How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

http://www.wired.com/2014/07/hacking-google-maps/

by cryptoz • 12 years ago

152 122 12 years ago

hyperliner2• 12 years ago

To what extent is a weapon or a tool at fault, instead of the shooter or user? This reminds me of Google bombing (for example, the attack on Rick Santorum, a Senator whose ideas we can all disagree with).

It seems to me that there is a responsibility here for Google. Google has become in effect the only way for small businesses to get or not get exposure, and the way Google automates the process without authorization causes these fringe problems. Fringe for Google, lethal for the business owner.

I think it is in Google's best interest to improve the process through which they deal with the problems, and maybe even help prosecute those who created them. Unfortunately, I also think they see these as collateral damage in a battle to create the most automated system that works 99.99999% of the time.

On the other hand, it is a shame this biz owner had no computer expertise nor knew to take care of his online reputation and information. Just like people and Linkedin or github, businesses need to take responsibility. As in any transitions, some people will be left behind, and it seems there is not a lot we can do to avoid that.

VikingCoder4• 12 years ago

The business owner needs to care what their online presence (including their Google Places) looks like.

There is nothing Google or anyone else can do, if the business doesn't care.

When the business does care, there are lots of options to clean up their online presence.

benihana2• 12 years ago

Did you read the article? This isn't a case of the owner not caring; he didn't know that google maps was incorrectly reporting his hours. It took a phone call from a customer. And that's the problem - why would he ever think that people weren't coming to his restaurant because a map service messed up his hours? As is clear from this article, that was very low on his checklist of things that might be killing my business.

hyperliner2• 12 years ago

Assuming that a competitor did this, then it is fair to assume that the person does not know how the "criminal mind" of someone who is after him works.

I just learned today that someone wearing Google Glass can record me typing my password on my iPad from a long distance, and be able to algorithmically figure out my password. Did I know that? No, and I am not even 74 years old.

boobsbr• 12 years ago

One more reason why I don't trust POIs I find on Google Maps.

I always try to find the actual business' page to check for phones and opening and closing hours.

post_break• 12 years ago

But it's a restaurant so you know they like to not list the phone number, hours, or menu (sarcasm).

nnnnni2• 12 years ago

You've also got to love how the menu is always done in flash, so you most likely can't view it on a phone...

swalkergibson• 12 years ago

Mostly relevant XKCD: http://xkcd.com/773/

bhartzer• 12 years ago

You can't even rely on a business' website anymore, though. You have to actually call them on the phone and talk to a real person there, at the business. Too often even the business owner doesn't have time to update their website or get the "web guy" (read: his brother in law's son) to update the website in a timely manner.

twoodfin3• 12 years ago

If I were Google, Yelp, or Facebook, I'd give serious consideration to selling local businesses pre-created, theme-able web sites on a subscription basis. They already have essentially all the content such sites would need, and better designers than most small businesses would have access to.

I regularly run into local places that use their Facebook page as their de facto virtual storefront, but that format could be much better customized for individual business varieties' needs, even putting aside the limitations of living in Facebook's garden.

mcguire3• 12 years ago

"You can't even rely on a business' website anymore, though. You have to actually call them on the phone and talk to a real person there, at the business."

Anymore? That is the traditional way of finding that kind of information. Sure, there was a brief period of time when only technically sophisticate businesses were online, but as you say, that is no longer the case.

mark-r• 12 years ago

But how do you get their phone number? The same way you found their hours: Google. Checkmate.

pbhjpbhj• 12 years ago

A place where I work has irregular hours such that the common hours are noted but contact is requested to book and verify that the business is available. The specific industry is too small to be targeted with affordable online bookings systems and the business is on the smaller end of that.

No listings sites seem to anticipate that a place can have opening hours but be "booking not always required"; indeed level of booking requirement doesn't appear to feature in any local business listings pages.

This can't be that rare as another business on our short road has the same booking policy ("not always required"). I understand entirely that Google/Facebook/Yelp/etc. want to pin down strict times but an alternate string field with suggested standardised forms would seem sensible for many businesses.

Thus opening times aren't entered and the only thing you can do is contact us to enquire what our policy is. It's a shortcoming of the listings database design.

j_m_b• 12 years ago

"The Serbian Crown closed its doors after nearly 40 years in the same location." Oh sure... blame it on Google Maps telling people you aren't open on Sat, Sun, Mon. I guess your regulars, who you've built up over 40 years, don't know when you're open unless they look at Google maps. Even the owner himself says "If you’re going there, it’s because you’ve planned to go there." I imagine his problem could be more accurately blamed on the decor (it looks hideous on the outside and that doesn't bode well for the inside) and the low quality of food being served (unless there are lion,kangaroo and bear farms in Virginia than that meat has probably been frozen).

