Social network and black label on Google Maps

Publication date: 3 August 2020

Google Maps users can follow interesting local guides

Google Maps is expanding its Local Guides feature and beginning to roll it out globally. Google Maps users can now follow other users with public profiles if they have shared photos, reviews or lists.

Their recommendations, advice and updates will be delivered to the Updates tab in Google Maps. So the next time you find someone sharing helpful photos of takeout menus, handy lists of your city’s most spacious parks or inspiring photos of local shops and services, you can keep up-to-date on all of their recommendations.

Google Maps profiles will also have new topic filters so you can see the topics and places people share about the most, like “pizza”, “brunch”, “camping” and “parks”. We wonder if there will be such filters as “casino” or “sports bar to place bets in”?

Google’s Local Guides program has more than 120 million members in 24,000 locations globally.

Labels or racism, sex and gender discrimination on Google Maps?

Google has added another interesting but quite a controversial feature to Google Maps — the “Black-owned” business label. As the company explained, Google Maps and Search included the icon to help customers find and support Black-owned businesses in the US that opted to self-identify.

Business Profiles on Google will include a “Black-owned” icon after a business owner indicates that they’re a Black-owned business. Customers can’t suggest this label for a business.

Internet users have already compared this initiative to events that took place in Nazi Germany when shops owned by Jews were marked with the Star of David.

Previously, Google added two other attributes to empower women-led businesses and support the LGBTQ community. A “Women-led” icon identifies businesses as owned, led or founded by women; an “LGBTQ-friendly” icon means that they are friendly to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning individuals. We wonder how these initiatives will be implemented in Russia and how the Russian authorities and lawmakers will react?

More news about how Google improves Google Ads:

• Google Ads have made recommendations and optimization score available in manager accounts for up to 1000 accounts. You can now easily manage multiple accounts and identify opportunities for efficiency or growth.
• Google is testing new approaches to increase transparency into how digital advertising works. One of the approaches called the Trust Token API that can combat ad fraud by distinguishing between bots and real users is now being tested by developers. Once these new approaches have addressed the needs of users, publishers and advertisers, Chrome plans to phase out support for third-party cookies.