More threads by appliance.surgeon

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Hi all,
I run a small appliance repair company in Alexandria, VA. Since August a lead-generation network has filled the Maps results for appliance repair in Northern Virginia, DC and suburban Maryland, and it now takes most of the local calls. I'd like advice from anyone who has dealt with a network this size.
What we see:
  • About 200 listings that don't appear to be real businesses at the address shown (174 still live on 18 Oct). Template names ("Elite / Prime / Ace / AAA" + town + "Appliance Repair") at addresses that belong to restaurants, office towers and a mall; many claim 24 hours.
  • Calls to several of them are forwarded to one company that answers under a different name.
  • 78 listings share 10 blocks of consecutive phone numbers.
  • Review bursts: groups of 3 to 15 listings each get a 5-star review within the same 30 minutes, with reviewer first names in alphabetical order. When Google removed the reviews on 11 listings, 9 got new ones within 16 minutes.
What we've done: Business Redressal Complaint Form submissions since 8 Oct (seven cases), with a spreadsheet each time. Google removed reviews on 18 listings, but almost all the listings are still up.
List with Google Maps links (view only):
Questions:
  1. For a network this size, what has actually moved Google: redressal forms in smaller batches, Suggest an edit on each listing, or something else?
  2. Is there evidence that Google's team responds to better than the rest (the call forwarding, the phone blocks, the review timing)?
  3. Is it worth reporting the review bursts separately from the listings?
Thanks,
Javid
 
For me it's been relentlessly reporting. I would block out an hour or two each week and go through the list, Reporting every listing three times: non existent, spam, not open to the public.

As long as you're not in that weird buggy space where clicking on "send" does not actually send in the report, it's been pretty good for me so far. it leverages a "report while other reports are open" tactic that @Phil Rozek wrote about some time ago.
 
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