The many categories are a function of scraping the many directories, user input, dashboard input etc etc etc.

I think google is using the rollout of G+Local as an excuse to get the SMB to crowd source their categories in MapMaker and get them more or less squared away.

@andrew
One of the reasons you see what look like “null” edits by anonymous is that everytime someone even opens a listing for an edit, Google tracks it. That is usually what you are seeing is an edit that has nothing entered. So it was in fact a null edit.

Naming conventions and variations in NAP are frequently at the core of the duplicates generated by Google. Thus good local ecosystem hygene is critical.

That all being said, it is still a bitch of an environment where it is just as easy to make it go wrong than right.

Once the back and front end to G+ local pages roll out, the listing will put significantly more trust in dashboard data. It won’t solve the duplicate issue but it make the main listing cleaner and more reflective of owner desires. Its hard to judge what we see to day as it is so half finished.

They do not seem to check what is in a Places account before denying our edits, or worse making edits they have ‘made up’.

Also there seems to be an excessive amount of bot ‘chatter’, some of it making ‘Null’ edits.

We had a Closed office slowly morph into the open office via ‘Chinese’ whispers from moderators and bots. Also google somehow came up with 4 duplicates of the open office by similar morphing. Luckily a Googler took pity on the client and cleared all the Map Maker data. And that is after many calls from India!. The expected Map Maker entry from a new PIN validated Places entry still contains some previous history and the added business name from a Closed office.

Also for another client a new set of PIN verified offices had one replaced by the office they had moved from and another morph via one office into another. At least I had been posting on Map Maker enough, and despite all those ‘denied’ edits, I seem to have started getting some email feedback and managed to convince the higher moderators my edits were right.

There needs to be a program of training and some guidelines for the moderators to follow, written by someone who understands Places and the real business world.

I think Places is poor but Map Maker is just a shambles and you says its driving the blended search results. Oh joy.

Andrew Huskinson B.Sc. MBCS C.Eng CITP

AKA SQLPerformance

Alternatively it appears that the categories came from hundreds of web directories with every kind of category a spammer could love.

My reviews of it…didn’t make mapmaker look like a quality source for that kind of info, at least IMHO

I used mapmaker a number of times. I edited info that was “places” oriented than maps oriented. Every edit was accurate. Every edit was denied by a reviewer.

Ha ha. So much for my own mapmaker “trust” level.

On a second level you look at histories in mapmaker. It appears that many edits come from ‘bots’. I’ve heard that confirmed from a person w/ deep mapmaker experience.

One problem on the mapmaker side is that one of those edits can permeate quickly into the Places/Maps side–especially as it relates to NAP info….and the record goes haywire. Not a good thing. My gut is that hit one of my records.

It is evidently fast…but its reliability might be questionable at times…and its impact can be severe.

But hey….what influence do I have??? It is google’s world.

That’s great, except in the UK, where it still hasn’t been implemented afaik. :/