brought it to their attention. The 5West pub is not a chain or a conglomerate. Businesses like that struggle to stay afloat, and many go under within a year or two of opening. They do not have a full-time marketing or online presence employee. It's regrettable that they chose to give their web business to Wix, but I don't think we should punish them for that. I don't understand your dismissive attitude towards attempts to help them.
All I stated is that they are not a small business without resources as you said. If they have claimed the feature via GMB, then they do have an online presence employee. Whether or not they are full time is irrelevant.
However, all I was pointing out there is that they were not helpless as you implied. I also pointed out that it didn't matter if they are a multi-million enterprises; we still need to ability to fix things; so you are arguing the same thing as what I already stated. None-the-less, there are always going to be features that are uneditable either due to spam or because other sources provide better data than public editing.
I also have never implied they needed to be punished for using Wix; I just stated they should have set up some simple forwarding that is standard protocol on the internet. My mention of the host being the same was to indicate that this change was likely a proper renaming rather than a new business that would be using a different host and not have access to forward the old website. Whether we like it or not, places are punished all the time for not using the web correctly. And yes, it is the modern business' responsiblity to hire an employee or contractor to do it properly, just as they hire people that are experts in all other aspects of their business in order to suceed. We can help them, but we can't take responsiblity for fixing failures by a business.
By the way, I'm Canadian, and I've never heard of Metro before that thread. It is just a regional chain, and even as a long time reviewer of edits in your region I am not familiar with them.
Flash - LG Connect Moderator, Maps Platinum Product Expert, Map Maker Platinum Product Expert, RER and Regional Lead
Due to the volume I receive, I do not respond to unsolicited private messages
True, there may be no Menu schema in the HTML code for that page, but I thought you said the entry for "Menu" is chosen manually by the business or those they hired to manage their online presence. GMaps uses HTML-based heuristics to confirm certain changes we submit, but I don't think they employ a web crawler to actively replace a URL selected by a business to one picked by the spider.
As far as I know, and again I'm not an expert in exactly how to set up a menu, manually setting it up is not a choice. I stated that perhaps Google had a way to manually fix one; though I'm doubtful.
I do know that Google does search for the information. They do have partnerships with large providers, and that is normally when you'll see the provider's name in the feature. They also look for schema; that is used instead of manually designating it. I know they also do collect some from scraping the web, but they are careful about that to ensure that the spammer's sites are not included. For details on what sources might be used, that's more a question for the GMB forum; they are more into the automated ways of collecting data (and thus how to make sure it's correct by fixing sources). However, the GMB forum will also only provide limited information, as exact information is protected to thwart the spammers.
Flash - LG Connect Moderator, Maps Platinum Product Expert, Map Maker Platinum Product Expert, RER and Regional Lead
Due to the volume I receive, I do not respond to unsolicited private messages
Your argument is that we should be able to edit nothing, or absolutely everything. Since letting people edit absolutely everything would just lead to a useless map; your argument then becomes that we shouldn't be able to edit anything.
A restaurant's most valuable assets are its name, and its location. We can already edit both of those, so your reductio ad absurdum argument doesn't hold much water. Why would a hijacker fiddle with the link to the menu, when he can rename and move the restaurant at will? People are much more likely to click the Website link than they are to click the Menu link, which is why most restaurants don't even populate the latter on GMaps.
I have spent years as a reviewer approving and denying edits; along with years as a spam fighter identifying spam trends, providing them to Google, and removing spam. As such, I am quite aware of where spam occurs and many of the measures are taken to combat them.
I know you've been doing this for a very long time, and have acquired considerable knowledge about the subject, which is why we all appreciate when you share your knowledge with us. However, in this particular case, it's hard to escape the impression that you are mixing known facts with mere speculation, and presenting both as facts. I'm not accusing you of fibbing, I'm just saying, your explanation just doesn't make much sense.
However, all I was pointing out there is that they were not helpless as you implied. I also pointed out that it didn't matter if they are a multi-million enterprises; we still need to ability to fix things
I never implied they were helpless, merely that they can benefit from our help. If it doesn't matter whether they are a multimillion dollar enterprise or not, why did you bring it up? It seems disingenuous to backpedal. Your original claim was that they are big and rich enough to fend for themselves, therefore they don't need our help.
By the way, I'm Canadian, and I've never heard of Metro before that thread. It is just a regional chain, and even as a long time reviewer of edits in your region I am not familiar with them.
Metro is the third largest supermarket chain in Canada. It spans all of Ontario and Quebec, so, hardly a "regional chain", unless you categorize two provinces that comprise 64% of Canada's population as "regional".
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