How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will
wired.com
wired.com
I expect a few bad reviews - nobody runs their business in such a manner that every customer is satisfied 100% of the time. If I see nothing but outstanding reviews, I'm going to assume they're all fake.
Also important is number of reviews. I'd rather have a solid 4/5 product with 100 reviews than a straight 5 star product reviewed only 3 times.
Not sure if it's possible for vendors on Yelp to reply to their customers in the forum, but I see this all the time on Amazon.
I've had so many web services (including Facebook) create accounts using my email address without my approval (maybe because the other person used phone verification). Now if I want to claim back my email address on that web service, they put the burden on me to provide a photo ID. Using my email address is partially impersonating me because my contacts might have uploaded their address book and FB allows that willy nilly.
Had the same problem, someone used my email to create a facebook account and now I can't get it back without going through various loops that I honestly don't care about. I just put anything that is related to facebook to be automatically deleted and my friends know I hate FB and I'm not there, so if someone 'friends' them thinking it's me, I think only 2-3 people I know wouldn't suspect it.
Could you elaborate why?
There are more than a couple bad actors that are Approved Google map moderators. I am not sure if their collective actions for denying and modifying changes are a net good or net positive. It has always seemed strange that someone from Washington state can deny a detailed and documented road/POI change in Florida.
I really enjoy editing/contributing to Gmaps, but the seemingly random/poisonous moderation process in that ecosystem is a huge turn off.
Sorry if this is a tad off topic.
And then there are Quality assurance tools: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Quality_assurance
Right now most of them are more geared toward detecting accidental errors, but it is pretty safe to say that once OSM becomes more popular there will also be tools optimized to detect vandalism.
I also feel like it's a lot easier to get in touch with the community, at least here in Germany: http://www.openstreetmap.de/community.html I actually still haven't found a simple German Wikipedia Forum where I could just discuss a page, which is something that really helps new users.
Reporting it when it first started happening led to nothing but rejections and it's only in the last month or so that some of the listings are finally being purged.
If they can't be bothered to take reports seriously when they're verifiable through authoritative sources (or heck, streetview) then it seems like a hopeless case for small businesses.
Sounds exactly what has happened to Wikipedia and Reddit--a small number of power users finding ways to exploit platforms for personal gain.
Consequently the various colleges and attractions of Oxford, UK were labelled in Japanese (and some of them in the wrong place) even when viewed from Google UK and/or in the UK, because Japanese tourists and tourist companies could edit the maps and users in the UK couldn't edit them back.
(Disclaimer: my partner works there - but I don't get a commission or anything :-) Just seemed relevant to the discussion)
There is no way to verify that the integrity of the submitter, who could be giving wrong information due to malice, incompetence, or as a prank. There's entirely too much trust in crowdsourcing.
In OpenStreetMap as a community project which is know as such people are much more likely to report things (on the German website there is even a big button for that). It takes longer for a edit to be approved in google map maker than people get easy stuff fixed in OpenStreetMap in my area. If I check my notes RSS feed after 1 week then most of the errors are already fixed.
Edit: +1 Cthulhu_ Google=private company
Once they do, it will have the same problems Google does, but worse because they don't have the resources to fight back.
It is much easier to fix mistakes than it is to fight an active adversary.
(Also, a bit dishonest to call OSM irrelevant when it is the canonical data source for a number of famous application, including Apple, even if it's not directly applicable to the situation here.)
Except that Wikipedia can't manage the problem. See cratermoon's post along similar lines upthread:
but worse because they don't have the resources to fight back.
Google does not come anywhere close to this. Not to mention that only a few of them can actually approve and fix things.
And because google is closed it does not have any kind of Quality Assurance tools. In OSM you could easily check if the last edit changed the opening hours and if the new one is strange (like not open Saturday evening)
Maybe local business organizations can provide help in this, have a few people dedicate some of their time to making sure all listings are correct. Alternatively, counties / local governments could take this responsibility upon them; after all, local governments dislike seeing local businesses go out of business or get less customers because they can't be found on Google.
At the same time, Google could do better in verifying changes; cross-check them with official address books and business registries and the like.
Sure, it's unfortunate, and these kind of "crowd-sourcing casualties" are going to happen here and there, but is it really that big of a problem, relative to the value that is gained?
imagine running bobs pizza just paying 100$ to some russian or chinese group to put negative yelp reviews for the near tom's pizza as well as change their opening and closing hours on places like google, etc costing them 10s of thousands of dollars.
But they only bring out that kind of prosecutorial initiative and creativity, if you downloaded a bunch of academic articles after previously identifying yourself as a bit of a troublemaker (Aaron Swartz). Who cares about some old immigrant's restaurant? OK, enough cynicism for today..
