{"id":7057,"date":"2010-08-03T10:36:18","date_gmt":"2010-08-03T14:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=7057"},"modified":"2010-08-03T10:42:33","modified_gmt":"2010-08-03T14:42:33","slug":"google-now-calling-to-confirm-google-places-community-edits-verification-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/03\/google-now-calling-to-confirm-google-places-community-edits-verification-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Now Calling to Confirm Google Places Community Edits & Verification Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past few months a number of clients and readers have emailed me and asked if Google ever called to check on listings. Apparently callers (often from India) would ask the business for information like street address. The callers when queried would claim to be from Google but would refuse to provide call back information to the businesses. \u00a0The calls struck an odd note with the businesses and when asked\u00a0I advised them that historically Google had never made such calls and that the calls were likely from scammers.<\/p>\n

In May, in an effort to be clean up business listing quality, Google \u00a0announced<\/a> that community edits would require verification before they would be integrated into the listing results. Apparently these “consumer calls” looking for location information are in fact from Google and part of this program. Google has confirmed that as part of that additional level of verification, they have been calling businesses to find out business name and address.\u00a0Google noted the following to me:<\/p>\n

In some cases, to verify business information, we’ll make phone calls to find out the business name and address. However, we will never make an unsolicited call asking you to provide specific account information, passwords or other sensitive information over the phone.<\/em><\/p>\n

If asked, the person will identify themselves as calling with Google Maps.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past few months a number of clients and readers have emailed me and asked if Google ever called to check on listings. Apparently callers (often from India) would ask the business for information like street address. The callers when queried would claim to be from Google but would refuse to provide call back …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t