Comments on: Google Maps UGC: End User Edits Now Require Google Review

By: Who Will Own Local Data? Search Engines, Yellow Pages, Aggegators Or Social Media?

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:01:59 +0000

[...] They’ve since hired editorial review staff to proof suggested changes, and Mike Blumenthal declared that it “…marks the end of an experiment in the ‘wiki nature of [...]

By: Google Maps: Melbourne Web Designers – A Mosh pit of Decay | Understanding Google Maps & Local Search

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 07:31:54 +0000

[...] also a full array of category cramming (getting more than your allotted 5), category geo-spamming, hijacked unclaimed listings and [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 15:05:16 +0000

From what I can see, it is on most posters. I know of no process to have it removed

By: Padma

Padma — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:03:43 +0000

What is the process to get the most unfair “user has entered risky data in the past ” removed.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:06:01 +0000

@MKelly

I do not think that they are ever going to be vetting reviews at least not manually. I do think that they are studying reviews and building algos that are going to be better able to spot spam…that being said the lone review by the single competitor may or may not ever be caught.

I would recommend that rather than responding themselves that having their customers speak on their behalf is an even stronger response.

By: MKelly

MKelly — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 22:07:06 +0000

Hi @Mike – do you know if this change also applies to consumers who review a business on the businesses Google Places page? In other words, will Google reviews be reviewed and moderated by a real person as well?

I ask this because we have several clients who are extremely distressed about negative reviews that have been posted to their Google Places page. In some instances, they know the review is posted by a competitor, but Google will not respond to their requests to have the review removed.

Right now the only advice I provide is for them to post a review themselves stating that they do not have a record of this customer and for the customer to please contact them directly so they can address any issue.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 29 May 2010 05:56:16 +0000

What happens if the listing you want to claim is caught in Flagged — Waiting status, and there are multiple listings of the business that need to be removed? Does it make sense to just wait for something to happen vs remove listings? Or remove listings but add in the link to the correct listing even though it’s flagged?

To the point about edits now needing to be reviewed, we tried to update the correct address listing so it would at least have the correct phone # and URL, but alas those are caught in needing to be reviewed status too so no progress in over 3 weeks!

Any ideas or are we just subject to Google being under-manned?

By: Google Says ‘No More’ To LBC Community Edits | Small Business Trends

Google Says ‘No More’ To LBC Community Edits | Small Business Trends — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:30:56 +0000

[...] Blumental authored a very insightful post detailing his history with Google’s community edit feature that I’d encourage folks to read, as well. AKPC_IDS += "41951,";Popularity: 1% [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 27 May 2010 01:00:40 +0000

@David
I have not seen anything concrete that shows the split

By: David Richter

David Richter — Thu, 27 May 2010 00:45:08 +0000

Good change by Google.
BTW,does anyone have some rough statistics about how the % of clicks spreads between local search and organic result?