I always try to find the actual business' page to check for phones and opening and closing hours.
Regardless, it's a pain to navigate flash restaurant menus. Just give me a plain list!
I regularly run into local places that use their Facebook page as their de facto virtual storefront, but that format could be much better customized for individual business varieties' needs, even putting aside the limitations of living in Facebook's garden.
"Here's your (crummy, last-updated-2011) web site today, and here's the beautiful one we've already built for you, including full online reservations and take out ordering. With just a few clicks you can customize it with photos or a new menu. Pay us $NN/month and we'll immediately switch your domain to point at this shiny new site."
Squarespace could move in this direction, too, by continuing to specialize and extend its templates until a good looking, functional site takes an average of minutes. But Google has the advantage of already knowing enough about the average small business to build it a better web site in literally milliseconds.
How can it be "unprofessional"? That's simply not their profession. Why should we judge them on that?
What an odd comment.
Your comment is far odder than mine.
Google runs a GYBO (Get Your Business Online) program doing that, down to domain name, in an effort to upsell things like GApps once the small business is ready, I'm not sure how popular it is.
Anymore? That is the traditional way of finding that kind of information. Sure, there was a brief period of time when only technically sophisticate businesses were online, but as you say, that is no longer the case.
No listings sites seem to anticipate that a place can have opening hours but be "booking not always required"; indeed level of booking requirement doesn't appear to feature in any local business listings pages.
This can't be that rare as another business on our short road has the same booking policy ("not always required"). I understand entirely that Google/Facebook/Yelp/etc. want to pin down strict times but an alternate string field with suggested standardised forms would seem sensible for many businesses.
Thus opening times aren't entered and the only thing you can do is contact us to enquire what our policy is. It's a shortcoming of the listings database design.
Specifically, Yelp was forced by the courts to reveal the real identities behind bogus reviews, and further individuals have been held personally liable for defamation.
Though the Google Map hacks may not fall under a cause of action for defamation (thought it may), certainly I could see rather large judgments under a theory of tortious interference with business contracts/business relationships. These suits permit not just damages for economic loss, but also punitive damages.
The article mentions some person on a retainer who does this on a shop-by-shop basis, but it seems to me that this is something that can be automated and scaled.
I usually don't trust yelp, but the decline is way too visible here.
Check the reviews, there's also how many reviews and friends the person has. The lower these two numbers are, the most likely the review is fake (either pro or against)
Also check how balanced the review is. Most legitimate ones are fair, and won't go over the top either way
And of course, there's always someone that's going to complain about a sushi restaurant serving raw fish.
Some people think the issue with yelp and google reviews is trust. Its not. Its entitlement and a lack of proper criteria. The types of people who gravitate towards these reviews and become frequent reviewers are often people with poor taste and a lack of understanding of what they are reviewing. They're not crowd-sourced Robger Eberts. They're your cranky local paper's film critic who thinks 'naughty language' is the most unforgivable sin.
If anything, services like yelp have made me appreciate the art of criticism and a lot of my dining decisions are now done via professional critics with good reputations instead of the usual gang of misanthropes and weirdos who dominate yelp.
Many Asian restaurants in the Bay Area that I like are 3 or 3.5 stars, though many others with that rating are mediocre. But on the low or high end, it seems very accurate.
There's a great ice cream place near me that gets complaints about their customer service. You're buying an ice cream cone! It takes like 3 sentences; how much service do you need? No joke, there are 2-star reviews like "Stopped by after dinner; the line was out the door and the owner seemed tired. The ice cream was delicious though."
So, you are told of a credible example of a restaurant being sabotaged on one user-content-based website by opponents, and then turn to another user-content-based notorious for fake reviews & astroturfing, and see an abrupt & extraordinary decline on every axis, and rather than take this as additional evidence of the sabotage campaign, you take this as evidence that the restaurant was declining simultaneously with the sabotage campaign? Interesting reasoning there.
openstreetmap, on the other hand, seems much more trustful on this, since it's moderated a little like wikipedia is.
I guess if openstreetmap was more popular, you might start to see similar problems described in that article.
I'm sure even governments would not want to give the data of businesses opening/closing for free.
I think it's likely that he had little interest in the online presence of his business, but he must also have missed opportunities to better manage it (I'm thinking of information from a chamber of commerce or similar, or just conversations with people).
I know the internet is much more popular since the last 10 years, but I don't think everyone is really up to it. There are still big opportunities to scam people who don't have the minimum of tech savyness: viruses, etc.
The internet is still a jungle with not enough laws.
