Join us in Dallas for LocalU
October 20, 2026 - Just $299
What Happens When Google Catches a Business Buying Fake Reviews 3 Times [Case Study]
TL;DR
- In 2022, Google removed over 115 million fake reviews, but fake reviews continue to be a persistent issue, with some businesses buying fake reviews to improve their ratings on Google and Facebook.
- You can report fake reviews through Google’s redressal form, and in some cases, Google has removed reviews and dropped businesses’ ratings after multiple reports.
- Buying fake reviews can result in penalties like losing removed reviews, being blocked from receiving new reviews, or even receiving a “Suspected Fake Reviews” warning label, which was introduced in the UK in 2024.
- Despite efforts to combat fake reviews, the system remains flawed, and businesses often face minimal consequences, unlike stricter platforms like Yelp.
- Fake reviews harm consumer trust, and customers should be wary of businesses with suspicious review histories or warning labels from Google.
If you read Google’s spam report from 2022, it seems like they are doing a decent job of tackling fake reviews. In 2022, they blocked or removed over 115 million policy-violating reviews, with the majority of them caught before they were ever seen.
Fake reviews aren’t slowing down though. My clients are constantly getting messages from people offering to post fake reviews for them on Google or Facebook. Ironically, one of the most common methods these days is for them to use the messaging feature on your Google Business profile to tell you about this. For this plumbing company, all of the last 8 messages they’ve received are from people offering to post fake reviews for them.
In a report from the FTC, Devesh Raval stated that “I estimated that about half of the difference between Google and Yelp ratings of low-quality businesses are due to fake reviews, and at least about a quarter of Google reviews for low-quality businesses are likely fake.”
This resonates with me because it’s exactly what I see all the time like in this real-life example I’m about to share with you.
There is a home services company in Canada that has been buying reviews for quite some time. They’re not even really doing a good job of it – it’s painfully obvious that they are fake. If you look on Google or Facebook, their average rating makes it look like their average customer is happy with them. However, if you look anywhere else, you get the truth.
On Yelp, they have a 1-star average:
On the BBB, you get the same story with an F rating and tons of complaints.
What Does Google Do When You Report Reviews?
You can report fake reviews to Google by going to the redressal form. For the drop-down under “Identify the content on Google Maps that you claim might lead to fraudulent activity” just leave it blank since none of those options apply to reviews.
These steps can help you remove negative Google reviews that violate guidelines and restore trust in your Business Profile.
In this case, this business had 18 listings that were buying reviews and were reported over a year ago to Google. I’m not going to detail everything for all 18 listings but will use one of their locations as an example, as all of them told this same story.
May 2022 – They had an average rating of 4.1 and 60 reviews when first reported.
July 2022 – Google removed half their reviews, they dropped down to 18 reviews, and their average rating dropped down to 3.
September 2022 – They bought more reviews and were back up to a total of 89 with a 4.6 average. They were reported a second time.
October 2022 – Google removed a bunch more, they dropped down to 25 reviews with an average rating of 3.7.
November 2022 – They bought more reviews and were back up to 37 reviews with an average rating of 4.1. They were reported a third time.
December 2022 – Google removed more reviews, they dropped down to a total of 20 reviews with an average rating of 3.4.
Currently, they have a total of 100 reviews with an average rating of 4.6.
What’s the penalty for buying Google Reviews?
In the past, the only punishment for buying reviews on Google was that you might lose some of the ones you bought, but you know, you can always just keep buying more. I’ve also only ever seen 1 business profile get suspended for having fake Google reviews in my entire career.
Recently, there have been more cases of Google blocking a business from receiving new reviews, or as we like to look at it, put them in review jail. This is not all that common, so there are still plenty of businesses out there buying reviews and not experiencing any consequences.
