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A Google Business Help thread has complaints from business owners that anonymous Google users can still leave reviews for business listings in Google Maps.
When Google upgraded Google Maps to Google Local + or whatever they call it now, they started requiring users who want to leave reviews for a business to sign into their Google+ accounts before leaving a review. Then the review would show their names. It seemed fair, why let someone leave a review in a public setting about a public business when the person leaving the review is anonymous.
But as you can see, reviews from weeks ago still allow anonymous "Google user" to leave reviews.
Jade Wang from Google said, "Thanks, all -- we are investigating."
But this issue doesn't seem new, I think we covered it a few months ago and it is still an issue.
Forum discussion at Google Business Help.
Comments:
ethalon
01/04/2013 01:58 pm
I like having anonymous reviews. Some might say that allowing it would allow for rampant manipulation of the review system, but forcing someone to log in to a Google+ doesn't solve that problem, it just forces people trying to abuse the rankings (poitive or negative) to sign up for additional G+ accounts. The only thing I see this accomplishing is allowing for review manipulation by creating multiple G+ accounts, which would also beef up the user count on G+. The casual customer who is encouraged to leave a review may get to the page and realize that they now have to sign up for an additional online product in order to do so and decide that "I really liked the cheese cake" isn't worth the hassle. So perhaps this is just a plan to increase the number of accounts on G+. Watching that long interview with Vic Gundotra left me with the impression that 'numberf of G+ accounts' is on some level of priority. Maybe that was a bit off-topic, but I really don't understand why you would force people to go through an additional hoop (set of hoops) to do something as simple as leave a review if it wasn't to boost that user count.
wastemylife
01/07/2013 11:46 pm
anonymous speech is necessary for honest discourse. - of course this site will not let me post without gathering personal info.
Brandon
05/31/2013 01:23 am
I agree. I understand that Google wants to make the internet into one big happy community but people sometimes have ongoing relationships with the businesses they are reviewing. For example, I just want to warn people not to move into my horrible apartment complex without giving management more incentive to hang onto my deposit when I leave.