Fascinating stuff Mike (and Alice), thanks for sharing! I’m glad there are algos in place to police community edits, if the algos are accurate of course. Any thoughts on how Google is identifying users who are entering poor data? Curious if you have any thoughts on if the accuracy is determined after the business has been claimed – as we can assume when a business is claimed that all of the info is correct?

I have a quick question related to editing a non-claimed listing. I’ve never noticed it before, but why do some listings show both “edit this place” and “business owner?” links, while other listings show only the “business owner?” link?

Here’s a link to one that I came across and it only contains the “business owner?” link:

http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=16711117528983056146&q=hotel+max+seattle&hl=en&cd=2&ei=OdrZS–bN43usAPL18nrDw&sll=47.614177,-122.336508&sspn=0.017528,0.009762&ie=UTF8&ll=47.625083,-122.359242&spn=0,0&t=h&z=15

Thanks for any thoughts/insights from you, or additional commenters.

Hi Mike,

Great information. Thanks to you and to Alice who pointed it out to you.

Google’s patent on rating raters has some interesting approaches listed, such as identifying overly optimistic and overly pessimistic raters, who tend to rate everything either too high or too low.

It also does provide some hints about other warning signs regarding raters, such as the raters who tend to rate many sites in a mighty small period of time. Ratings from raters who give everything the same score might be perceived as bots. Raters who haven’t provided many ratings, and haven’t established a “base of legitimacy” may not have their ratings count as highly as raters who have been more active.

It appears that Google’s ratings for user edits on GoogleMaps appear to follow some guidelines that seem to be very similar. I’m going to have to check out some of Google’s rankings for past edits that I’ve made.

Hi Mike,

A few things seem very similar, such as people who haven’t made many edits yet probably don’t get as high a score as people who have made a good number more – that concept of a base of legitimacy that seems to be a strong part of the “rate the raters” approach in action, and seems to apply to editors as well.

A “history of entering poor data” or profanity might similarly undermine such a base of legitimacy, and possibly make it less likely that edits from those editors would be displayed.

I’d definitely like to look at more edit histories to see what other signals they might be considering and identifying.

I am struck by the wierdness and hypocracy of google’s public “ratings of community edits”.

Seriously is there a place where people can publicly evaluate Google’s customer service? Would google please highlight this for the rest of us. Who the H is Google to establish a “rating system” for community edits?

I see too many situations brought up in the Google Groups forums for Maps/Business Owners (now Google Places) that simply never get solved, never get addressed.

@Nifty
I had noticed on the edge of my consciousness that comment about name length but your explicit observation of it helps put it clearly in perspective. Thanks.

Their editor rating system is pretty poor. I’ve only made a couple of edits (location of a couple of buildings I own) and got a “has history of making poor edits” rating.