In 2024 Google took this another step further in the UK, where they went as far as to remove all ratings and reviews from some listings (including the average rating) and applied a warning label that tells customers the business had suspected fake reviews. This is a bit of a game changer as before even when Google did remove fake reviews, users had no way of knowing there ever were fake reviews on the listing. Now, affected listings prominently display a “‘Suspected Fake Reviews” warning badge, alerting users to be weary of any online reviews for this business. Talk about a badge of shame.
Still, this is a broken system that does not protect consumers. I genuinely feel for the customers reading the multitudes of negative reviews for this business. They should be warned in some way that this business is doing this, especially since Google has agreed the reviews were not legitimate three times already. It is a stark contrast to Yelp’s harsh treatment for businesses they catch breaking their review guidelines.
Join us in Dallas for LocalU
From my experience google loves to tell you to just keep doing the right things and you will prevail and if you do the wrong thing we’re going to get you. Neither are really true.
OMG – Google will suspend a GBP for genuine local business for the most minor edits which are very often done in good faith ie the phone number change, and something which is far more serious with premediation to falsify rarely does …….
From my experience google loves to tell you to just keep doing the right things and you will prevail and if you do the wrong thing we’re going to get you. Neither are really true.
OMG – Google will suspend a GBP for genuine local business for the most minor edits which are very often done in good faith ie the phone number change, and something which is far more serious with premediation to falsify rarely does …….
“The only punishment for buying reviews on Google is that you might lose some of the ones you bought”? Not even close. Google can also decimate your rankings. We had a carpet cleaning client who bought a bunch, rankings barely went up, a few weeks later, Google removed them and destroyed their rankings, as measured on the BrightLocal map grid rankings report.
Interesting insights. In my experience, businesses that get reviews removed don’t experience a massive drop in rankings. Though if Google removed ALL the reviews, I think it would affect them more than removing some.
“The only punishment for buying reviews on Google is that you might lose some of the ones you bought”? Not even close. Google can also decimate your rankings. We had a carpet cleaning client who bought a bunch, rankings barely went up, a few weeks later, Google removed them and destroyed their rankings, as measured on the BrightLocal map grid rankings report.
Interesting insights. In my experience, businesses that get reviews removed don’t experience a massive drop in rankings. Though if Google removed ALL the reviews, I think it would affect them more than removing some.
Perhaps we should report them to organizations that enforce business regulations, like in my country it’s the Competition Bureau. Getting fake reviews written could be considered deceptive marketing practices which is probably prohibited in virtually all countries.
I came across a business that has more than 400 reviews of them doing things like selling defective products then not accepting returns. And advertising stuff at $x, but in store they have a higher price and won’t sell it for the advertised price even when customers show them the ads on their phones. So fraudulent that the BBB has an alert about them, only the 2nd business I’ve ever seen with an actual alert. But they bury those reviews with more than 1000 fake reviews. Tried reporting to Google, their response was blocking me from writing a review that educates readers about applicable legislation like the defective goods violating the Sale of Goods Act and other stuff violating the Competition Act. Google is now facilitating the fake reviews.
Perhaps we should report them to organizations that enforce business regulations, like in my country it’s the Competition Bureau. Getting fake reviews written could be considered deceptive marketing practices which is probably prohibited in virtually all countries.
I came across a business that has more than 400 reviews of them doing things like selling defective products then not accepting returns. And advertising stuff at $x, but in store they have a higher price and won’t sell it for the advertised price even when customers show them the ads on their phones. So fraudulent that the BBB has an alert about them, only the 2nd business I’ve ever seen with an actual alert. But they bury those reviews with more than 1000 fake reviews. Tried reporting to Google, their response was blocking me from writing a review that educates readers about applicable legislation like the defective goods violating the Sale of Goods Act and other stuff violating the Competition Act. Google is now facilitating the fake reviews.
The Transparency Company is doing excellent work in this space, you should check them out https://askfortransparency.com/
The Transparency Company is doing excellent work in this space, you should check them out https://askfortransparency.com/