With that being said, Google maps is far from perfect. They really should have a way for business owners that they list to be able to update their store information, especially for small businesses. How hard would it be to implement a callback system that allowed an owner to make simple updates to hours of business or to delete false/inaccurate listings? I guess they're too busy trying to find places in their code base to replace 'if' statements with bayesian filtering.

vinceguidry5• 12 years ago

From the article:

Demonstrating causation between a bad Google Maps listing and Serbian Crown’s decline is going to be hard, though. For one thing, the restaurant’s Yelp listing—also a big factor in choosing a dinner reservation—is packed with abysmal, almost frightening, reviews. And there are any number of reasons a restaurant—even an old, established one—can fail, as Google’s lawyers pointed out an angry June 17 motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

People don't read anymore.

woodchuck643• 12 years ago

Does the article actually thoroughly discredit its own title? People don't write anymore.

woodchuck643• 12 years ago

Indeed. The domestic demand for beef seems to be declining over the last 5 years, surely the demand for lion meat is falling as well.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/s...

ceejayoz2• 12 years ago

I've planned many times to go to somewhere while still having to GPS my way there, and if the food/decor are crap, I'd suspect that's not a sudden change after 40 years.

orf• 12 years ago

I've eaten Kangaroo in Cambridge and it tasted delicious, and I can assure you there are no Kangaroo farms around here - the fact the meat has been frozen is not the reason for them shutting. Any place that has been around for 40 years serving food has to be doing something right, they did win the "NVM Best Restaurant" award from 2006 to 2009. You also can't blame the decor on a huge, sudden drop in customers.

I would think that perhaps the hideous website[1] played a bigger role and perhaps didn't help the situation.

1. http://www.serbiancrown.com/

benihana2• 12 years ago

And I would not be surprised to learn there is some internet activism at play here too. Someone who doesn't think people should eat [this list of animals] because of [this reason] might see this place and think "oh, if I go to Yelp and leave bad reviews, this place will close, ha ha!"

maxerickson2• 12 years ago

They do have a system for the business to give feedback on the listing; it's even discussed in the article that the Serbian Crown eventually found a web consultant that helped them correct the listing. I have no idea if it is simple.

Each of Facebook, Google+, Yelp and Foursquare (and I'm sure lots of others, those are the ones I perceive as being 'big') have buttons that say something like 'Do you own this business?' (they disappear if/when the owner updates the listing). I sort of think these local business landing pages were one of the big reasons Google worked so hard to have their own Facebook (there are still an awful lot more businesses 'on Facebook' than are doing anything with Google+).

joeatp• 12 years ago

They offer an easy way for business owners to update their information. It's not difficult at all, just have to order a confirmation code to a current business address and take some other verification steps, then you can modify your business page however you like.

If the business owner doesn't understand technology, contract it out.

ufmace• 12 years ago

You might be getting downvoted for the snarky tone of the first paragraph, but I think you have a point. If you're a restaurant in business for 40 years, and you don't have enough regulars who would question Google Maps telling them that you're closed on the busiest nights of the week for the restaurant industry, then I think you have problems much deeper than anything that might be happening on Google Maps.

drivingmenuts• 12 years ago

This is an example of one of the major problems of crowd-sourcing: trust.

There is no way to verify that the integrity of the submitter, who could be giving wrong information due to malice, incompetence, or as a prank. There's entirely too much trust in crowdsourcing.

Vik1ng3• 12 years ago

I think the real problem is this google has the half baked crowd-sourcing. Where you actually have a closed system and then let some people crowd source on top of it and have different ranks and people approving. It's the same reason Wikipedia is losing editors, because people don't want to wait for some admin to approve it.

In OpenStreetMap as a community project which is know as such people are much more likely to report things (on the German website there is even a big button for that). It takes longer for a edit to be approved in google map maker than people get easy stuff fixed in OpenStreetMap in my area. If I check my notes RSS feed after 1 week then most of the errors are already fixed.

Edit: +1 Cthulhu_ Google=private company

spot• 12 years ago

OSM is still so irrelevant that the spammers and scammers have not targeted it yet.

