Google Now Allows Anyone to Flag User Profiles
Carrie Hill

July 2, 2020 |

A brand new help center document appeared that outlines the procedure for anyone to report a user profile if that user is “contributing false information, uploading offensive content, or taking other abusive actions that violate Google Maps user-contributed policy ”

This is another way that marketers can report spam that appears in the form of fake reviews, and even Local Guides can be reported with this new feature.

Google urges you to review the policy and make sure the user is in violation before you start, and to be patient – as it can take several days to see a response.  This is pretty typical of user-submitted edits or reports, so no new news there.

The key piece of information, in my opinion, is that users can ONLY be reported from the Maps App.  I tried to report from desktop, and from chrome browser on my iPhone with no luck.  Here are the steps for both iOS and Android:

  1. Open the Google Maps app.
  2. Find a contribution from the profile that you’d like to flag.
  3. Tap on the user name of the profile.
  4. Tap the 3 vertical dots in the upper right-hand corner
  5. Choose “Report Profile”

As you can see – the three dots are only available on the Maps App:

Google Chrome on Mobile:

Google Maps App:

Desktop in Chrome:

When asked, Joy indicated that she thought the ability flag a profile has existed in the maps app for a while – but there were no rules, guidance, or help docs available.

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Carrie Hill

Carrie Hill

Carrie comes to Sterling Sky with SEO experience that dates back to 2005! She has a passion for figuring out what works for each and every client and picking apart the problems that arise in our “it depends” relationship with Google. She has also been organizing and nurturing the LocalU Conference Series since 2017 – through to today – across a hectic few years of pandemic and back into in-person conferences again.

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