Look how old this is!
I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 12 years 4 months 21 days ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.

There’s a bug in the Google Places app on my Android phone that is allowing me to edit the last review for any local business.

Instead of saying “Leave a Review” the only option for me is to “Edit Your Review”. I discovered it over the weekend while I was trying to leave a review for a business I’d never been to before.

Here are a few screen shots, showing that I can edit a review for every single Thai restaurant I look at. Take my word for it please, that I’ve never reviewed these restaurants, and I’ve got this option available on my phone for ALL businesses in ALL cities that I checked.

In every instance, I am able to edit the very last review left for any business, as long as it says “a Google user”.

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I could go on and on, but I’ll stop here, since I think you get the idea. Now here’s a restaurant that is closed, and I’m offered the ability to edit the review –

Then I can simply edit the review and save…

and in just a few minutes, the “review”  is live

It’s also worth noting that even though I have taken the necessary steps to make my name visible on my Google reviews, these hijacked / edited reviews are still showing up as anonymous, from “a Google user”.

I know that recently Google came out with a new version of the Google Places App for the iPhone, but I hope they do the same thing for Android soon and squash this bug…

After all, they wouldn’t want this to get around, would they?

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