GMB Dashboard Data Highly Inflated -- Related to Barry Schwartz Inflated Impressions Article

[Ellen]

Hello all! Looking for some input or to see if anyone knows more about anything Google is taking action on as a result of the spike in search impressions related to Barry's post here Google Is Investigating Spike In Impressions & Queries

I work in automotive and we've seen similar spikes in Google Trends, GSC, and GMB Insights. The query spikes we've seen have included:
“bmw”, “benz”,

This is US trends but similar to this comment reported on Barry's article about Malaysia.

All of these coincide with the query Barry mentioned "loans", plus others: “bitcoin”:
Something Very Strange Is Going On With Bitcoin And BTC Google Searches

Interesting thing is the spillover we've seen not just in GSC, but also GMB Insights including the queries report AND whatever photo was the primary photo on the dates of this spiking event now have a huge amount of views. One of these photos has 2.39M views as a result which we know 100% is not due to a surge in customer interest or national/international news event. In the extreme case of 2.39M views, it's also a customer photo that we do not want featured, of course -- just our luck -- and now we have to compete against it.

I'd like to know if anyone has heard anything new about this. Especially what caused it and if Google is going to take retroactive approach for these data events. We've already seen things return to normal.

Thanks!

 

[Yan Gilbert]

Manipulation testing by some group to see if they could influence the data perhaps?