College becomes strip club in website prank

End of term high-spirits over the weekend saw a Marlborough high school’s Google My Business profile changed to ‘‘strip club’’.

On Saturday, a Google search for Marlborough Girls’ College, in Blenheim, revealed the profile had been renamed ‘‘Marlborough Girls’ Strip Club’’.

By Sunday the name had been fixed, but a Covid-19 business update still showed a tongue-incheek comment about hand sanitiser and mask usage.

‘‘No hand sanitiser is ever available, we would prefer not to stay safe,’’ the update read.

‘‘Masks are not school uniform. Anyone who wears a mask will get it confiscated and can be picked up on Friday after school :)’’.

The page also showed the school was closed every day except Friday, when it was open for 24 hours.

Marlborough Girls’ College principal Mary-jeanne Lynch said the school was aware of the edits and working to solve the issue.

BP Computers owner Brendon Price said anybody could make changes to a Google My Business profile – all they needed to do was ‘‘suggest an edit’’.

‘‘All that a person has to do is click on your listing and suggest an edit option, and I suspect that’s what was used for the girls’ college one,’’ he said.

Usually Google simply pushed the changes through, but account administrators should get an email notification if a detail was edited.

In the case of the college, there may not be an account administrator or it may be an address no one was checking, Price said.

Businesses could avoid unwarranted edits by claiming their listing on Google and ensuring details were up to date, so they would be notified of any changes immediately.

‘‘It’s more of a prank than anything, but what people have to remember is pretty much everything leaves a trail,’’ he said.

‘‘And if they did anything too serious, they might get a knock at the door.’’