A local mover reported in a Google Maps Help thread that his competitor has successfully removed his listing from Google Maps by having hundreds of people report his address as "inaccurate" in the Google search results.
Back in October, Google added a link to the map results found in the results to enable users to mark a business listing as accurate or not and this person is claiming that his competitor was able to use that to remove his listing in Google Maps. He said:
He has now used those same fake user accounts to report my addresses as invalid - probably hundreds of times with the number of ID's that he has. The likely automated trigger at Google goes off and the map spammer with the 40 fake address and hundreds, if not thousands, of fake reviews from from bogus accounts wins the day. It's easy to report a bogus address.
Now, I am not sure if this is indeed possible. You can always try to reproduce it, but that might be a bad thing to try to reproduce.
A Google Maps representative, Maps Guide Linda, did reply to this thread saying:
Thanks for reporting this instance of spam to us. We will effectively deal with this user since they are violating our Business Listing Quality Guidelines. Please take a look at our guidelines yourself to make sure your listings comply.
I am not sure if she is referencing the abuse of the "inaccurate" reporting feature or the abuse of this mover posting dozens of duplicate companies in Google Maps.
So can you use the "is this accurate" link to remove competitors from Google?
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
