Fake Google Business Profiles: How to Report One and Protect Yours

Search your own trade and town on Google Maps and you'll probably find a listing that doesn't belong there: a locksmith at an address that's a parking lot, a plumber whose "office" is a mailbox, or a name that's really just your keyword with a city on the end. Google says it removed over 13 million fake Business Profiles in 2025 alone. Some of the ones it missed are sitting between you and your customers.

"Fake" covers three different problems, and each has its own fix. There's the fake listing that competes with you, the real profile for your business that someone else controls, and the edit to your own profile that you never made. This guide takes them in that order, using Google's own forms, timelines, and words.

The Three Kinds of Fake Google Business Profile

The word "fake" gets used for three situations that have nothing in common except the damage.

A fake listing competing with you. Someone creates a profile for a business that doesn't exist at that address, or doesn't exist at all, to catch calls for your trade. It happens most in trades where customers call the first result they see, like locksmiths, towing, and plumbing. Every one of those pins pushes a real business down the map.

Your real profile in someone else's hands. The profile for your business is verified, but not by you. Sometimes it's a previous owner or an agency you stopped paying. Sometimes it's a stranger who verified it first. Either way, you can't edit it, and they can.

Edits you didn't make to the profile you do control. The hours change, the website link points somewhere else, or the description picks up a competitor's phone number. Google accepts suggestions from anyone, and in 2025 it says it "blocked 79 million inaccurate or unverified edits." The ones that get through land on your profile.

How common this is

On October 22, 2026, we looked at the 2,558 Google Business Profiles connected to ReplyOnTheFly (our own test accounts excluded). Google reported an ownership conflict on 89 of them, about 1 in 29, meaning the account the owner connected isn't the one Google treats as being in good standing for that business. Those are owners who tried to manage a profile and found someone else already holds it.

The third problem is far more common than hijacking. Since August 19, 2026, ReplyOnTheFly has emailed owners every time a watched profile's hours, special hours, description, or services changed on Google without going through it. In those nine weeks, 290 of the 2,209 profiles it watched saw at least one such change, about 1 in 8. Some of those were the owner's own edits made directly in Google, and some were Google's updates. All of them were changes the owner didn't see coming from the inside.

If you run a profile and never look at it between reviews, there's a fair chance something on it is different from what you last set.

How to Tell Whether a Listing Is Fake

Before you report anything, be sure. Google's representation guidelines let service-area businesses hide their address, so a listing with no storefront isn't fake by default. A listing is worth reporting when several of these line up:

• The name is a search phrase. "Emergency Locksmith Denver 24 Hour" is a keyword, not a business name. Google's guidelines say a name "should reflect your business's real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers."
• The address is somewhere a business can't operate. A vacant lot, a residential block with no sign, a mailbox store, or the same suite number as six other "businesses" in the same trade.
• The phone goes to a call center. Call it. If someone answers with a generic script and asks for your zip code before the business name, it's a dispatch line, not a shop.
• The website is a template with no real company behind it. Stock photos, no license number where one is legally required, no staff names, and the same layout as the other suspect listings.
• The reviews arrived in a cluster. A dozen five-star reviews in one week, then nothing. Google says that when it sees "a sudden spike in spam reviews" it removes them and pauses new reviews on the profile, so the pattern is one it already watches for.

Write down the listing's Maps URL, take screenshots, and note the phone number and website before you report. Google's complaint form asks you to quote the exact content you object to, and listings sometimes change after a report goes in.

One honest caveat: a listing that outranks you isn't fake because it outranks you. If your real competitor is simply doing better, our guide to why Google Maps rankings keep changing is the page you want, not this one.

How to Report a Fake Google Business Profile

Google has two routes, and it's strict about which one you use. Pick wrong and the report goes nowhere.

Route 1: Suggest an edit on Google Maps

This is Google's general route for a business that "may not exist." From its report a business help page:

1. Open Google Maps and search for the business, or select it on the map.
2. Select Suggest an edit, then Place is closed or not here.
3. Select Offensive, harmful, or misleading, then Submit.

There's no box to explain yourself. That's the trade-off: it takes thirty seconds, and Google decides based on what it can see.

Route 2: The Business Redressal Complaint Form

For fraud involving the listing's name, phone number, or website, Google points to its Business Redressal Complaint Form. Its help page says to use it "if you find misleading business names, phone numbers, or business URLs on Maps that raise suspicion of fraudulent activity," and adds that "you can report multiple businesses at once by uploading 10 or more profiles or a spreadsheet with all URLs."

The form itself sets three expectations in plain language:

• Scope. "If your complaint is not related to fraudulent activity on the name, phone number, or URL of the business, we will not be able to review your complaint."
• No promises. "We cannot guarantee that any action will be taken on your complaint after you complete and submit this form. After we receive your complaint, you will not be updated on its status."
• Detail required. Google asks you to "quote the exact content from the URL above that you believe is malicious," and says it "will not process your complaint if it isn't properly filled out or if the complaint is incomplete."

So fill it in the way a reviewer would want to read it: the public Maps URL, which field is fraudulent (the form offers Title, Address, Phone number, Website, or "This business doesn't exist"), and a specific explanation. "This address is a UPS Store mailbox; the phone number also appears on these four other listings" beats "this is a scam."

Google also says the form isn't for corrections: "If you simply need to correct an incorrect business name, phone number, or URL, do not use this form." For a wrong phone number on a real business, suggest an edit instead.

What happens after you report

Google doesn't publish a timeline, and the redressal form says outright that you won't hear back. Check the listing again in a few weeks. If it's gone, keep checking the area, because operations that build fake listings tend to build more. If it's still there and you have new evidence, report again with that evidence.

