Google Maps to crack down on businesses using fake reviews

FILE PHOTO: Google Maps is planning to make its reviews more trustworthy by detecting and removing fake reviews and taking action against business pages posting them. 
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Google Maps is planning to make its reviews more trustworthy by detecting and removing fake reviews and taking action against business pages posting them. Google will now impose restrictions against business profiles that violate their Fake Engagement policy by temporarily removing reviews, blocking new reviews and ratings and even throwing up a warning for profiles that have these fake reviews deleted.

While the changes were made just the in the UK earlier this year, but now it has been reported that the support page was eventually updated in mid-September globally. However, the warnings are only appearing in the UK currently.

According to the terms, business pages cannot display content which doesn’t “accurately represent the location or product in question,” or was a favour in exchange for payment, discounts or freebies. 

Google Maps will also tamp down on reviews which are looking to manipulate their ratings by either posting from multiple accounts, emulate reviewers or using other methods to recreate genuine engagement.