Google released its annual metrics on how well it did with fighting spam on Google Maps. In short, Google said it blocked or removed more than 240 million policy-violating reviews, blocked or removed more than 70 million policy-violating edits, removed or blocked more than 12 million fake Business Profiles and placed posting restrictions on more than 900,000 accounts.
You can see the previous years at 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019 for those data points.
Here is what Google posted:
- Thanks to our advanced machine learning algorithms, we blocked or removed more than 240 million policy-violating reviews from 2024, the vast majority of which were removed before they were seen – over 40% more than in 2023.
- Our improved detection system blocked or removed more than 70 million policy-violating edits to places on Maps. We also removed or blocked more than 12 million fake Business Profiles.
- We placed posting restrictions on more than 900,000 accounts that repeatedly violated our policies.
Sadly, Google did not tell us how many photos or videos they removed this year. But Google did remove 41% more fake reviews than last year. Google removed the same number of fake Google Business Profiles as last year.
Here is the chart I have been keeping tabs on from year to year:
| Year | Reviews | Photos | Videos | Profiles |
| 2024 | 240 | N/A | N/A | 12 |
| 2023 | 170 | N/A | 14 | 12 |
| 2022 | 115 | 200 | 7 | 20 |
| 2021 | 95 | 190 | 5 | 19 |
| 2020 | 55 | 160 | 3.5 | 3.6 |
| 2019 | 75 | 10 | 3 | 4 |
Here it is as a bar chart:
Google also spoke about a new metric, the 900,000 businesses that had alerts added to their Business Profiles, preventing fake reviews. Google wrote, "we rolled out alerts in the U.S., U.K. and India to let you know if we've recently removed suspicious five-star reviews in certain circumstances. These warnings — which will expand globally starting next month — help you understand quickly if a place may be engaging in unfair review practices."
This actually launched in December 2023 but here is a screenshot of this:
Google credited Gemini and its AI for this help. "AI has been a pivotal tool in helping us stop scammers in their tracks, and we’re now using it to scale our protections even more," Google wrote.
Meanwhile, the complaints in the forums about reviews and suspension issues is off the charts and human review is so very delayed.
Forum discussion at X.
