Google Maps Bulk Upload Spam?

First Case of Large Scale Abuse at Google Maps? from Mike Blumenthal reports cases of companies using the Google Maps business location bulk upload feature to potentially spam the local vertical.

I am not going to list out the reported violations here, because Mike Blumenthal did so in his blog post and in this Google Groups thread. Mike reported that this one company uploaded listings “in all major and minor metropolitan areas of the US.” Now, technically, this company does not have a physical location in all those areas. Mike found other examples of this type abuse as well.

Postscript: Seems like Google cleaned up the local maps spam.