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A large network of fake Google Maps comments/reviews and fake businesses

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Re: A large network of fake Google Maps comments/reviews and fake businesses

#81

Post by wolongong942 »

bryceacc wrote: post #53
flownoon wrote: post #46

I got scammed by this exact type of thing when I needed a tow truck ASAP to jump my car. They had a fake business <1 mile away with lots of good reviews. After giving them my credit card info right away and after a long delay, I gave it more scrutiny and realized it was definitely a fake business. I called multiple times to figure out where the F$&@ my tow truck was, each time talking to a different person with a fil…

get AAA, and also credit card over the phone? I would have stopped there

That's how most legitimate tow companies take payment if you aren't already registered.

Re: A large network of fake Google Maps comments/reviews and fake businesses

#82

Post by mgerdts »

Denatonium wrote: post #59

I got a COVID test at a local independent pharmacy. This same "Right Way Laboratory" processed the results and billed my health insurance company over $500 per test.

I got a COVID test from UW Hospitals and Clinics in Madison WI. This is a huge academic medical organization with tens of clinics scattered in all parts of the city and millions of square feet of hospital space.

I had to drive about 40 minutes to a drive through location beyond the other side of town. They also billed my insurance over $500.

Assuming you got accurate results in a timely manner, you got the better deal by not having to leave your neighborhood.

Re: A large network of fake Google Maps comments/reviews and fake businesses

#83

Post by hannasm »

gerdesj wrote: post #9
troydavis wrote: post #2

95% of the 100+ comments on this business are fake, presumably from a comment/review farm that was paid by the business owner (though I don't know that). The same commenters - some of which Google Maps describes as "Local Guides" - also have commented on dozens or hundreds of businesses that don't exist at all. The fake business entries are basically using Google Maps place locations for SEO and presumably, referral…

I own a business in Somerset, UK. The site we are on is roughly 40% us and 60% Somerset County Council property. We each have our own UK postcode - normally reserved for around 5-80 properties. The SCC bit has multiple uses - a transport division (minibuses for schools) and nowadays the vestiges of supported living. Its being wound down and is being sold off. We moved to Yeovil Five Ways from near Hazlebury Plucknet…

This may come off as a little intense but this seems like the central issue with capitalism in our world today. Competition is competition to lower human expectations to increase corporate profits instead of giving more to humanity on the back of the corporation that has grown a capability to do it.

Re: A large network of fake Google Maps comments/reviews and fake businesses

#84

Post by hollerith »

lubujackson wrote: post #80
anamexis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh and the real masters of this business model? Well they don't bother SELLING the leads to contractors, they will quite literally start their own company and will hire their own plumbers, electricians, concrete crews, etc to squeeze as much profit as possible. Now, this part is funny. It's come full circle to a legitimate business. (Kind of)

Kind of the same path Google attempted with SEO spam, making the easiest path to success actually producing content people spend time on and link to. Of course, this has devolved into the "life story before the recipe" sites that have become the shining failure of what can go wrong by focusing on these metrics.

The incentive to put the story on the page along with the recipe comes not from Google, but rather from US copyright law, which has decided that a plain recipe is not copyrightable; there has to be some "personal expression".

Re: A large network of fake Google Maps comments/reviews and fake businesses

#85

Post by splonk »

jaycroft wrote: post #14
TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #6

My time to shine as someone who's pretty deep in this game. There's an enormous and growing market of fake GBPs for the purpose of selling leads called Local SEO Lead Gen. (each entity can bring in thousands of dollars/month.) The thinking is why go through the headache of dealing with clients who can fire you the day after they begin ranking (Local SEO is heavily "front loaded" work wise), will always try undercutti…

So this is why when I called a locksmith last week, they took down my info and then 30 minutes later got a call from no less than 5 other locksmiths who were "on their way to my house". Nobody's phone number matched, nobody wanted to tell me who they worked for. Totally sketched out with Google Maps' suggestions, I switched to yelp. The first service I called on yelp was reasonably priced, was actually the person com…

I used to work in this field (verifying local business listings). Locksmiths are traditionally the spammiest and scammiest industry of them all (along with taxis, before rideshare cut down their ROI). Basically any service area business has huge incentive to spam any and all business listing providers, and for whatever reason the locksmith industry became the worst of them. Flower delivery and personal injury lawyers often fall into the same bucket. You'll still see companies named "AAA Locksmith" and the like because this behavior dates back to the days of the Yellow Pages.

