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Review Spam on Google Maps, 10 Months Later

By Matt McGee on Nov 13, 2008 in Google, Local Search

With thanks to my Anaheim florist friend, Cathy, I just ordered a nice flower arrangement for good friends in San Jose who just had their first baby. I asked Cathy for a recommendation because she’s very much in touch with the best local florists around the country, and I wanted to make sure I was spending money with a real, small business — not some affiliate or intermediary who would charge me more for doing nothing.

Cathy suggested I call Marlowe’s Flowers, a Milpitas florist whom she liked after visiting a few years ago. It’s a good thing I had Cathy’s recommendation, because if I’d relied solely on this company’s online reviews, I would’ve never called them. Have a look at this screenshot of Marlowe’s listing on Google Maps:

screenshot

I’d probably skip right past any business with a 2.5 stars rating, wouldn’t you? But, if you bother to dig into the reviews (which most people won’t), you’ll see something awfully suspicious:

screenshot

Most of the reviews — and all of the 1-star reviews — were written over the course of two days: January 3 and 4, 2008. I circled the dates on a handful in the image above, but that’s only half the story. There are ten 1-star reviews, all left in a two-day span. And as if that’s not suspicious enough, let’s look at the review history of these “people” leaving the negative reviews about Marlowe’s Florist:

screenshot

Above is the review history from “Mike.” Two reviews on the same day, and no others. He doesn’t like Marlowe’s, but he loves Lili of the Valley Flowers. Let’s see another one:

screenshot

Hmmm. Someone named “Greppolo” also doesn’t like Marlowe’s, but loves Lili of the Valley Flowers. What about this “Angus” person’s review history:

screenshot

Same thing happened with “Poly“, “Daniel“, “Rich man“, and others.

Pretty obvious review spam, wouldn’t you say? And it’s been sitting there for 10 months, turning away who-knows-how-many potential customers from picking up the phone and calling Marlowe’s Florist.

Luckily for Marlowe’s, Cathy showed them all this and they’re now doing what every small business needs to do: Claiming their Google Maps listing and reporting this obvious case of review spam. Hopefully, Google will react and clean this up.

On the bright side, I see Marlowe’s ranking #1 on a search for “milpitas florist,” so it’s not affecting their rankings in Google Maps. But you can bet that seeing so many negative reviews is affecting the amount of click-throughs and customers they get. And the scourge of Google Map Spam, this time in the form of fake reviews, continues….

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  1. 8 Comment(s)

  2. By Dan Connolly on Nov 13, 2008 | Reply

    Thanks for the insight. I have relied on these online ranking methods for years without really thinking about how easy it is for these results to be manipulated. Wow!

  3. By Cathy on Nov 13, 2008 | Reply

    Great summary of the challenge facing this florist. On one hand, I’m glad to see they didn’t drop out of sight from all the bogus bad reviews, on the other, I’m surprised some sort of filter didn’t kick in and instead, let the spam stand… and that the shop didn’t aggressively address it.

    How many small businesses are too busy taking care of customers to pay attention to reputation management online? How many don’t know they should or even how? I’m guessing it’s a bunch.

    It pains me to think that quality local businesses might economically suffer - not from providing bad products or services, but because they don’t know how to defend themselves from blacks hats.

  4. By Miriam on Nov 14, 2008 | Reply

    I have got to get Mike to stop spamming those poor florists.

    Haha (just kidding Mr. Blumenthal)

    Matt, great case of reporting here. This is just awful. Have these spammers never heard of karma? If the only way you can hope to succeed is by harming your competition, you do not deserve to be in business.

    My best wishes to the folks at Marlowe’s. If Matt says you’re good, I’m confident you are and I sincerely hope you will be able to get some kind of action on this.

    Miriam

  5. By David on Nov 14, 2008 | Reply

    I would think there would be/could be/should be some algorithm that could catch this type of stuff? Your investigation pretty well speaks to the shop that is gaming/abusing the system.

    Until there is some type of catch in place, I think the local map SE’s should ignore these, as it really isn’t providing a user service.

    Again great research, will keep this post in mind when working with our clients.

  6. By john williams on Nov 14, 2008 | Reply

    Good post, like you I would have normally continued searching after the 2.5 stars.
    This is how we use the net looking for something in a list that stands out 5 stars and neglecting any others. This post will certainly make me look more closely in future at customer rankings!

  7. By Nick Stamoulis on Nov 14, 2008 | Reply

    That’s the problem with product reviews you get competition that comes in and tries to negatively impact your business.

  8. By Mike Blumenthal on Nov 14, 2008 | Reply

    The ultimate irony here is that Google counts total reviews towards ranking but as of yet does not seem to count quality of reviews towards ranking.

    Since the stars have been pulled off of the Universal Local results, the efforts of the review spammers is quite the opposite of their intention. They have effectively moved Marlowes up in the rankings and visibility on the main search results page.

    Mike

  9. By Miriam on Nov 14, 2008 | Reply

    Mike -
    I had that thought, too. Rather funky, isn’t it?
    Miriam

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