'My Shop Looks Like It Belongs to Someone Else': Milan Traders Speak Out on Duplicate Image Problem

A Navigli-based wine bar owner spent three weeks last autumn trying to get a photo of her interior — the same shot she paid a professional photographer €400 to take in 2023 — removed from a rival listing on a major booking platform. She never fully succeeded. Her experience is not unusual. Across Milan, small business owners and independent traders say the unauthorised duplication of their images on Google Maps, TripAdvisor, and third-party delivery apps has become one of the most persistent and underreported problems facing the city's commercial districts.

The issue has fresh urgency in 2026. With Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics infrastructure bringing an estimated surge of international visitors through the city from February, local businesses are investing heavily in their digital presence. A duplicated or misattributed image — a competitor's dining room appearing under your restaurant's name, or your own facade photo appearing on a completely different address listing — can redirect foot traffic and tank a booking conversion rate before a single phone call is made.

The Streets Where It Hits Hardest

Corso Como and the Porta Nuova district, which draws heavy tourist and design-week traffic, appear to be the most affected zones according to a survey conducted in May 2026 by the Milan-based digital consultancy Mosaico Digitale. The firm, which operates from offices on Via Tortona in the Zona Tortona creative hub, canvassed 214 micro and small enterprises across six Milan neighbourhoods. It found that 61 percent had discovered at least one instance of one of their images appearing on a third-party platform listing they did not control. Among food and beverage operators, the figure rose to 74 percent.

In the Brera design district, a ceramics studio owner described finding a photograph of her workshop window display used as the lead image for a completely different artisan shop, three streets away on Via Madonnina. She said she first noticed the duplication when a customer arrived asking about products she did not stock. Getting the image reassigned required filing two separate correction requests to Google Business Profile over a period of six weeks, she said, with no direct phone line to reach a human reviewer.

On Viale Monza, a family-run pasticceria reported that images from its own Google listing had migrated to a delivery aggregator's page where another bakery was listed at the same civic number — the result, apparently, of an address data error that then pulled in adjacent photographic content. The business estimates it lost roughly two weeks of delivery orders before the correction was confirmed.

Platforms, Processes and What Owners Are Doing

The legal framework governing this is not simple. Under Italian copyright law, images created by a professional photographer remain the photographer's intellectual property unless an exclusive licence or assignment agreement is signed. Many small Milan businesses commission shots without clarifying those terms in writing, which complicates formal takedown requests. The Camera di Commercio di Milano Monza Brianza Lodi has offered a free contract-template advisory service through its Punto Impresa Digitale programme since 2021, though uptake among sole traders has been limited.

For now, most affected owners are solving the problem manually. Digital consultants on Via Tortona and around the BASE Milano creative complex off Via Bergognone say they are fielding more requests for image-audit work than at any point in the past two years. A standard audit — checking a business's photos across Google, TripAdvisor, Booking.com, and the main Italian delivery platforms — typically costs between €150 and €300, depending on the scale of the listing portfolio.

The practical advice circulating among Milanese traders is specific: claim and verify your Google Business Profile with identity documentation before someone else contributes images that displace your own; watermark professional images with your business name before uploading; and file correction requests through the platform's Business Profile Manager rather than the general Help form, which tends to move faster. For persistent cases, the Sportello per il Consumatore at the Camera di Commercio on Via Meravigli 9 accepts written complaints that can support a formal dispute if a platform fails to respond within 30 days.

With the Olympics window now less than eight months away, traders in the affected neighbourhoods say the correction process needs to move faster than it currently does. The visitors are coming. The listings need to be right.