Google has been stressing on security of late, as it came up with the ‘Good to Know’ campaign earlier this week. Yet again it is with an option to win user’s trust. The search engine giant has opted for automatic listing updates, which would give more trust to user reports on the address, hours, and operating name of businesses. Theses updates which are submitted would show up, even though business verification is not routed for. However, business owners would still receive a notice, wherein they have an option to halt the change.
The official announcement of the change, came with Google introducing a streamlined process for updates to potentially incorrect listings. The automatic update would work when data such as the business hours, address, or name of a location are submitted, Google states “the organic listing will automatically be updated and the business owner will be sent an email notification about the change.”
Google is even trying to improve its accuracy by working with partners to receive up-to-date information about businesses. The search engine giant has even worked on training its web-crawler, which accordingly looks for one’s current business data. The process is simple as the company’s systems tracks trusted sources and automatically updates as and when they get new information. However, getting the same verified from the business owner is done by sending an email indicating that a change is going to be made.
Once a business owner receives a summary of the changes made, they have an option to “prevent any of these changes from being made on your Place page and listing” through their Google Places account. Google states that it relies on “a neighborhood local or a loyal customer”, rather than “a digital representation of the real world”.
Each and every segment of Places would feel its impact, but businesses sending out promotions via AdWords and AdWords Express won’t see any changes being made to their ads. The said feature is officially out, but its full implementation still seems to be gradual.
Some are still of the thought that this move of Google would make business vulnerable. A few even call it a brash move from the search engine giant as Google Places had earlier failed to prevent abuses. Of course, this time Google is back with a much better and improved system of vetting and a window wherein business owners can only negate a change, when its automatically effected. It only states that the possibility for abuse both directly through Google and through manipulating “trusted external sources” is highly visible. It can thus be said that the possibility of businesses being the target of shut-down campaigns is still there.
Suggestions noted that offering a “lock/unlock” feature for business owners, would be a proper solution for prevention of such abuses.