Once they do, it will have the same problems Google does, but worse because they don't have the resources to fight back.

It is much easier to fix mistakes than it is to fight an active adversary.

Cthulhu_• 12 years ago

It works very well for Wikipedia though, but that's because Wikipedia has much more people that care about the information and maintain it. Google Maps lacks that community feeling of providing correct information, probably because it's owned and operated by Google.

Maybe local business organizations can provide help in this, have a few people dedicate some of their time to making sure all listings are correct. Alternatively, counties / local governments could take this responsibility upon them; after all, local governments dislike seeing local businesses go out of business or get less customers because they can't be found on Google.

At the same time, Google could do better in verifying changes; cross-check them with official address books and business registries and the like.

cratermoon2• 12 years ago

Except Wikipedia doesn't work "very well". It works OK for most subjects, but there are some areas and points of view that are no-go areas because of the prevailing values of the major editors, and even turf wars. Mentioned not to long ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7700546

crdblb• 12 years ago

The only reason it works for Wikipedia is because everything must be externally-verifiable ("citation needed" and all that). On Wikipedia, trust in the crowd is not only unnecessary, it is actively discouraged. That doesn't work for all situations, and as we can see from this story, bad things can much more easily happen in cases where external verification is not available.

resu_nimda• 12 years ago

I don't think it's a major problem. This is one old guy who didn't even understand that his restaurant was listed on Google. As soon as a tech-savvy person stepped in it was cleared up in a few minutes. The damage may have already been done, but that's another story (some are saying the restaurant was already in decline).

Sure, it's unfortunate, and these kind of "crowd-sourcing casualties" are going to happen here and there, but is it really that big of a problem, relative to the value that is gained?

chdir5• 12 years ago

I've heard so many horror stories of businesses trying to remove fake reviews from competitors. Even a tech savvy can't do much if your nemesis are bent upon destroying your online reputation. A company like Google doesn't offer an easy way to alleviate that. Your best bet is that you hope to stay lucky.

autokad• 12 years ago

online scamsters are more focused on trying to pretend they got you to click an ad and buy something, but as soon as they turn their heads towards using 'crowdsourcing' for financial gain then the value of what crowdsourcing provides becomes extremely diminished. not only is its value diminished, but it becomes a weapon to use against people you do not like or competition.

imagine running bobs pizza just paying 100$ to some russian or chinese group to put negative yelp reviews for the near tom's pizza as well as change their opening and closing hours on places like google, etc costing them 10s of thousands of dollars.

CalRobert• 12 years ago

Well... we could use a robust and well-established web of trust based infrastructure, but only weirdos like me go to key signing parties :-(

chdir5• 12 years ago

And it's very easy to bully someone by hiring an army of a 'black' crowd spread geographically.

chdir5• 12 years ago

If you are running a popular place, whether you like it or not, you'll end up on Google controlled listings. Unfortunately, there's little help for a non-tech savvy business owner to fix problems with listings or fake reviews or even removal of genuine reviews. This is an area where they need to be held accountable. If you are wielding so much power, you need to handle it responsibly and error in favor of business owners rather than community. Most web companies prefer the approach of 'act now, apologize later' or maybe never to garner users.

I've had so many web services (including Facebook) create accounts using my email address without my approval (maybe because the other person used phone verification). Now if I want to claim back my email address on that web service, they put the burden on me to provide a photo ID. Using my email address is partially impersonating me because my contacts might have uploaded their address book and FB allows that willy nilly.

tedunangst• 12 years ago

If it's your email, can't you just send a password reset?

chdir5• 12 years ago

With Facebook, no. My guess is that if you've verified with a phone number, they make it difficult to reset by an unverified email (they favor the fake user and assume that the email was entered incorrectly). Moreover, I don't want to take over someone's account if they've been ignorant about entering the email incorrectly. They still own the data. However I do report that I didn't create this account. Services like FB blacklist the email address in that case. As a result, I can't use that email in future without giving a photo ID (never gonna happen).

BSousa• 12 years ago

Not with facebook last time I tried.

Had the same problem, someone used my email to create a facebook account and now I can't get it back without going through various loops that I honestly don't care about. I just put anything that is related to facebook to be automatically deleted and my friends know I hate FB and I'm not there, so if someone 'friends' them thinking it's me, I think only 2-3 people I know wouldn't suspect it.

true_religion• 12 years ago

The previous process used to go "if you're weilding this much power... you charge businesses to fix things for you".

