After a Wall Street Journal investigation concluded that there are millions of fake business listings on Google Maps, the company has issued a response detailing the measures it takes to combat the problem.
According to estimates from online advertising experts surveyed by the WSJ, there are “roughly 11 million falsely listed businesses on any given day,” with hundreds of thousands more fake listings appearing every month. Many are placed by businesses that specialized creating fake listings for clients that want to boost their information above competitors in search results.
According to a search expert interviewed by the WSJ, a 2017 academic study paid for by Google that found only 0.5% of local searches researchers examined were fake was skewed by limited data.
In the company’s response, Google Maps product director Ethan Russell wrote that of the more than 200 million listings added to Google Maps over the years, only a “small percentage” are fake. He said that last year Google took down more than 3 million fake business profiles, including more than 90% that were removed before users could see them. Google’s systems identified 85% of the listings removed,…
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