When Someone Else Controls Your Profile

If you search for your business and see "Claim this business" or "Own this business?", nobody has verified it yet, and you should claim and verify it now. If instead you see "Someone else may manage this Business Profile," the profile is verified and the verification isn't yours.

Google's route is to request ownership from whoever holds it:

1. Go to business.google.com/add and enter your business name and address.
2. Choose your business from the list. Google says you'll see "Someone else may manage this Business Profile."
3. Select Request Access, fill out the form, and submit.

Google says "the current profile owner is then notified by email and has 3 days to respond." If they approve, you get an approval email and can manage the profile. If they deny it, "you can still suggest an edit to the profile," and "you can also try to appeal the decision." If there's no response after 3 days, "you may have the option to claim the profile" from the View request link in your confirmation email, though Google adds that "the option to claim a profile isn't always available."

For a service-area business with no shop or office, Google says to contact support and enter "Transfer ownership of listing" as the issue.

Two things make this go faster. Make the request from a Google account on your business domain, so the connection between you and the business is obvious. And have proof ready, such as photos of your signage, a utility bill, or your business license, in case you're asked for it before the profile is handed over.

If the hijacker is someone you invited

The quieter version of this is the owner or manager you added two years ago: the marketing agency, the ex-employee, the partner who left. Google's owners and managers help says managers "have mostly the same access to the profile as owners," except that "they can't add or remove users or remove the profile." Owners can do everything, including delete it.

To see who has access, open your profile, select Business Profile settings, then People and access. Remove anyone you don't recognize or no longer work with. Google notes that "only owners can remove other owners and managers," and that when you remove a user, "their replies to reviews, posts, comments, and other actions stay on the Business Profile."

There's a built-in safety margin here worth knowing. Google says new owners and managers "have to wait 7 days" before they can "remove other owners or managers" or "transfer primary ownership." So a bad invitation can't lock you out on day one. If you check the People and access page when you get the "accepted your invitation" email, you have a week to undo it.

Edits You Didn't Make: Google's 4-Day Window

The most common "fake" problem isn't a fake profile at all. It's your real profile, with details someone else suggested and Google accepted.

Google's help page on updates to your profile explains the mechanism. "If sources report that your profile info is incorrect or outdated, Google may update your profile." In the editor, "Blue: Shows info changed by Google," and "if your profile has Google updates, you'll find a notification at the top of the page."

Google now has a review step for some of those edits. From the same page: "If a suggested edit requires your review, you may receive an email or an in-product notification. Once notified, you have 4 days to accept or reject the suggestion." Then the part that matters: "If you don't respond within 4 days, Google may automatically publish the update if it is supported by other publicly available information, such as your business website."

Google also says it "may apply suggested user edits to your business information without prior review" when "edits are necessary to meet policy guidelines." So the 4-day window isn't a guarantee of a warning. It's a chance, if you're watching the inbox the profile is tied to.

Google announced the alerts in its April 2026 post on protecting businesses on Maps: "we're rolling out proactive email alerts so verified and active owners have a way to easily review important edits to their Business Profiles before they go live." Note the wording. Verified and active owners. Google doesn't define "active" there, so a profile nobody signs in to is the one to worry about.

Three habits cover most of the risk:

• Keep your website's hours, phone, and address identical to the profile. Google says it uses "other publicly available information, such as your business website" to decide whether to publish an edit you didn't answer. If the website agrees with your profile, a bad suggestion has nothing to lean on. Our guide to why Google changes your hours covers the rest of that mechanism.
• Open the editor once a month and look for blue text. That's Google's own marker for info it changed. Fix anything wrong on the spot.
• Get told when something changes. When you connect your profile to ReplyOnTheFly, it keeps a daily copy of your hours, description, and services and emails you when any of them changes on Google without going through it. That's the data behind the table above. If the change is wrong, the Profile Assistant puts your hours, description, or services back from a chat message, with a before-and-after card you approve first. It deliberately never touches your name, address, category, or phone, because those are the fields that trigger re-verification.

Lock the Doors Before It Happens

None of the fixes above are fun, and all of them are slower than prevention. Five things, once a quarter:

1. Check People and access. Remove former staff, former agencies, and any address you don't recognize. Make sure the primary owner is an account your business controls, not an agency's.
2. Turn on 2-Step Verification for every Google account on that list. A hijacked Google account is a hijacked profile.
3. Search your own business on Maps while signed out. You're looking for a second listing with your name, your phone number on someone else's listing, or a "Claim this business" button on a profile you thought was yours. If you find a second copy, our guide to duplicate Google Business Profiles covers merging and removing it.
4. Report fake competitors with evidence, in batches. Google's form takes 10 to 100 URLs at a time and says that's faster to process. One well-documented batch beats ten vague single reports.
5. Run a quick profile check. The free audit scores your profile against 9 ranking factors in about 30 seconds, which is a fast way to see whether something basic has drifted.

Fake reviews are a separate problem with a separate form. If the attack on your business is coming through reviews rather than listings, our guide to handling fake Google reviews covers reporting and responding.

The Takeaway

A fake Google Business Profile is one of three things: a listing that shouldn't exist, your listing in the wrong hands, or your listing with the wrong details. Each has a Google-documented route.

Report a listing that may not exist through Suggest an edit, and fraud in a name, phone, or website through the Business Redressal Complaint Form, with the exact content quoted. Request ownership of a profile someone else verified, and expect a 3-day wait. Answer suggested edits within 4 days, keep your website in agreement with your profile, and check who has access once a quarter.

Google removed 13 million fake profiles last year, so reports do land. The part it can't do for you is notice when your own profile changes. If you'd rather be told than find out from a customer, start free with ReplyOnTheFly and keep the rest of the optimization guide handy for everything else on the profile.

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