Karunamon• 12 years ago

If you are wielding so much power, you need to handle it responsibly and error in favor of business owners rather than community

Could you elaborate why?

chdir5• 12 years ago

The above article is an example of how Google unknowingly destroyed a 40 year old business that was being run by a 74 year old man who hadn't used internet. I've personally known business owners who struggle to figure out reputation management with Google listings. There's simply no systematic way to call up Google & fix things when things go wrong. We're talking about people's sole livelihood here. If there's a doubt about a listing, instead of assuming that crowd source data is correct, Google should have a clear laid out way for businesses to call up and set things right.

Semaphor3• 12 years ago

The yelp review paint a picture of 2010: Great food, great service 2011: Good to great food, horrible service 2012: Horrible food, horrible service

I usually don't trust yelp, but the decline is way too visible here.

raverbashing• 12 years ago

People love to bash yelp, but it's merely a reflection of the fact that People Are Dicks

Check the reviews, there's also how many reviews and friends the person has. The lower these two numbers are, the most likely the review is fake (either pro or against)

Also check how balanced the review is. Most legitimate ones are fair, and won't go over the top either way

And of course, there's always someone that's going to complain about a sushi restaurant serving raw fish.

drzaiusapelord• 12 years ago

What exactly is yelp telling you? I'm something of a foodie and am stunned at how inaccurate the reviews are for most restaurants. Most of the reviews seem to come from a minority "elite" users who are chronic whiners and come off as terribly immature. Its just incredible what people ding establishments for. "Fries came late, this place sucks! Zero stars!"

Some people think the issue with yelp and google reviews is trust. Its not. Its entitlement and a lack of proper criteria. The types of people who gravitate towards these reviews and become frequent reviewers are often people with poor taste and a lack of understanding of what they are reviewing. They're not crowd-sourced Robger Eberts. They're your cranky local paper's film critic who thinks 'naughty language' is the most unforgivable sin.

If anything, services like yelp have made me appreciate the art of criticism and a lot of my dining decisions are now done via professional critics with good reputations instead of the usual gang of misanthropes and weirdos who dominate yelp.

Semaphor3• 12 years ago

This was the second time I really read through reviews on yelp. The first time I was reading reviews about a restaurant I love and reviewing it myself. And when I say I don't trust yelp, I meant the user base :)

electrum• 12 years ago

Do you have any examples of awesome restaurants that have poor ratings on Yelp? Assuming a sufficient number of reviews, Yelp ratings are at least "directionally accurate". In my experience, a place with four stars is decent and two stars is poor.

Many Asian restaurants in the Bay Area that I like are 3 or 3.5 stars, though many others with that rating are mediocre. But on the low or high end, it seems very accurate.

wl• 12 years ago

If this restaurant was targeted by a competitor on Google Maps, it's not inconceivable that they also put fake reviews on Yelp.

gwern• 12 years ago

I usually don't trust yelp, but the decline is way too visible here.

So, you are told of a credible example of a restaurant being sabotaged on one user-content-based website by opponents, and then turn to another user-content-based notorious for fake reviews & astroturfing, and see an abrupt & extraordinary decline on every axis, and rather than take this as additional evidence of the sabotage campaign, you take this as evidence that the restaurant was declining simultaneously with the sabotage campaign? Interesting reasoning there.

Semaphor3• 12 years ago

The decline was gradual, got worse over time and the users often have multiple reviews. Also it started before the google thing.

troymc• 12 years ago

Aren't there large-scale services to whom a small business owner can pay an annual subscription fee, where the service will monitor the accuracy of their Google, Yelp, Open Street Map, Wikipedia, Yellowpages, etc. information?

The article mentions some person on a retainer who does this on a shop-by-shop basis, but it seems to me that this is something that can be automated and scaled.

ceejayoz2• 12 years ago

I believe http://www.reputation.com/ does this.

funkdobiest• 12 years ago

Here is a free one( up to 5 listings) that feeds Google https://mybusinesslistingmanager.com

mierle• 12 years ago

GoDaddy's Get Found does this; http://getfound.com. Disclaimer: I work at GoDaddy on Get Found.

will_brown• 12 years ago

It would seem to me these types of hacks are very risky in light of the recent lawsuits involving bogus Yelp reviews.

Specifically, Yelp was forced by the courts to reveal the real identities behind bogus reviews, and further individuals have been held personally liable for defamation.

