This image from Google Maps viewed from a browser in New York on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, shows the … [+]
Google has tacitly admitted to removing negative reviews objecting to the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America from Google Maps. It has also turned off the ability to suggest edits or report inaccuracies for the Gulf of America.
“We regularly put protections on places during times when we anticipate an uptick of contributions that are off-topic or unrelated to someone’s direct experience with the place,” a Google spokesperson told me in an email, directing me to a blog post — dating back to 2023 — on the company’s rules for tackling “policy-violating content.”
“We’re invested in making sure information is accurate and unhelpful content is removed,” reads the blog post.
The decision to curtail content contributions to the Gulf of America likely comes from pushback from irked users, who mobilized to review-bomb the renamed location on Google Maps as an act of political dissent.
It wasn’t long after users took to social media to complain about being unable to report the Gulf of America as mislabeled or suggest edits. There were also multiple mentions of deleted reviews.
Gulf of America Content Moderation On Google Maps Is Standard Procedure
In defense of Google, the company seems to be simply enforcing its already existing content moderation rules for Google Maps.
When deciding how to depict location names on Maps, Google sources data from authoritative standards bodies like the United Nations, ISO and the FIPS.
In a post on X, the company explained that it draws data from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) when naming places in the U.S.
The renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America is a result of a change in the GNIS database, which itself was updated following an executive order from President Donald Trump.
This is where seed of discord stems from.
Once GNIS set the new standard as the Gulf of America, all mentions of the location as the Gulf of Mexico now technically fall under what Google would consider “fake content.”
The deluge of mislabeling reports and reviews calling the location by its former name triggered the app’s “real-time abuse” protocol.
“When we detect suspicious activity, we act quickly and may implement protections to prevent further abuse,” Google Maps product manager Christina Wichiencharoen writes in the blog post from 2023. “This can include everything from taking down policy-violating content to temporarily disabling new contributions.”
Google notes that some of these safeguards are temporary, while others remain in place for longer stretches of time, depending on the severity of the situation.
Beyond temporary protections, “there are also longer-term protections for places where we have found user contributions to be consistently unhelpful, harmful or off-topic,” Wichiencharoen adds.
We’re yet to find out where the Gulf of America falls on that spectrum.
Gulf of America Now The Default On Google Maps, Apple Maps and Bing
Although the first to implement the change, Google Maps is not the only one.
Apple Maps and Bing have subsequently also followed suit, with both now displaying the Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America. So before you rush to boycott Google Maps, just know that the alternatives aren’t much different.