Google Ends Free-For-All Editing in Maps

Good news, nerds! Remember when I mentioned that one of the reasons you need to claim your listing on Google Maps is because shady characters could hijack your listing? Google has now decided to end community editing, which means that in order to make any changes to a local business ad, you have to be the business’s verified owner. They announced this change in their blog last week:

We recently made a change to Google Maps to require all community edits to be reviewed before they are shown. In the past, some “pending” edits were shown immediately on Maps and only moderated (and sometimes denied) later on.

We’re taking this step to ensure that changes to Google Maps pass the high quality bar our users expect, while preventing SPAM and other problems from showing up before being reviewed first.

It’s late-coming, but a very welcome change, nonetheless. Some marketers are dubious about the new process, which requires a manual review time on Google’s part (because, well, it’s manual and might be more time consuming than anyone would like). I personally would choose a slightly longer review period over instant free-for-all editing any day.

And of course, it doesn’t change one very important best practice: if you haven’t claimed your listing, you need to do it!