This seems like design flaw more than malice. Google services on entities that can potentially have an address revolve around Maps - restaurant, hotel, location ads all seem to join against their map data at some point as it’s impossible to purchase any of these without providing a source address. They likely did not design for physical businesses without an address. Interested to see how they handle food trucks or ice cream trucks.
I used to work on this ~10 years ago. I don't know the current policies, but I'm pretty sure I know the rationale for requiring address verification, because I doubt it's changed much.
This comment explains half of it - it's basically an antispam measure, akin to online services verifying using phone numbers. It's not perfect but it ups the bar for generating fake listings.
https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/kivs8k/is_go...
The second reason is that it helps prevent listings hijacking. Since any user can suggest changes to a listing, it's fairly difficult to distinguish between the owner updating to a new phone number/website, or a competitor changing them to point to their own business instead. Postcard verification allows the owner to claim their listing and have more control about whether their business information gets changed. I think it also lets them do things like respond to reviews, and probably their own edits go through faster as well.
In theory it's possible to hide your business address and only show up on Google Maps as a "service area" business. No idea how user friendly that flow is these days.
The alternatives seem to be "make your address visible to the world" or "pay us for an ad". Requiring address verification, and keeping that between google and the business in question, would probably be an acceptable middle ground for this business.
Buisness contact information including addresses are very much not private information. You generally have to publicly disclose both when signing up for a licence.
This should not be here. Flagging is overkill but requiring an address for a business is also a requirement for starting a business so why not for Google? Nothing at all to do with Yelp or extortion.
I agree that Google should allow addressless businesses as it biases their search but they are not at all doing the same thing as Yelp.
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[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 31.5 ms ] threadGoogle My Business is a Google maps profile. Of course you are going to need a physical address.
This comment explains half of it - it's basically an antispam measure, akin to online services verifying using phone numbers. It's not perfect but it ups the bar for generating fake listings. https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/kivs8k/is_go...
The second reason is that it helps prevent listings hijacking. Since any user can suggest changes to a listing, it's fairly difficult to distinguish between the owner updating to a new phone number/website, or a competitor changing them to point to their own business instead. Postcard verification allows the owner to claim their listing and have more control about whether their business information gets changed. I think it also lets them do things like respond to reviews, and probably their own edits go through faster as well.
In theory it's possible to hide your business address and only show up on Google Maps as a "service area" business. No idea how user friendly that flow is these days.
I agree that Google should allow addressless businesses as it biases their search but they are not at all doing the same thing as Yelp.