Right off the bat, if you receive a call about an urgent “problem” or “emergency” with your Google account, it is 100% a scam. Google will only call you about your listing if you’ve specifically requested help and will NEVER call you out of the blue requesting personal information or asking that you “verify” your Google business listing. That being said, let’s go over what a Google Listing scam phone call sounds like and how you can get “Google” to stop calling you.
What A Google Business Listing Scam Call Sounds Like
It’s important to know that scam calls from people pretending to work for Google have become so common that the real Google support team had to release a public statement on them. In this statement, the support team clarified some things that Google doesn’t and will never do:
- Google will NEVER charge businesses to set up a My Business profile or to be included in search results.
- Google will NEVER offer or charge you to “manage” your online business profile or “boost” your search ranking.
- Google will NEVER ask you for your password over the phone, nor will they ask you for any verification codes for that matter.
A Google scam call could come in the form of a robocall instructing you to follow a series of prompts to complete certain actions related to your business listing, such as pressing 1 to “verify” your listing. It could also be a real live person claiming to work for the Google support team, calling to let you know that there’s a “problem” with your listing or even offering to sell you a “lifetime subscription” for your listing.
Furthermore, these con artists will typically be very insistent when asking for your personal information, often emphasizing ridiculous claims and threatening you with your listing being “flagged for deletion” unless you cooperate – another thing Google would never do.
Stopping Listing Scam Calls
If you’ve been targeted by these scam callers, then you’re probably wondering how to make the calls stop. Truth be told, the most effective way to stop scam calls is to simply hang up and ignore them when they call – they’ll give up eventually.
Alternatively, you could try your luck at blocking their numbers or getting on your national “Do Not Call” list, though this will admittedly do little to deter persistent scammers since most of them use random VoIP numbers and operate overseas where such rules don’t apply. Last but not least, if you’ve managed to get the caller to admit that they don’t actually work for Google, but rather for an agency that works “with” Google, and squeezed an agency name out of them, you could report the violation to Google.
Small companies across the globe lose millions to scammers like this every single year. Now that you’ve learned about the Google Listing Scam, do your local business community a favor and spread the word!
