One of the contributing factors in the increase in reviews being removed is the spate of extortion review attack schemes. 2025 seemed to have a major uptick in extortion review attack schemes. Google released the merchant extortion report form. It does seem to have quieted down, as I haven’t seen any complaints lately.

What is interesting is that in 2022, Google removed 20 million reviews, the highest number. That year, only 115 million reviews were blocked. The number of blocked reviews has increased, while the total number of reviews has remained slightly unchanged.

So, why are Reddit and the help forum seeing an increase in reviews being removed since February 2025? Several people have mentioned a five-day review removal process. Google seems to remove reviews five days after they are posted. Is this part of the Gemini process? It is interesting to note the patterns where we see upticks in help forum threads. November and Decemeber 2025 were two months. The spike started in October 2025 and dropped in January 2025. In February, we saw it spike, then slightly drop in March. April is on pace to surpass February.

The post did state there are plans to, “If we do see a sudden spike in spam reviews, we’ll quickly remove the fake content, pause new reviews on the profile, alert the Business Profile owner and display a notification banner to let consumers know why contributions are temporarily paused. These protections are rolling out globally in the coming weeks.”

I wonder what these warnings will look like. City Farm Roslindale Weed Dispensary received a consumer alert when Google removed what it perceived as fake reviews from its GBP. There are a few businesses I will be keeping an eye on as they have routinely violated Google’s TOS.

The post Google Blocked 292 Million Reviews in 2025 first appeared on Review Fraud.

While I wasn’t able to find any reviews from Jorge Boruda and Michael Trevino, the review from Seth Nicamoff doesn’t look suspicious. However, other reviews appear to violate Google’s TOS. Jamie Reneau is suspicious. They reviewed Law Offices of Michael A. Trevino and LAW OFFICE OF CiCi CUNNINGHAM, PLLC. Prior to this review, a person using the name of Aaron Reneau also reviewed Law Office of Nicholas Abaza. There is a review from Jennifer Borunda Elardi, who also reviewed Borunda P.C.. There is a review from Terry Gomez, who left a keyword-stuffed review for Kherkher Garcia, LLP – Galveston.

It appears that several of these reviews were posted to counter a negative review attack. Several people have left negative reviews over the past two days. They have also reviewed Borunda P.C. and Law Offices of Michael A. Trevino. Some of these reviews appear to violate Google’s TOS.

If the positive and negative reviews are being posted to game the system and were posted to impact the ratings, they need to be removed. Posting positive reviews to counter negative ones or to help friends is not the way to go. I found an account using the name of Nick Abaza that left reviews for Law Offices of Michael A. Trevino, Borunda & Fomby at 440 Louisiana St #900, Houston, TX 77002, and 12141 Wickchester Ln Suite 650, Houston, TX 77079, Wynne Smith & Young, PLLC, The Cobern Law Firm, and Will Contests, which is a business connected to Nicholas Abaza.

Hopefully Google will take action and remove the positive and negative reviews that violate the TOS.

The post What is Happening with the Law Office of Nicholas Abaza’s Google Reviews? first appeared on Review Fraud.

On March 10th, 2026, Google employee Lisa Landsman published a post on the help forum. The write-up is directed towards small businesses and addresses rankings and online reviews. The spotlight on reviews section has some great nuggets of wisdom.

Pro-Tips for Managing Feedback 

• Reply to reviews: Show you’re listening by replying to reviews. Keep replies positive and professional. Instead of sending the same “thank you” to everyone, focus on reviews where you can make the reviewer feel heard with a customized response.
• Don’t panic over a bad review: A mix of positive and negative reviews often feels more authentic and trustworthy to potential customers. Reply promptly, apologize when appropriate, and be honest about your limitations. Never share a reviewer’s private information or engage in personal attacks. If a situation is complex, request that the reviewer contact you directly to resolve the issue privately.

Lisa is telling people to show they are listening by replying to reviews. According to the BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Study, 42% of consumers are unlikely to use a business that fails to respond to its reviews.

