Scraped GBP reviews appearing on competitor GBP profiles

[MonicaH]

Has anyone had problems with GBP reviews being scraped from your clients' profiles and then shown on other companies' GBPs?

We've seen several cases of this happening and they all seem to be associated with this "marketing company" - https://www.treeleadsonline.com/information51112906. When we threatened legal action, the copied reviews quickly disappeared so it's clear they're doing something to put the scraped reviews online. I just don't know how they're doing it ...

Any suggestions for how to prevent this? Or how to find out which other companies may be using our clients' reviews?

Reporting the offending sites to Google has gone nowhere.

And here's the kicker - the companies stealing reviews are all Google Guaranteed! It seems to me that using other companies' reviews as your own should be enough to disqualify you from the Google Guaranteed program!

 

[JoyHawkins]

Fake reviews online is a growing problem. Nothing surprises me anymore.

Glad to see threatening legal action worked - that is probably faster than dealing with Google support.

Did you report the companies here? Business Profile third party complaint: Report a violation - Google Business Profile Help

 

[MonicaH]

Fake reviews online is a growing problem. Nothing surprises me anymore.

Glad to see threatening legal action worked - that is probably faster than dealing with Google support.

Did you report the companies here? Business Profile third party complaint: Report a violation - Google Business Profile Help

It just keeps getting worse and worse. Then again, when something has such a large impact on a company's success, there's a lot of pressure to do whatever it takes to beat the competition.

Thanks for the link - I didn't know there was such a thing. Will try reporting and see if anything happens...

 

[MonicaH]

Wondering if anyone has any idea how this is being done? Or what we can do to protect our clients' reviews?