20% More Fake Reviews Blocked By Google Maps In 2022

Recently, Google has released spam and fraud prevention stats for Google Maps and local search. 

In brief, Google blocked 21% more reviews, 5% more photos, 40% more videos, and 5% more fake business profiles in 2022 than they did in 2021.

Google also removed or blocked 115 million reviews, 200 million user-contributed photos, 7 million user-contributed videos and prevented and removed 20 million Google Business Profiles in 2022.

Here is the data each year as shared by Barry:

Chart representation:

Google did so via machine learning technology that detects and prevents more fake Business Profiles from being generated and the upload of fake phone numbers in user-contributed photos.