The next point is not to panic over a negative review. This is where people make matters worse. Potential customers will judge you more on how you respond to the review than on the original review. The goal is to take the conversation offline and, when possible, show remorse and apologize. There is a lot of truth here.

The post Google Provides some Clarity Regarding Online Reviews first appeared on Review Fraud.

One Property Management gained 10 Google reviews through this promotion. They didn’t have the desired effects as they went from a 3.3 average rating to a 3.5 average rating. It’s worse. Google will remove the reviews and warn the business, and they will be out $50. They could be fined up to $51,744 per review. This stunt could cost them $5,1744,000 in total.

Since this review scheme, they have recieved two negative reviews, a 1-star and a 2-star review. Not only will their review count drop once the 10 reviews are removed, but their score will be slightly lower. If they focused on the issues that caused their score to decrease, it would continue to drop. These review schemes don’t work as they don’t fix the underlying issues.

The post ONE Property Management got Caught Exchanging Gift Cards for Google Reviews first appeared on Review Fraud.

Here are the results after scanning the Google Business Profile (GBP) for Flyland Recovery Network.

The tool shows groups of businesses connected to the scanned business and places them into an easy-to-read format.

This is what my original data looked like.

The above list took me months to map out. Now I can spot and identify networks within minutes. Once I identify businesses in a network, I can scan them to find additional businesses.

If you suspect that your competitors are engaging in fraudulent reviews, let me scan them for you. Contact me to inquire about my pricing.

The post My new Fake Review Detection Tool is Live first appeared on Review Fraud.

I identified 181 GBPs in the first network. This network is in California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, and one in Washington. I have been able to remove 75 GBPs. I have several websites that didn’t link to a GBP. Google removed those GBPs. The second network is much smaller. I found 32 GBPs. I was able to remove 17 GBPs.

While these networks appear to be different, there are similarities. They are using private residences for the addresses. These are service-based businesses. They travel to their client’s home to perform their services. Yet, they show popular times on their profiles. Popular times mean people are visiting the business. Nobody is bringing their dryer or dryer vents to these businesses. The profiles also have several fake reviews.

The above GBP for Evolve Dryer Vent Cleaning Services uses a private residence, yet it has traffic around the clock. The reviews are fake. One user using the name of ohn Carter left a review for a psychic in Brampton, Canada, and for an appliance repair company in Los Angeles, California. There are other fake reviews posted on this profile.

There are services that offer Click-through Rate (CTR) manipulation services. One of those companies is Jumper Media. The CEO, Colton Bollinger, claims that they don’t fake the clicks. He states that they are offering in-game discounts to people to travel to the businesses and leave their driving directions turned on. Jumper Media once offered fake reviews. I am not sure if they still do.

There is a negative review on Jumper Media’s GBP claiming that the person was supposed to receive 100 fake reviews and only received 20. Somebody replied to the review and acknowledged that their vendor dropped the ball. They signed the review as Cotlon, the company’s CEO.

These networks rely on black hat tactics to outrank and perform like legitimate businesses. They sell the leads to anyone willing to pay. Consumers don’t know who is showing up at their door, whether they will be price-gouged, or whether they will receive subpar service. The second network posted the photo of their “owner,” Carlos Montoya.

There appear to be two different Carlos Montoyas. Here is the second Carlos.

Is this a case of not changing the owner’s name or of mistakenly uploading the wrong photo? This image has no matches. I ask this because there is evidence that these websites were edited overseas. There seems to be a lack of oversight and quality control.

One of the profiles I was able to get suspended is live on Google as of this morning. The profile is still showing the address. Did they apply for reinstatement, or were they able to create a new profile again?

Regardless, these websites and GBPs are a plague on the system. They prevent consumers from making an informed decision. The companies that sell black hat CTR manipulation and fake reviews are also to blame. At some point, Google needs to take stronger action and start suing the people behind these networks and the review sellers. Until that time, we will continue to play whack-a-mole.

The post The Anatomy of an Air Duct Cleaning Spam Network. first appeared on Review Fraud.

