Google Maps allows businesses to claim their listings on the site and edit them for accuracy. But sometimes, business that don't claim their listings quick enough will lose control of them to a spammer, who then edits the business's phone number, address and category.
Mike Blumenthal, who's been covering the topic obsessively, calls this a hijacking. In September, he wrote about a San Francisco florist that's seen sales decline 30% after falling vicitim to a Google Maps takeover. Despite Blumenthal's coverage, Google's done little to prevent hijacking. So Blumenthal took matters into his own hands, "claiming" one of Microsoft's offices and renaming it "Microsoft Escort Services." The entry's since been corrected, but not before Blumenthal nabbed the above screenshot. Blumenthal explained his strategy:
Every small business thinks that if they could only operate like the IBMs, Microsofts or Apples of the world, they would have their act together on these new marketing angles. If like, IBM et al, Podesta Baldocchi were on top of these details they could have prevented this hijacking.
I wondered if that was in fact the case so I decided to see if some of the major Fortune 500 companies had in fact claimed their records and avoided the possibility of hijackings. Microsoft came to mind first. I grabbed one of their listings in Redmond and was able to change the location, url and their business name. Microsoft even managed to gather a spammy review in its short life as an escort service :). Out of a sense of fair play, I changed it back although Google has not yet done so. I wasn’t sure that that Microsoft or Google would appreciate my sense of humor.
On February 28, Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, joined 31 other media groups and filed a $2.3 billion suit against Google in Dutch court, alleging losses suffered due to the company's advertising practices.