Though the Google Map hacks may not fall under a cause of action for defamation (thought it may), certainly I could see rather large judgments under a theory of tortious interference with business contracts/business relationships. These suits permit not just damages for economic loss, but also punitive damages.

southflorida• 12 years ago

if google is going to take it upon themselves to list a business they should be held accountable and the information should be accurate. google listed the business without his consent and it was incorrect information. i hope he wins... google listing a business that is closed on weekends could have been detrimental in this case. the business owner doesnt need to change because technology has evolved beyond his understanding, google should have never listed the business to begin with. google = giant scraper site of misinformation.

pavel_lishin• 12 years ago

the business owner doesnt need to change because technology has evolved beyond his understanding

I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, but I disagree with that line in particular.

If you disagree, please sent your reply via the Pony Express to the Harlem Public House; I shall check with the barman therein to see if your letter arrives every other Sunday.

mcguire3• 12 years ago

Note: IIRC, the pony express was a transport mechanism for the US mail service, which has the same API today. And if you do send a letter to someone C/O the Harlem Public House, said establishment still exists and is willing to hold mail, and you do check it periodically, you will very likely get the letter.

nicolethenerd• 12 years ago

In case any of you have a business w/ a physical location, yext.com sells a service that lets you manage these details (business hours, location, phone #, etc) across several different sites (Bing, Mapquest, Yahoo, etc + ~50 others), rather than handling them all individually.

(Disclaimer: my partner works there - but I don't get a commission or anything :-) Just seemed relevant to the discussion)

Gracana• 12 years ago

Can yext do anything to protect you from attacks like those mentioned in the linked article?

eightofdiamonds2• 12 years ago

They can lock down the listing so that only you can edit them with their partner sites. But it wouldn't work in this case since they are not partnered with Google. We just had a presentation from them at my work a few weeks ago.

SquareWheel• 12 years ago

Why the heck can't I scroll down on the results page? It keeps resetting my position when I use the scroll bar.

eightofdiamonds2• 12 years ago

Yext can't manage Google listings though which is important to note. No 3rd party is able to directly manage Google listings.

jokoon3• 12 years ago

I always wondered about this, but now it's obvious: google doesn't make sure those business info are accurate, it might have a huge cost to verify those info, for example asking for some paperwork to check.

openstreetmap, on the other hand, seems much more trustful on this, since it's moderated a little like wikipedia is.

I guess if openstreetmap was more popular, you might start to see similar problems described in that article.

I'm sure even governments would not want to give the data of businesses opening/closing for free.

dclowd9901• 12 years ago

As a business owner, it's your job to make sure those listings are accurate, just as it would be you would want to make sure the yellow pages had your right phone number. There's no excuse for technological illiteracy or ignorance, and if you don't want to bother to be in charge of your online presence, you had better hire someone for the job.

Crisco• 12 years ago

What if the owner has no idea that his business even has an online presence? I can see that being very common amongst older business owners, especially if they have never even used Google before.

jokoon3• 12 years ago

There's no excuse for technological illiteracy or ignorance

I know the internet is much more popular since the last 10 years, but I don't think everyone is really up to it. There are still big opportunities to scam people who don't have the minimum of tech savyness: viruses, etc.

The internet is still a jungle with not enough laws.

pdonis2• 12 years ago

There's no excuse for technological illiteracy or ignorance, and if you don't want to bother to be in charge of your online presence, you had better hire someone for the job.

I hate to disagree with this because I sympathize strongly with the underlying sentiment, but I have to disagree anyway in this case. If you had just said that business owners who don't have an online presence could benefit from having one, I would certainly agree. But if, for whatever reason, a business owner does not have an online presence, that does not give online entities like Google an excuse to publish false factual information about them. The operating hours of a business are factual information, and if Google is going to let such information appear on its site, it has a responsibility to verify its accuracy with the actual business owner.

veepee• 12 years ago

I can confirm that Google actually do call businesses to verify hours and address information. My cafe has been opened for 16 months now and I've received three calls within that time frame. Two of which said they were from Google and calling to verify hours, address and web address is correct. The last one didn't introduce himself but asked for the same information.

sirdogealot• 12 years ago

They were in business for 40 years... and Google maps just recently started incorrectly listing their hours.

I highly doubt that the google maps error caused or even contributed to the downfall of their apparently well established business.

_wp3r• 12 years ago

If you have ever used mapmaker, and attempted to update/modify POI and roads, then you will be aware of the strange and unvalidated process of accepting and denying changes to Gmaps.

