Image: The Verge Google is updating Street View imagery in nearly 80 countries, such as Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Japan, the Philippines, Rwanda, Serbia, South Africa, and more. It's also bringing Street View to a handful of countries where it's never been available, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Namibia, Liechtenstein, and Paraguay.Google says its more portable Street View camera, which launched in 2022, will help offer images of even more places in the future." Image: Google An enhanced Street View image of Logstor, Denmark. Meanwhile, Google Maps and Google Earth are getting sharper satellite imagery as well thanks to the company's cloud-removal AI tool that takes out clouds, shadows, haze, and mist. This should result in... Continue reading...

If a place is caught using fake reviews, Google will temporarily limit its reviews entirely. | Image: The Verge Google Maps is reeling in business pages engaging in fake reviews, and highlighting such activity to its users. Google will now impose restrictions against business profiles that violate the search giant's Fake Engagement policy, such as temporarily removing reviews, blocking new reviews or ratings, and displaying a warning message on profiles that have had fake reviews deleted.The business profile restrictions were introduced in the UK earlier this year, but Search Engine Roundtable notes that the support page was updated in mid-September to seemingly apply globally. For the moment, however, only users in the UK are seeing the business warnings, such as the example posted to X by Mike Blumenthal. Image: Google / Mike... Continue reading...