Google Mapsis a big trove of information and data that many people rely on. This makes it a valuable target for scammers, spammers, and for nefarious fake reviews, leading to a constant battle between Google and those bad actors. Thanks to the help of AI, Google thinks it’s coming out on top. The company shared what advances in machine learning it made to improve Maps for everyone in 2023.
Google has long used machine learning tospot fake reviews, but with the latest upgrade in 2023, the company says it managed to “take down 45% more fake reviews” than the year before. The new algorithm achieved that by working both faster and by considering a longer timespan to spot irregularities, like when a business receives unusually many one- or five-star reviews at a time or when someone leaves the same reviews on multiple businesses.
The company was able to fine-tune the algorithm thanks to the help of businesses that noticed an influx of fake reviews and reported it to Google. Some even reported that they were contacted by scammers offering them to get better ratings on Google Maps. Using and analyzing all this information, Google could feed it all back to the algorithm and make it more vigilant about scams like this. In addition, Google also took legal action against some bigger scammers in 2023.
The year before, in 2022, Google published a similar report. In it, the company described similar advancements in machine learning, but also shared some insight on blocked low-quality content, like blurry images or those that violate its content policies. Back then, the company also successfully filed a lawsuit that brought down a bigger scam operation.
In 2024, it’s likely that Google will only become more successful with its automated tools working against Maps scams and spam. In its 2023 report, the company hasn’t mentioned using its new AI tools likeGeminiat all. It’s likely that Google will rely even more heavily on AI and machine learning tools as Google Maps continues to be one of the biggest and most complete datasets about the world.
While it’s important to keep problematic content at bay, Google also needs to ensure that it’s possible to fight incorrect claims. With 20 million contributions a day to Maps, there will likely also be false positives. Just like when moderating the Play Store, Google needs to make sure that it’s possible to identify these and offer a solution.
