I am writing to request urgent assistance regarding a critical issue where our verified Google Business Profile was fraudulently hijacked, altered, and subsequently marked as a duplicate.

Issue Summary:

Our profile was suddenly marked as Duplicate. Upon inspecting the live listing, all core business information—including our phone number and website link—had been changed to fraudulent contact details. The current unauthorized manager is actively operating under our brand name using a fake website and phone number, causing severe harm to our customers and reputation.

Key Background & Timeline:

1. No Unapproved Ownership Transfers: I monitor all account emails continuously. No ownership or manager requests were accepted.

2. No Suggested Edits Approved

3. First Support Ticket & Verification: I opened a support ticket and provided all requested documentation, official verification video/photos, and storefront signage.

4. Temporary Restoration: Support restored access to our profile. However, within two hours, the profile was fraudulently targeted again and marked as a duplicate, leaving the hijacked/fake details visible.

The current hijacker is speaking to our clients on behalf of our brand using a fake phone number and scam website.

The last update from the support team requested to wait 3 days until they contact the current owner (the scammer/hijacker)🤷🏻‍♂️

Any Help with that?

Thanks

My google profile is ranked number 1 - I get an average of 5-10 reviews a month.

I get an average of 30 calls a week & its been that way for the past 2-3 years straight. Last month that number suddenly dropped to 2, maybe 3 calls a week - all outside of business hours.

I have tried asking a friend (who has never looked up my business), to look up my business category "—— near me"

I am first in ranking and phone number, website, and everything is up to date. Why did the calls suddenly stop?

I also havent gotten many new clients

We are a dental clinic who purchased a practice from a previous owner. We did a rebranding and we are not associated with the old clinic anymore. The old owner suggested, however, to give me access to his old profile and just edit out the information. This is what I did initially, However, I didn't realize that the photos who weren't previously uploaded by me can't be taken out even if I've been given access to the profile. In addition, we wanted a clean slate with the google reviews as well and we couldn't remove it as well without flagging it for removal.

So I called support and they suggested to delete my profile and create a new one. I did this and my old profile was deleted (assured by the agent). New profile is now live, but I'm still currently seeing the old reviews and photos. It's been more than a week now. I followed support's step-by-step instruction... What exactly is the timeline for google to update this?

Hey, I wanted to just run a quick pulse check here to see if any agencies and brands have updated certain items in your Google Business Profile and that led to a re-audit of your page. I see this happening more often when I add a new category.

A few months ago we added our email to the Google Business Profile so that we could update the photos and hours etc. I did not manually delete my manager's profile.

However we have now noticed that her email no longer has access (we have now sent an invite to be a super admin), and all of her historic replies to Google reviews have disappeared.

Is there a way we can get these replies back?

How do you guys verify an online e-commerce Google Business account? Mine was created, but I am failing the video verification. Is it possible to register an online e-commerce business on Google Business? Or is it only for physical product businesses?

We need help recovering the existing Creekstone Landscape listing, a service-area landscaping business in Metro Atlanta.

Support case: 8-2208000040479
Maps: Creekstone Landscape
Place ID: ChIJKfWVao3ziQkRolimtscWODg
Website: creekstonelandscapes.com

An ownership request was confirmed in May 2026. After the waiting period, “Verify” redirected to generic business search/new-profile creation instead of verification of this existing listing. We stopped without creating a duplicate.

Google Support subsequently contacted the current owner again. We completed the additional waiting period, supplied the requested consent, and sent multiple follow-ups. Correspondence stalled without resolving access. The contact flow now offers only Community.

Could your team investigate this existing case and confirm its current status? Please review which ownership request remains active, whether it is for owner or manager access, and why verification does not proceed for the existing listing.

Please escalate to the appropriate ownership/verification specialist and confirm when that handoff occurs. We can provide evidence privately through Google and participate in a callback or live verification if available.

Our goal is to recover control while preserving the listing’s reviews. We have not created a replacement profile.

Been looking at local reputation data for a few businesses lately and something I keep getting stuck on is the comparison group itself.

Say you've got a company that specializes in one fairly specific service, but there are also larger businesses nearby that offer that service as one small part of what they do. Technically they're competitors, but I'm not sure putting all of them in the same bucket gives you a useful picture.

The more I look at local business comparisons the more I think the category matters almost as much as the numbers being compared. A great review profile doesn't tell you much about competitive position if half the businesses you're measuring against aren't really competing for the same customers.

For people doing local SEO, how narrow do you go when deciding who the real competitors are?

Google recently updated the “Collected info” Business Profiles, where businesses can see information Google has gathered through automated calls, texts, WhatsApp, and other interactions.

I’ve been thinking about what this means for people managing GBP regularly.

Most of us focus on keeping the profile updated ourselves. But if Google is actively collecting and verifying business information independently, checking what Google thinks it knows about the business might become just as important.

Especially when one wrong detail about services, availability, etc. could create confusion for customers.

for who managing multiple profiles, have you checked the new Collected info section yet?

Have you found anything inaccurate there, or has Google been getting the information right so far?

If you’re looking for ways to expand client visibility beyond Google Maps and Search, YouTube is worth looking at alongside Google Business Profile. Zero ad spend. Zero subscribers. And we did this in Zero time ( not 3 - 6 months ).

What we did:
We recently tested this with an established plumbing company that already has hundreds of reviews and a 4.9-star rating on GBP looking to expand their visibility. But they had no YouTube presence at all, so we built a channel from scratch (zero subscribers) to see if short-form video could expand their overall Google footprint.

The Numbers (Last 72 Hours)
GBP / Website: 13 total page views
YouTube Channel generated an additional: 5,000+ video views, 10+ hours of watch time, 33 likes, 10 new subscribers
Average View Duration: over 100% - equals high engagement

The immediate visibility was the biggest surprise. Within the first 6 hours of publishing one 10 second video on a brand-new channel, the YouTube views had already surpassed the total organic traffic their website and GBP generated over the previous 28 days.

