Google Maps introduces steps to remove fake business profiles

Google Maps has introduced new ways to report fake business profiles. It has also started to apply new techniques to business categories.  

Google Maps mentioned some ways for the people to detect the fraud in business profiles in a blog by Ethan Russell, Product Director, Google Maps. He mentioned that people can learn about the policies for businesses representing themselves on Google and user contributed content to decide whether the content or profile is against the policies which need to report or not. Also, he said that people can flag individual business profiles for removal and can report multiple business profiles at once via business redressal form to start review process. 

Last year, Google Maps took down 3 million fake business accounts, among which 250,000 were reported by the users, blog mentioned. They disabled 150,000 user accounts that were found to be abusive, blog added. 

Rusell said that, "Every month Maps is used by more than a billion people around the world, and every day we and our users work as a community to improve the map for each other. We know that a small minority will continue trying to scam others, so there will always be work to do and we’re committed to keep doing better."