In September 2020, June Jung Art received two fake 4-star Google Reviews. They posted for help on Reddit. A Reddit user advised June Jung Art to contact me. I advised them to post on the Google My Business (GMB) Community Forum, and we were able to get Google to investigate and remove both reviews. On October 26th, June Jung Art received another fake 4-star review. Google was able to remove this review. On December 5th, the spammers posted two more fake reviews, and Google is refusing to delete the reviews.
Google can’t see patterns of abuse.
The 4-star review attacks are not new. I previously wrote about them when a group of photographers started receiving fake 4-star reviews praising services that they don’t offer. The Easy Breezy Frozen Yogurt shops in San Francisco have been dealing with these same fraudulent reviews since 2019. They received another fake review this month. Google took action and removed the latest fake review.
What is the purpose of these reviews?
The fake profiles are posting fake 5-star reviews on a series of fake lead generation service businesses. The spammers are trying to bolster the profiles by posting reviews on random GMB listings. The fake reviews get published in an attempt to make the scam listings look real. The spammers create fake listings for appliance repair, plumbers, HVAC, and other businesses that visit consumers in their homes. The phony profile of Amanda Miller, that left a fake review for June Jung Art left a 5-star review for Miami Best Service AC Repair. This listing has forty-six fraudulent positive reviews. Each profile reviewed several random businesses with 4-star reviews.
I checked the listings attached to the profiles that posted reviews for the Easy Breezy Frozen Yogurt listings, and those listings were removed. Google didn’t ban the fake profiles. Here is one of the listings that became a rehab listing. The rehab listing is part of a more extensive network of lead gen listings sending unsuspecting patients to Florida and a rehab facility that is notorious for spamming Google with fake listings.
Google will eventually conduct a sweep and remove all of these fake lead generation listings. Google won’t remove the fake profiles, and the spammers will continue to use them to leave fake reviews on unsuspecting businesses. June Jung Art, Easy Breezy Frozen Yogurt, and countless other companies will have their overall ratings tarnished with 4-star reviews. Consumers will think that these businesses offer products and services they don’t provide. In the meantime, Google is going to look as hapless as John Travolta at the Wallace residence.