Why not just have better defenses against things like this in the first place, that work whether the activity is deemed "wrong" or not?
I'm not saying you really need laws, but regulations might improve the situation. There's nothing really illegal there, but it would be nice to see google being liable for its data if it reach a certain size of audience. In this case it's false advertising of defamation (unintentional).
Google map is a product, even if it hides behind a free thing "use with caution". Most people can get along with it, but if it starts to have a big impact on society, people will indeed become wary and learn, but not everyone will do.
I guess you can say "let the nature do its work", but that's not always how government see things, and that's not why the government exists. Strong government can do big improvements, I think. It depends, that's a balance to find.
I hate to disagree with this because I sympathize strongly with the underlying sentiment, but I have to disagree anyway in this case. If you had just said that business owners who don't have an online presence could benefit from having one, I would certainly agree. But if, for whatever reason, a business owner does not have an online presence, that does not give online entities like Google an excuse to publish false factual information about them. The operating hours of a business are factual information, and if Google is going to let such information appear on its site, it has a responsibility to verify its accuracy with the actual business owner.
It seems to me that there is a responsibility here for Google. Google has become in effect the only way for small businesses to get or not get exposure, and the way Google automates the process without authorization causes these fringe problems. Fringe for Google, lethal for the business owner.
I think it is in Google's best interest to improve the process through which they deal with the problems, and maybe even help prosecute those who created them. Unfortunately, I also think they see these as collateral damage in a battle to create the most automated system that works 99.99999% of the time.
On the other hand, it is a shame this biz owner had no computer expertise nor knew to take care of his online reputation and information. Just like people and Linkedin or github, businesses need to take responsibility. As in any transitions, some people will be left behind, and it seems there is not a lot we can do to avoid that.
There is nothing Google or anyone else can do, if the business doesn't care.
When the business does care, there are lots of options to clean up their online presence.
"as we know, there are known knowns[...] there are known unknowns[...] But there are also unknown unknowns" - Donald Rumsfeld
It's easy for business-minded techies to understand the impact of "that online stuff". It's very likely that a septuagenarian restauranteur simply doesn't fathom its potential impact.
It is absolutely a case of the business owner not caring. It's completely understandable to not care about something that you don't know about. But if you do care about it, then you will learn about it.
As a business owner, you need to care and know how your customers find you. Be it Bing Maps, Google Maps, the phone book, etc. And you need to care that your information is correct in those places, and that means you need to know about them. Or have someone act on your behalf who can check them for you.
I just learned today that someone wearing Google Glass can record me typing my password on my iPad from a long distance, and be able to algorithmically figure out my password. Did I know that? No, and I am not even 74 years old.
I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, but I disagree with that line in particular.
If you disagree, please sent your reply via the Pony Express to the Harlem Public House; I shall check with the barman therein to see if your letter arrives every other Sunday.
I highly doubt that the google maps error caused or even contributed to the downfall of their apparently well established business.
With that being said, Google maps is far from perfect. They really should have a way for business owners that they list to be able to update their store information, especially for small businesses. How hard would it be to implement a callback system that allowed an owner to make simple updates to hours of business or to delete false/inaccurate listings? I guess they're too busy trying to find places in their code base to replace 'if' statements with bayesian filtering.
Demonstrating causation between a bad Google Maps listing and Serbian Crown’s decline is going to be hard, though. For one thing, the restaurant’s Yelp listing—also a big factor in choosing a dinner reservation—is packed with abysmal, almost frightening, reviews. And there are any number of reasons a restaurant—even an old, established one—can fail, as Google’s lawyers pointed out an angry June 17 motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
People don't read anymore.
I realize people choose page titles that are meant to grab your attention, and I don't have a problem with that in general. It just gets tiresome when the article does not discuss what you were led to believe it was going to discuss.
Today? Online news sites don't care about headline accuracy, just SEO and linkbait rating. They don't even really have to care about length, to an extent. "Subject That Will Blow Your Mind and Change the Way You See the World. Top All-time. You Won’t Believe Your Eyes. Watch."
So yes, headlines have gotten useless.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/s...
I would think that perhaps the hideous website[1] played a bigger role and perhaps didn't help the situation.
Each of Facebook, Google+, Yelp and Foursquare (and I'm sure lots of others, those are the ones I perceive as being 'big') have buttons that say something like 'Do you own this business?' (they disappear if/when the owner updates the listing). I sort of think these local business landing pages were one of the big reasons Google worked so hard to have their own Facebook (there are still an awful lot more businesses 'on Facebook' than are doing anything with Google+).
If the business owner doesn't understand technology, contract it out.