News
Community members across Gosford, Wyong and the broader Central Coast say a flood of copied and misattributed images is distorting how their suburbs look to outsiders — and they want someone to fix it.
Residents and small business owners on the Central Coast say a persistent problem with duplicate and misattributed imagery on mapping platforms and real estate sites is causing real-world harm — from misdirected tradespeople to renters who show up expecting a property that looks nothing like the listing.
The issue has gained fresh urgency this winter. With Sydney recording its hottest June in over a century and climate anxiety pushing more people to consider moving north along the coast, the volume of people researching Central Coast suburbs online has surged. More traffic means more exposure to bad data — and more complaints landing with local agents, councils, and community Facebook groups stretching from Terrigal to Toukley.
The problem is not new, but community members say the scale has grown. Duplicate images — stock photos recycled across multiple listings, satellite images labelled for the wrong street, or photos from one suburb used to represent another — have cluttered property listings, tourism pages, and business directories covering the region. Members of the Central Coast Community Noticeboard, a Facebook group with tens of thousands of local followers, have posted dozens of complaints in recent months about images that bear no resemblance to actual properties or locations being shown to prospective buyers and renters.
Mann Street in Gosford CBD, currently the focus of a multi-year renewal effort, has been particularly singled out. Residents say images circulating on third-party platforms still show streetscapes from before major demolition and construction work altered the precinct's appearance — creating a mismatch between what people see online and what they find when they arrive. A similar issue has been raised around the Wyong town centre, where images attached to business listings on at least two national directory platforms show facades that no longer exist following shopfront upgrades completed in 2024.
The Entrance Road corridor, which runs through one of the region's busiest tourist strips, has also been flagged. Local operators along that stretch say visitors sometimes arrive expecting a venue based on an image that belongs to a different business entirely — occasionally a competitor — because duplicate uploads have shuffled the visual record.
Central Coast Council, which emerged from state-appointed administration in 2021 and has since worked to rebuild community trust, does not directly control how third-party platforms display imagery of local areas. That jurisdictional gap is part of what makes the problem stubborn. Platforms that aggregate real estate, tourism, or business data typically rely on user-submitted content or automated scraping, with inconsistent moderation.
Housing affordability remains one of the Central Coast's defining pressures. The region draws significant numbers of Sydney commuters — particularly since hybrid work arrangements became more common after 2020 — and the volume of remote property searches from Sydney postcodes keeps the stakes high. A misrepresented listing is not merely an inconvenience; for a buyer making a decision from 90 kilometres away based on a handful of images, it can mean wasted travel, broken trust, or a purchase that does not match expectations.
Community members have begun taking practical steps of their own. Several residents active in the Gosford Improvement Group, a volunteer-run initiative focused on CBD renewal, say they have been systematically flagging incorrect images through the reporting tools available on Google Maps and major real estate portals. The process is manual and slow — one member described submitting more than 30 correction requests over a three-month period, with mixed results.
The most straightforward protective step, according to local real estate professionals who spoke in general terms, is to cross-check any property or business image against the most recent available aerial imagery on mapping tools before drawing conclusions — and to contact the listing agent directly if something looks inconsistent. For businesses, keeping their own Google Business Profile and any directory listings updated with current, geotagged photographs remains the most reliable defence against being displaced by a duplicate.
Community members say the larger fix requires platform-level accountability. Several have written to the office of the federal member for Robertson asking whether any consumer-protection framework applies to systematically misleading imagery in commercial listings. As of the date of publication, no formal response has been reported publicly.
Spread the word
About this article
Published by The Daily Central Coast