There are more than a couple bad actors that are Approved Google map moderators. I am not sure if their collective actions for denying and modifying changes are a net good or net positive. It has always seemed strange that someone from Washington state can deny a detailed and documented road/POI change in Florida.

I really enjoy editing/contributing to Gmaps, but the seemingly random/poisonous moderation process in that ecosystem is a huge turn off.

Sorry if this is a tad off topic.

freyfogle• 12 years ago

Out of curiosity, have you tried OpenStreetMap? You get the same enjoyment of editing without the "random/poisonous moderation process", plus the data you contribute is open, rather than private property.

Crito• 12 years ago

Do you know what OpenStreetMap has done to avoid the toxic editing community? Wikipedia also has a problem with a toxic community; are they doing something different?

josephschmoe• 12 years ago

I tried to do this for my apartment complex. I kept getting fed up when people would approve my road additions, but not subtractions - and how difficult it was to change structure shapes and roads.

dobs• 12 years ago

Someone started creating fake business listings on fake side-streets with the names of major intersections throughout my city about a year ago. So if you searched for directions to something like "Main and 1st" you'd get redirected to someone's backyard several miles away.

Reporting it when it first started happening led to nothing but rejections and it's only in the last month or so that some of the listings are finally being purged.

If they can't be bothered to take reports seriously when they're verifiable through authoritative sources (or heck, streetview) then it seems like a hopeless case for small businesses.

diogenescynic• 12 years ago

I really enjoy editing/contributing to Gmaps, but the seemingly random/poisonous moderation process in that ecosystem is a huge turn off.

Sounds exactly what has happened to Wikipedia and Reddit--a small number of power users finding ways to exploit platforms for personal gain.

coroxout• 12 years ago

Less of a problem than described in this article, and now fixed, but rather incongruous nonetheless: a couple of years ago (as far as I could make out) Google maps editing was available in some territories and not in others.

Consequently the various colleges and attractions of Oxford, UK were labelled in Japanese (and some of them in the wrong place) even when viewed from Google UK and/or in the UK, because Japanese tourists and tourist companies could edit the maps and users in the UK couldn't edit them back.

hnriot• 12 years ago

The world is a better place without a restaurant serving bear meat.

pests• 12 years ago

If you read the article you would see it no longer serves bear meat.

trhway• 12 years ago

it was still serving lion, horse, kangaroo... Good riddance. Time has changed and the owner just didn't notice it. He blames it on Google while his business simply fell out of fashion.

derekp7• 12 years ago

Would this type of hack fall under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? If so, it seems like an easy case to prosecute (the person committing the act has a financial profit motive, the public would like to see genuine bad actors get punished, etc). Or does the CFAA not apply because this isn't a protected resources?

scintill76• 12 years ago

Maybe it could count as "knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value".[0]

But they only bring out that kind of prosecutorial initiative and creativity, if you downloaded a bunch of academic articles after previously identifying yourself as a bit of a troublemaker (Aaron Swartz). Who cares about some old immigrant's restaurant? OK, enough cynicism for today..

[0] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030

csandreasen• 12 years ago

Several years ago my spouse and I took a vacation abroad and booked a tour with a local company. The guide was really shocked when I told him that I went with their company because they had negative reviews. All of the touring companies had fairly amateur web sites, but with the exception of this company, all of the Yelp reviews were glowing, 5-star, nothing-went-wrong-with-this-trip reviews. His company had fairly good reviews, with one or two one-star reviews from angry customers that cancelled at the last minute and didn't get their deposit back.

I expect a few bad reviews - nobody runs their business in such a manner that every customer is satisfied 100% of the time. If I see nothing but outstanding reviews, I'm going to assume they're all fake.

steven777400• 12 years ago

Especially key is also what the bad reviews are for. Like in your case, you identify the bad reviews are unreasonable expectations. Bad reviews with claimed reasonable cause may be worth a little more pause.

Also important is number of reviews. I'd rather have a solid 4/5 product with 100 reviews than a straight 5 star product reviewed only 3 times.

soperj• 12 years ago

And now I know when faking product reviews to throw a few bad ones in there ;)

r00fus• 12 years ago

Well, if there is a bad review that has a response from the company, that reflects well in my opinion, unless there are a large number of them.

Not sure if it's possible for vendors on Yelp to reply to their customers in the forum, but I see this all the time on Amazon.

How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

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