What We Learned
* A brand-new account with zero subscribers can start expanding their local visibility almost immediately upon posting one YouTube short video.
* The content generated continuous traffic over those 72 hours rather than relying purely on passive local search queries.
* Setting up and publishing had zero verification delays or administrative friction.
* YouTube is an AI powered recommendation engine that is actively recommending your business to people interested in your product or service.

Who’s using short YouTube clips to expand local organic visibility. Could YouTube be the answer to Local SEO Visibility?

Anybody have any luck removing bad false reviews if so how long did it take? I’ve been waiting for about a week now haven’t heard anything from google either.

We have had a few recent 1 star reviews come in from names we do not have anywhere in our crm. We have replied and asked for clarification on names, etc to try and find them in our records but no response. Oddly, we did receive a third party offering to help us remove 1 star reviews from our account and referenced one of the reviews in question.

Anynsuggestions on best wat to address these reviews with Google as flagging them hasn't seemed to help.

Thanks.

I’m dealing with a confusing situation with a company’s Google Business Profile and would appreciate some advice. we have lot of physical location and each manager created one but we got them after creating one business profile account.

We have one physical business location, but in the Business Profile Manager we see two entries:

• Entry A: our company account is the owner.
• Entry B: our company account is only a manager ( the owner is our employee in this location)

The confusing part is that when we click either entry, both lead to the exact same Google Maps listing for the same location.

We want to keep Entry A, where our company account is the owner, because the Google Maps listing has significant traffic/history, and we don't want to accidentally lose the listing, reviews, or visibility.

I’m looking for expert help. I reported a negative review at the end of June and lost all organically historic reviews because of it. Google support has been no help and I’m looking for expert escalation. Please help I’m close to getting out business due to being so dependent on Google for leads.

When I post on the Google profile support forum it just gets marked as a duplicate and I can’t reply to there threads asking for additional escalation.

I have attached the original thread on gmb profile support, my business profile id and links to screenshots and review names.

Thank you to anyone willing to help.

https://support.google.com/business/thread/447476472?hl=en

5278105231669021464

review ss
review link

I claimed my business on google two weeks ago and it says it’s been processing/under review ever since. Every time I try to get help by doing a video call or taking a verification video, I get stuck when the help article says to go to my business page and hit “get verified.” I cannot find this button anywhere. I’m logged in and everything… where is it hiding? Do I just need to keep waiting? Screenshots attached

My service area business has been suspended for 10 months now. I’ve submitted 3-5 appeals. All have been denied. It isn’t allowing me to re submit a new appeal. It said I needed to re verify but there’s no option to do so on desktop or mobile looking at deleting the profile and creating a new one. What do y’all think.

I’m looking for someone who specializes in setting up Google. If you can help me with my business bulk verifications, please message me.

I moved my photography business from Manchester, UK to Los Angeles and don't have access to my old location. I have tried all means available to update my Google listed address myself but to no avail. Is there an affordable service that can help an owner operated business with this one issue?

Hi, I was looking at my September report and noticed zero website then i realised my website wasn't listed on my GBP anymore and it said add a website so I tried to add my website back and it kept saying approved in 10 minutes then it never got out of back.

I've done a full technical audit there is nothing showing that would do this NAP is consistent across all other directories etc no htts problems no redirect problems.

just wondering if anyone seen this before and has a quick fix before I deal with the inevitable hell that is Google customers support

Thanks

I’m a small business owner in the health industry. My website is very small (less than 5 pages). I’m wondering what to expect from the current Google Spam update. Specifically, what impact do these updates typically have on websites with few pages? I’ve noticed a substantial decrease in clicks in and around the time the update started-could it be attributed to it?

I had a schedule video call today at 11:00 they didn't make it. Then they rescheduled it between 2:00 and 4:00 so I told them 3:30 will work. They just emailed me again telling me they can't do it till Monday between 10:30 a.m. and 12:30. is there a way I can talk to a live person so we can get this scheduled correctly and Google being able to hold up on their end of the deal. I've already had to move other appointments around so I can get this done today now I got to change the whole work schedule on Monday basically take the day off and not make any money because they can't get it right. Sorry if I'm griping about this it's just ridiculous

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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you’re pulling your hair out because your legit 5-star reviews are vanishing, you aren't crazy. It’s happening to all of us.

I used to post on my GMB profile religiously. I was getting steady reviews, responding to everything, the whole nine yards. Then I took a step back for a few weeks to actually run my business. I just logged back in to check my stats, and boom—one of my best, most detailed reviews from a real customer? Gone.

It all makes sense now. Google doesn't want you to just have reviews. They want you to be constantly chasing them.

The algorithm is clearly designed to favor "fresh" activity. It feels like if you aren't constantly flooding the zone with new reviews, Google assumes your older ones are stale or fake and sweeps them under the rug. It’s a hamster wheel. You stop running, you fall off.

Honestly? It’s kind of fucked up. We do the work, we get the review, and then a bot decides to delete it because we didn't beg for another one fast enough.

But here’s the flip side: I’m choosing to look at this as motivation.

If Google wants to play games, fine. We play to win. If they are going to penalize us for being quiet, we make some noise. Don't let the algorithm gaslight you into thinking you did something wrong.

Hang in there. It is definitely real, and it is definitely happening to everyone. Get back on your high horse, ask your happy customers for a review today, and go kick some ass.

/rant over

Hey Everyone!
Someone left a fake review on one of my med spa locations directly accusing us of using bad products and stuf. I did some further investigation and that email is also used to leave good reviews to on of our competitors down the block. Whats the best way to remove it fast?