April 28th, 2025 – Starting today our marketing agency which frequently provides both local SEO and PPC services to clients has stopped running ads on keywords full of spam on Google Maps and other Google products. Over the past year and half we have noticed a significant increase in fake and spam listings from illegitimate companies that claim fake locations or simply do not exist at all as well as parallel significant degradation in edits and redressal reports being accepted to remove this spam. During this time Google has escalated their attacks on small publishers, used their AI systems to outright steal content, encouraged users to keep clicking on various search terms, allowed harmful and bullying fake reviews on profiles, and made it harder for legitimate local businesses to write helpful content for local consumers and appear in the search results.

In light of these multiple factors that are adversely affecting local small businesses nationwide; and despite Google’s claims of improved spam and fake listing prevention on Google Maps through the use of AI, which our firsthand experience strongly contradicts – we have decided, effective immediately, to evaluate each keyword we advertise on and to remove any keywords from our campaigns where a significant volume of spam is ranking highly.

In the city of Dallas alone 7 out of the top 10 listings for an SEO agency using the keyword “Dallas SEO” are all non-existent companies all in direct violation of Google’s guidelines using virtual office space, fake addresses, empty offices with for lease signs on them, etc… After suffering for over a year doing everything possible to bring the increasing spam to Google’s attention including taking video and photo evidence for Google and providing it to them via their redressal system, we have made the difficult decision to no longer run ads on keywords where a large volume of top rankings are spam. It seems ridiculous to us that Google is willingly allowing and tacitly encouraging spammers to infest Google Search and Maps while simultaneously expecting the real local businesses being harmed to run more ads and suffer from loss of rankings to their AI systems.

With today’s decision to walk away from Google’s ad products on keywords rife with spam for our agency, we are also starting to encourage our clients to be conscious of this as well and recommend they only run ads on keywords where Google appears to be allowing for fair competition amongst real companies and where they are clearly taking efforts to remove spammers on Google Maps and other Google products.

Our recommendations will be sent out to clients starting this week with reports of spam on keywords, potential impacts, and ways we can remediate any traffic, lead generation, or sales lost by adjusting our marketing strategy.

In 2018 our research on spammers here in Dallas showed how easily Google Maps could be manipulated by fake companies. This research helped lead to the creation of the Redressal report system which allowed for the anonymous reporting of spam listings on Google Maps, a system Google now appears to have abandoned completely and the results are unsurprisingly a dramatic rise in spam. We field calls every week from local Dallas small businesses that believes they were scammed by another SEO agency and in almost every case the company doesn’t exist anywhere except on Google Maps. It is our hope that our latest efforts bear similar fruit and bring about positive impacts for small businesses around the country.