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How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

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Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#111

Post by mark-r »

bhartzer wrote: post #8
boobsbr wrote: post #3

One more reason why I don't trust POIs I find on Google Maps. I always try to find the actual business' page to check for phones and opening and closing hours.

You can't even rely on a business' website anymore, though. You have to actually call them on the phone and talk to a real person there, at the business. Too often even the business owner doesn't have time to update their website or get the "web guy" (read: his brother in law's son) to update the website in a timely manner.

But how do you get their phone number? The same way you found their hours: Google. Checkmate.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#112

Post by MadManE »

jokoon wrote: post #78
dclowd9901 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a business owner, it's your job to make sure those listings are accurate, just as it would be you would want to make sure the yellow pages had your right phone number. There's no excuse for technological illiteracy or ignorance, and if you don't want to bother to be in charge of your online presence, you had better hire someone for the job.

> There's no excuse for technological illiteracy or ignorance I know the internet is much more popular since the last 10 years, but I don't think everyone is really up to it. There are still big opportunities to scam people who don't have the minimum of tech savyness: viruses, etc. The internet is still a jungle with not enough laws.

Why are laws the answer? If something is in a legal/moral gray area now, then how many people will stop doing it when it becomes a true illegality?

Why not just have better defenses against things like this in the first place, that work whether the activity is deemed "wrong" or not?

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#113

Post by twoodfin »

prostoalex wrote: post #108
twoodfin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were Google, Yelp, or Facebook, I'd give serious consideration to selling local businesses pre-created, theme-able web sites on a subscription basis. They already have essentially all the content such sites would need, and better designers than most small businesses would have access to. I regularly run into local places that use their Facebook page as their de facto virtual storefront, but that format could be…

Yelp customers don't want theme-able, if I'm browsing five restaurants closest to me to decide which ones to go to in the next 10 minutes, I want to see the type of cuisine, hours, menus, etc. in a consistent way instead of playing "find Waldo" with whatever artistic genius designed that specific theme.

Sure, but local businesses will still want control over their main web address. I don't think very many are confident enough to simply redirect you to their Yelp page.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#114

Post by pbhjpbhj »

bhartzer wrote: post #8
boobsbr wrote: post #3

One more reason why I don't trust POIs I find on Google Maps. I always try to find the actual business' page to check for phones and opening and closing hours.

You can't even rely on a business' website anymore, though. You have to actually call them on the phone and talk to a real person there, at the business. Too often even the business owner doesn't have time to update their website or get the "web guy" (read: his brother in law's son) to update the website in a timely manner.

A place where I work has irregular hours such that the common hours are noted but contact is requested to book and verify that the business is available. The specific industry is too small to be targeted with affordable online bookings systems and the business is on the smaller end of that.

No listings sites seem to anticipate that a place can have opening hours but be "booking not always required"; indeed level of booking requirement doesn't appear to feature in any local business listings pages.

This can't be that rare as another business on our short road has the same booking policy ("not always required"). I understand entirely that Google/Facebook/Yelp/etc. want to pin down strict times but an alternate string field with suggested standardised forms would seem sensible for many businesses.

Thus opening times aren't entered and the only thing you can do is contact us to enquire what our policy is. It's a shortcoming of the listings database design.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#115

Post by steven777400 »

csandreasen wrote: post #107

Several years ago my spouse and I took a vacation abroad and booked a tour with a local company. The guide was really shocked when I told him that I went with their company because they had negative reviews. All of the touring companies had fairly amateur web sites, but with the exception of this company, all of the Yelp reviews were glowing, 5-star, nothing-went-wrong-with-this-trip reviews. His company had fairly g…

Especially key is also what the bad reviews are for. Like in your case, you identify the bad reviews are unreasonable expectations. Bad reviews with claimed reasonable cause may be worth a little more pause.

Also important is number of reviews. I'd rather have a solid 4/5 product with 100 reviews than a straight 5 star product reviewed only 3 times.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#116

Post by Karunamon »

chdir wrote: post #18

If you are running a popular place, whether you like it or not, you'll end up on Google controlled listings. Unfortunately, there's little help for a non-tech savvy business owner to fix problems with listings or fake reviews or even removal of genuine reviews. This is an area where they need to be held accountable. If you are wielding so much power, you need to handle it responsibly and error in favor of business ow…

>If you are wielding so much power, you need to handle it responsibly and error in favor of business owners rather than community

Could you elaborate why?

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#117

Post by trhway »

pests wrote: post #110
hnriot wrote: post #87

The world is a better place without a restaurant serving bear meat.

If you read the article you would see it no longer serves bear meat.

it was still serving lion, horse, kangaroo... Good riddance. Time has changed and the owner just didn't notice it. He blames it on Google while his business simply fell out of fashion.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#118

Post by soperj »

steven777400 wrote: post #115
csandreasen wrote: post #107

Several years ago my spouse and I took a vacation abroad and booked a tour with a local company. The guide was really shocked when I told him that I went with their company because they had negative reviews. All of the touring companies had fairly amateur web sites, but with the exception of this company, all of the Yelp reviews were glowing, 5-star, nothing-went-wrong-with-this-trip reviews. His company had fairly g…

Especially key is also what the bad reviews are for. Like in your case, you identify the bad reviews are unreasonable expectations. Bad reviews with claimed reasonable cause may be worth a little more pause. Also important is number of reviews. I'd rather have a solid 4/5 product with 100 reviews than a straight 5 star product reviewed only 3 times.

And now I know when faking product reviews to throw a few bad ones in there ;)

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#119

Post by ufmace »

j_m_b wrote: post #5

"The Serbian Crown closed its doors after nearly 40 years in the same location." Oh sure... blame it on Google Maps telling people you aren't open on Sat, Sun, Mon. I guess your regulars, who you've built up over 40 years, don't know when you're open unless they look at Google maps. Even the owner himself says "If you’re going there, it’s because you’ve planned to go there." I imagine his problem could be more accura…

You might be getting downvoted for the snarky tone of the first paragraph, but I think you have a point. If you're a restaurant in business for 40 years, and you don't have enough regulars who would question Google Maps telling them that you're closed on the busiest nights of the week for the restaurant industry, then I think you have problems much deeper than anything that might be happening on Google Maps.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#120

Post by autokad »

resu_nimda wrote: post #31
drivingmenuts wrote: post #10

This is an example of one of the major problems of crowd-sourcing: trust. There is no way to verify that the integrity of the submitter, who could be giving wrong information due to malice, incompetence, or as a prank. There's entirely too much trust in crowdsourcing.

I don't think it's a major problem. This is one old guy who didn't even understand that his restaurant was listed on Google. As soon as a tech-savvy person stepped in it was cleared up in a few minutes. The damage may have already been done, but that's another story (some are saying the restaurant was already in decline). Sure, it's unfortunate, and these kind of "crowd-sourcing casualties" are going to happen here a…

online scamsters are more focused on trying to pretend they got you to click an ad and buy something, but as soon as they turn their heads towards using 'crowdsourcing' for financial gain then the value of what crowdsourcing provides becomes extremely diminished. not only is its value diminished, but it becomes a weapon to use against people you do not like or competition.

imagine running bobs pizza just paying 100$ to some russian or chinese group to put negative yelp reviews for the near tom's pizza as well as change their opening and closing hours on places like google, etc costing them 10s of thousands of dollars.

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