Google Inc.

Douglas Richard Grundman

Baris Yuksel

Anurag Adarsh

Piyush Janawadkar

Andrea Lynn Frome

Ethan G Russell

Paul Eastlund

Diego Ariel Gertzenstein

Howard Wellington Trickey

Melanie Clements

A system and method is provided wherein, in one aspect, the likelihood of a listing being spam or enhanced by spam is determined based on whether the number of times that each term appears in descriptions of the listing tend to be equal or tend to reflect a natural language distribution. The likelihood that the listing is spam or enhanced by spam may be used to determine the position of the listing within search results to be displayed to a user.

System and method for determining the legitimacy of a listing

A spam score is assigned to a business listing when the listing is received at a search entity. A noise function is added to the spam score such that the spam score is varied. In the event that the spam score is greater than a first threshold, the listing is identified as fraudulent and the listing is not included in (or is removed from) the group of searchable business listings. In the event that the spam score is greater than a second threshold that is less than the first threshold, the listing may be flagged for inspection. The addition of the noise to the spam scores prevents potential spammers from reverse engineering the spam detecting algorithm such that more listings that are submitted to the search entity may be identified as fraudulent and not included in the group of searchable listings.

Reverse engineering circumvention of spam detection algorithms

Systems and methods are provided for determining whether given business listings are spam or are closed businesses. In one example, a system receives a business listing from a user. The business listing contains a geolocation and the name of a business. The system also receives one or more street level images related to a geographic object that is at or near the same geolocation as the business listing. The system determines if the business listing is spam or is closed based on the received street level images by determining if the geographic object is the business or by analyzing whether the business associated with the listing is shown in any of the street level images.

Systems and methods of correlating business information to determine spam, closed businesses, and ranking signals

Aspects of the disclosure provide for detection of spam business listings. Aspects operate to identify business listing characteristics in trusted sources and untrusted sources. As untrusted sources are likely to contain more spam, characteristics that are present in untrusted sources but not present in trusted sources are typically indicative of spam listings, and vice versa. Thus, statistical analysis of the frequency of characteristics within each source may be used to identify common characteristics of spam listings. These characteristics may further be analyzed in specific listing contexts, as different listing contexts (e.g., different types of businesses) typically use different terms and vocabularies, such that terms that are indicative of spam in one context may not be indicative of spam in another. Various methods for leveraging this context-specific statistical information to improve spam detection operations are disclosed.

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Rosemont, PA, United States of America

Douglas Richard Grundman