The newest Google scam

and how to protect yourself

August 19, 2024

Hi local SEO enthusiasts!

Here are last week’s most interesting posts 👇️

1. New GBP hotel scam

Nevena Ivanova reported that spammers and/or hackers are taking over Hotel Google Business Profiles, mainly targeting hotels in Indonesia and the UAE… for now.

⚠️ In Indonesia, attackers are changing the phone number to a personal or fake WhatsApp number on hotel Profiles.
⚠️ In the UAE, legitimate hotel Profiles are marked as "Permanently closed."

These changes can be super damaging to businesses, so I hope Google fixes this infuriating problem soon before it spreads to other countries.

If you have clients in the hotel business (or any industry), and you’re worried about this, you might wanna check out our Local Platform software.

The tool is designed to prevent this exact problem by alerting you to any changes to your Google Business Profiles and allowing you to reject them easily.

We also priced it at just $1/mo so that every GBP out there can be safe.

2. Thoughts on citations

Ugh. Citations. The most hotly debated topic in local SEO 😅

Scroll through the carousel to read my thoughts 👇️

Other people had thoughts, too. Read them in the comment section here.

3. How long does local SEO take to show results?

This client has been with Whitespark for only three months, but just by making simple optimizations on their Google Business Profile, their visibility has gone up by 13%.

And we’re not even working on their website. GBP only.

💡 Takeaway: Optimize your Google Business Profile. You can see a big increase in your rankings and leads just by working on your Profile.

4. Local area code vs. 1-800 number for local SEO

Should you use a local phone number or a 1-800 number on your Google Business Profile?

Watch this video to find out 👇️

@darrenshawseo

Should you use your local phone number or a 1-800 number on your Google Business Profile? #seo #localseo #googlebusinessprofile #googlemyb... See more

5. Google AI can now generate a menu from a photo

The Google Business Profile has a new experimental AI feature that can create a menu from a photo.

ㅤScroll through this carousel to learn more about it 👇️

See the carousel on Instagram.

That’s it for this week. Follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok to catch everything I publish!

Darren

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🤑 Refer to Whitespark and earn big!