Escrow would play a big role in scam preventing.
This is already in the list on using escrow. That is kinda a no brainier if a high priced item.
On google it really depends some are better then using it then others. Some get really good data they do it as a service even. Others data is not great. For example I go by notlist3d on many places. But if you look online some times other people using notlist3d who is not me (I cannot sign up for every site on internet to reserve it for me). So google can pull in these false positives of other people who use same forum name but are not the same person.