One alarming trend is that these profiles left one only review and uploaded 50 to 90 photos. There is no way to tell if they uploaded the photos for the same business or across several businesses. The reviews were posted within the past two months. A few negative reviews mention that the apartments are under new management. The reviews don’t seem to be coming from the new management company. It seems that an employee with Wau Lin Cree Apartments is behind the reviews.

If these reviews were being used to repair the image for the Wau Lin Cree Apartments, then they didn’t do themselve any favors here. Each review could result in a $51,744 fine. I wonder how long these reviews remain live.

The post Is Somebody Buying Fake Google Reviews for Wau Lin Cree Apartments first appeared on Review Fraud.

The first claim was posted in a negative Google review over three years ago. The reviewer wrote, “I believe there was some deal recently where they would give you a free smoothie if you left a 5 star review.” While this claim is not definite, it does place the reviews into question. This review was posted on February 18th, 2023. Ten days later, three 5-star reviews were posted mentioning the smoothie bar. 25 reviews were posted on the date. 12 of those reviews mention Mason, the smoothie bar worker. This is again pure speculation, but the review patterns are extremely alarming.

I have reason to suspect the legitimacy of the 5-star reviews, and you should too.

The post Can you Trust Genesis Health Clubs – Midtown Tulsa Google Reviews first appeared on Review Fraud.

These reviews appear to be random and not an official attack. Based on my experience, it seems that spammers are testing which reviews remain live and which get removed. I don’t know why they’re still posting reviews on the JFTB GBP. I have mapped out the latest batch of fake reviews, and it still appears that the spammers are still testing out their review process.

How long will it take Google to remove these reviews? When will Google go after these people, sue these spammers, or turn them over to the authorities? What more should be done?

The post Coordinated Fake Review Attack on JFTB Real Estate Phuket Google Business Profile first appeared on Review Fraud.

The domain was registered on September 16, 2025. They registered it using a private Whois. This means that they are hiding who registered and owns the domain. I don’t know how long the website has been live. It was hacked between the time it was registered and when I looked at it on February 22nd. Google indexed three URLs: the home page, and two hacked pages with Chinese characters. Google has included the location URL in the index. The meta title and description listed The Home Depot. The meta title and description have since been updated, removing any mention of The Home Depot. When I looked up the domain on viewdns.com, I performed a reverse IP lookup, and I discovered that only two domains are using the same server. The other domain is for http://santacruzgaragedoorrepair.online.

Some of the GBPs started to recieved fake reviews within the past week. I started to look at the profiles of the people who left reviews. Imagine my surprise when I saw one profile reviewed two Garage Door Repair The Home Service, and Top Garage Door Repair Santa Cruz. The listed website for Top Garage Door Repair Santa Cruz is http://santacruzgaragedoorrepair.online. On Monday, February 23, I called the number for Garage Door Repair The Home Service and Top Garage Door Repair GBPs. The woman answered with, “Services.” She failed to identify the name of the company I called. Today, I called the phone number for Top Garage Door Repair Santa Cruz and was dumped into a phone tree. They answered as local garage door service and asked me to press 1 for service and 2 for support. I pressed one, and the same lady answered.

Both domains are listed on the same server. There are fake reviews linking the two profiles. The same woman answered the phone. All signs point to the same person being behind both profiles. How many different GBPs is the woman taking calls for?

There is a significance with Garage Door Repair The Home Service mentioning The Home Depot in the meta title and description. All of them are using the addresses associated with The Home Depot locations. The Top Garage Door Repair Santa Cruz address is associated with Office Max. They are not located at these addresses and never should have been verified by Google. A few years ago, Google switched from sending postcards to requiring businesses to get verified by video. How did these GBPs become verified? If they performed the video verification, they had to fake details. This has happened in the past. On June 16, 2023, Google sued Ethan Hu for creating fake GBPs with fake reviews. He and his other co-defendants sold the leads to other businesses looking to promote their own services. Google alleges 350 fake GBPs were created.

Will Google sue the people behind this network? Will Google ever be able to stop the spam and abuse?

The post Can you Trust Garage Door Repair The Home Service? first appeared on Review Fraud.