Look how old this is!
I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 12 years 5 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”.

**************************************************************************************************

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?

If you like what you've seen here, would you please share this?

•