As to why Yelp is better than Google on this, I'd guess it's either that you got lucky, or that Google is more targeted than Yelp these days. I'm not up on the current state of how listing verification works now, but it's possible that Google's process is easier to target than Yelp's, and if there are any weaknesses, a locksmith marketer will figure it out pretty quickly.

Re: A large network of fake Google Maps comments/reviews and fake businesses

#86

Post by cyberlurker »

twelve40 wrote: post #71
themitigating wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How though? Does Doordash instantly send the restaurant the money or is it like after a few days?

That's the part i'm not sure about. The menu looked totally legit, the phone number turned out some random person in Vegas (after i bothered actually calling). Someone took their time to set this up.

Maybe money laundering front?

Re: A large network of fake Google Maps comments/reviews and fake businesses

#87

Post by trompetenaccoun »

msla wrote: post #54
totetsu wrote: post #31

Maybe in the future/present one could provide a service of just being a 100% verifiable real person.

Any verification you can get over the mail or over the Internet or over any other distant communication can be faked. Cryptography doesn't help, genetic material doesn't help, fingerprints don't help: They only prove that the entity you're communicating with has access to private keys and at least one person, assuming genetic material can't be faked at this point, not that you're always communicating with the same pe…

It's a very difficult problem to solve in a way that works for most people, i.e. secure, privacy preserving, easy to use, etc. It's easy to have one and not the other. It's not true that it can not be solved at all though. The guys from idena.io have a solution that definitely works, problem is it's not convenient and I highly doubt that it'll ever be adopted by the masses. But it is a sybil attack solution and it does work over the internet.

Edit: Just noticed you said prove that it's always the same person. They can not do that. But they can prove that it's a unique human. Which seems good enough for online reviews imo, where it doesn't exactly matter who the person is.

Re: A large network of fake Google Maps comments/reviews and fake businesses

#88

Post by narrator »

jaycroft wrote: post #24
schappim wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't give Yelp too much praise. It's been alleged that Yelp engages in astroturfing and unfair business practices[0], and the documentary "Billion Dollar Bully"[1] even accuses them of "Mob-Like Behavior". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yelp [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Dollar_Bully

Oh definitely - I can't say that I've had stellar experiences with Yelp in the past for restaurants, barbers, etc, from the consumer side, and I hear it is much worse as a business. I was just very surprised that in this niche Google performed so poorly and Yelp so well. I wouldn't go on to generalize from this experience though.

I have had great luck with Yelp. Maybe this is where Google's "no customer service" strategy starts to screw them up?

Re: A large network of fake Google Maps comments/reviews and fake businesses

#89

Post by Spooky23 »

feet wrote: post #75
Spooky23 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing is that it’s often impossible to manage your own GBP. I was on the board of a small private school where a couple of knucklehead students posted some weird reviews. We couldn’t do anything until I was able to leverage a high level google contact, which is something I hate to do.

Removing reviews should be difficult for the owner of a business. It seems weird to me that someone would think it appropriate for a business to remove reviews of their business as they see fit otherwise you just get business owners removing all bad reviews

It was a weird situation where the review ran afoul of policy, but the organization wasn’t able to respond in a way that allowed them to follow a Google process. (Ie someone set something up 15 years ago with a defunct domain name or similar, and there was an “orphaned” instance of the place.)

The “fix” was to essentially reestablish the lost ownership of the business (which had paid Google Workspace and GCP presence) with their listing. Once they regained control, they were able to file a complaint and a Google reviewer removed the content.

It wasn’t a situation of “This place sucks” getting taken down.

Re: A large network of fake Google Maps comments/reviews and fake businesses

#90

Post by lavezzi »

troydavis wrote: post #2

95% of the 100+ comments on this business are fake, presumably from a comment/review farm that was paid by the business owner (though I don't know that). The same commenters - some of which Google Maps describes as "Local Guides" - also have commented on dozens or hundreds of businesses that don't exist at all. The fake business entries are basically using Google Maps place locations for SEO and presumably, referral…

> Google Maps doesn't have a way to report an entire account as a bot; one can only flag a specific comment. There's also no way to provide enough information for Google Maps' trust & safety team to understand what's happening and figure out how they're evading Google's bot detection. So, it continues unabated.

But didn't they used to? Some of their old support articles used to mention the ability to report accounts, but that functionality seems to have disappeared.

I tried to report a business garnering fake 5* reviews last week and was frustrated that there was seemingly nothing I could do, especially since they buy and sell stolen goods.

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