Google has released its annual Google Maps safety report, showing the scale of spam prevention and policy enforcement across Google Maps and Business Profiles. According to Google, it blocked or removed more than 292 million policy-violating reviews and removed more than 13 million fake Business Profiles.
Google shared these updates in its official post on the Google blog and in the annual Google Maps safety report.
In addition to reviews and fake profiles, Google also said it blocked 79 million inaccurate or unverified edits. It also placed posting restrictions on more than 783,000 accounts that violated its policies.
Google explained that its systems are getting better at catching spam and suspicious activity before it becomes visible. The company said advanced reasoning capabilities from Gemini now help its systems quickly detect and block policy-violating suggestions before they go live. This includes content such as social or political commentary that may appear in local business edits.
Google also said that when it detects a sudden spike in spam reviews, it can quickly remove the fake content, pause new reviews on the profile, alert the Business Profile owner, and show a notification banner to explain to users why new contributions have been temporarily paused.
Another important update is that Google is rolling out proactive email alerts for verified and active Business Profile owners. These alerts are designed to help owners review important edits to their profiles before those changes go live.
At the same time, Google did not provide updated numbers for how many photos or videos were removed this year. Still, the latest report shows that Google removed 21% more fake reviews than last year. It also removed about the same number of fake Business Profiles as the year before.
Comparision Report
Here is the year-by-year comparison shared in the report:
| Year | Reviews | Photos | Videos | Profiles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 292 | N/A | N/A | 13 |
| 2024 | 240 | N/A | N/A | 12 |
| 2023 | 170 | N/A | 14 | 12 |
| 2022 | 115 | 200 | 7 | 20 |
| 2021 | 95 | 190 | 5 | 19 |
| 2020 | 55 | 160 | 3.5 | 3.6 |
| 2019 | 75 | 10 | 3 | 4 |
This data shows how much Google has increased its efforts to fight fake reviews, fake listings, and harmful edits across Maps. For businesses, this also means policy compliance and profile monitoring are becoming even more important.
There is also a forum discussion on X.
