Google has announced that, during the year 2021, it blocked over 100 million fraudulent editing attempts on Google Maps and Google Business Profile. These edits were aimed at changing professional and business profile information to include false and malicious information.
The algorithms that Google has implemented to fight spam, have managed to stop almost 99% of attempts to create fraudulent information.
These blocks are part of the actions that Google takes, manually and automatically, in its fight against spam. In this sense, the company has managed to greatly improve the automatic processes, thanks to updates to the algorithm created specifically for this purpose.
Among the actions Google has taken to curb spam in its main tools, there is not only the blocking of attempts to edit profiles in Maps and Business Profile, but also the total elimination of 7 million fake business profiles in Google Business Profile, of which only 630,000 were directly reported by users.
Google’s anti-spam algorithm has prevented the creation of 12 million fake business profiles and prevented 8 million fraudulent attempts to claim Google Business Profiles. In addition, Google’s anti-spam algorithm has disabled 1 million accounts for quality policy violations.
On the other hand, Google’s algorithm has successfully blocked or removed 95 million reviews that violated Google Maps or Business Profile policy. Between the two tools, Google has blocked or removed 190 million photos and 5 million videos removed for content policy reasons. In this regard, protection systems have been implemented in more than 100,000 accounts where suspicious activity was detected.
In this way, Google has pointed out that, thanks to the anti-spam algorithms they have implemented, “less than one percent” of all abusive or fraudulent content manages to sneak into Google Maps or Google Business Profile.
