Google's search engine remains the biggest way that people find products and services on the internet. Google also provides ways for people to review those products and services online. Indeed, the company says that over 20 million community reviews of products and services in Search and Maps are added every day.
However, as many of you might be aware, there are also a lot of online schemes to make money by posting fake reviews online. Today, Google announced it has been making changes and improvements in its review algorithms and technology to detect and get rid of fake reviews in Google Search and Google Maps.
In a blog post, it stated that in 2023, it removed or blocked over 170 million reviews that violated its policies. That number was over 45 percent more than the fake reviews it got rid of in 2022. Google also got rid of over 12 million fake business profiles last year as well.
One of the new algorithms Google put in place to find fake reviews tries to find if the same review shows up on multiple businesses, or if a business gets a huge surge of 5-star reviews. This algorithm was used to bring down one network of online scammers. Google's technology, combined with working with people who had been contacted by this network, resulted in five million fake reviews being removed in just a few weeks.
In addition to the fake reviews and business listings, Google said that it removed 14 million videos that violated its policies in 2023. That number was double the amount of videos removed in 2022. Also, Google blocked over 2 million attempts from scammers in 2023 who were trying to claim legitimate business profiles, which again was double the number it found in 2022.
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